NYT: Mossad Front Company in Hungary Manufactured Exploding Pagers

How Israel Built a Modern-Day Trojan Horse: Exploding Pagers

The Israeli government did not tamper with the Hezbollah devices that exploded, defense and intelligence officials say. It manufactured them as part of an elaborate ruse.

By Sheera Frenkel, Ronen Bergman and Hwaida Saad | Sept. 18, 2024

[...] By all appearances, B.A.C. Consulting was a Hungary-based company that was under contract to produce the devices on behalf of a Taiwanese company, Gold Apollo. In fact, it was part of an Israeli front, according to three intelligence officers briefed on the operation. They said at least two other shell companies were created as well to mask the real identities of the people creating the pagers: Israeli intelligence officers.

B.A.C. did take on ordinary clients, for which it produced a range of ordinary pagers. But the only client that really mattered was Hezbollah, and its pagers were far from ordinary. Produced separately, they contained batteries laced with the explosive PETN, according to the three intelligence officers.

The pagers began shipping to Lebanon in the summer of 2022 in small numbers, but production was quickly ramped up after Mr. Nasrallah denounced cellphones.

[...] Over the summer, shipments of the pagers to Lebanon increased, with thousands arriving in the country and being distributed among Hezbollah officers and their allies, according to two American intelligence officials.

To Hezbollah, they were a defensive measure, but in Israel, intelligence officers referred to the pagers as "buttons" that could be pushed when the time seemed ripe.

That moment, it appears, came this week.

Speaking to his security cabinet on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would do whatever was necessary to enable more than 70,000 Israelis driven away by the fighting with Hezbollah to return home, according to reports in Israeli news outlets. Those residents, he said, could not return without "a fundamental change in the security situation in the north," according to a statement from the prime minister’s office.

On Tuesday, the order was given to activate the pagers.

To set off the explosions, according to three intelligence and defense officials, Israel triggered the pagers to beep and sent a message to them in Arabic that appeared as though it had come from Hezbollah's senior leadership.

Seconds later, Lebanon was in chaos.

The Japanese manufacturer whose name was on handheld radios that exploded in Lebanon said Thursday that it had discontinued the device a decade ago and was investigating what happened.

The company, Icom, a telecommunications equipment maker based in Osaka, Japan, had shipped IC-V82 transceivers — the model whose name is seen on radios in photos and a video of the aftermath of Wednesday’s attacks — to overseas markets, including the Middle East, from 2004 to October 2014.

Icom said in a statement Thursday that it had not shipped any of the IC-V82 radios from its plant in Wakayama, Japan, in roughly a decade. But the company has long warned of what it called a surge in counterfeit IC-V82 transceivers.

At least 20 people were killed and more than 450 wounded when walkie-talkies owned by Hezbollah members exploded across Lebanon. It was unclear where Hezbollah purchased the devices that exploded.