The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Why You Should Ditch Your Pager (Hezbollah Operative Edition) || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: September 19, 2024

If you haven't heard by now, a sophisticated Israeli operation targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon was carried out on September 17. While Israel has not officially claimed this attack, it appears to be the next chapter in the rising tensions between Israel and Hezbollah. Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/why-you-should-ditch-your-pager-hezbollah-operative-edition

Hey everybody, Peter Zion here coming to you from Colorado. Today, I'm recording this on the 18th. Yesterday, the 17th of September, we had several thousand pagers explode in Lebanon, injury and at least 2,800 killing at least 12. This was undoubtedly an Israeli operation. I mean, the Israelis aren't saying anything about it, but no one else would and no one else has a vested interest in doing this. The target was Hezbollah, which is a militant slash political organization in Lebanon, that the Israelis have kind of been dicking around with over the last several months and vice versa.

Okay, so what's going on? Number one, Hezbollah's not new. It's been around for decades. Israel's not new. It's been around for decades. And basically, since Hezbollah's formulation, 40, 50, 60 years, it's been a while years ago. They have always been spatting. Things have evolved over the last 15 years in a more peaceful direction.

The two haven't come to direct blows since a, brief air war in the aughts. And the reason is very simple. Hezbollah is not a normal terror organization. They also have a political wing that is part of the government in Lebanon. So there's a whole class of people in Hezbollah who don't see a vested interest in firing rockets into northern Israel because they now are part of the power structures. And if you challenge Israel in a way that Israel feels that the tanks need to move, there's nobody in the neighborhood who can stand up to them. So, you get this kind of hybridized organization where there's a militant wing and there's a political wing. I'm not suggesting any of them are nice people, but not everybody wants to have a war.

In fact, even on the militant side in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks of last year, Hezbollah knows that they are very fortunate that Israel has its hands full with basically a suppression operation in Gaza. The danger, of course, here is that everybody in the Middle East always wants the goddamn last word. So both of them have been doing attacks on each other, the same with the Iran. Iranians in order to get the last word, but since no one will let's anyone else have the last word, we keep having these layered attacks that go up and then go down, go up and go down, go up and go down. I have no reason to believe that this is any different. I don't think it's going to lead to a general war, but Hezbollah will feel like it has to respond,

and then Israel will feel like it has to respond, which will make Hezbollah feel like it has, I mean, welcome to the Middle East. This is just what the place looks like on a good day, and this does not change my assessment that the Middle East is still the calmest part of the world and has been for a little over two years now. Okay, put that aside. What about this attack specifically? Well, a few things.

First of all, this is clearly against international law using a civilian network, the telephone network, to trigger civilian devices, pagers in civilian areas, Lebanon, is clearly not legal, but because Hezbollah has that militant wing and they've been launching missiles and rockets into Israel, I really don't see anyone who matters

bringing a court case against the Israelis for this one. So that's kind of like the minor side show issue. Far more important, this was a pretty sophisticated attack. I mean, the Israelis have had a lot of intel failures over the last few years. They completely missed the Gaza operation. They're botching their counterattacks into Gaza now. This should have been done months ago and they're making no appreciable progress. They're having to go back over areas that they've cleared over and over and over again. And this has the makings of the Quagmire operation for them. And so, In order to do this sort of tech, let me kind of layout what's going on here.

So these painters were manufactured in Taiwan. They were shipped to Hungary, where Hungarian company distribution system, and somewhere between Taiwan and Hungary and these things being delivered to Hezbollah, the Israelis got a hold of the shipments at some point in the supply chain and implanted explosives in all of them. Probably what they did was swap out the batteries and replace them with a hybrid battery explosive system. There's no way you can basically remotely hack a pager and turn into a bomb. Sorry, no. I mean, at most would get really hot and then you set it down. So the sophistication to do that without anyone noticing and getting into thousands of people's hands is kind of impressive.

There's also the operational aspect. The reason HesBelah uses pagers because cell phones can be easily tracked if you know what to do. Pagers only send a signal when they're on and, you know, it's just a much simpler technology, but makes it much safer if you're going to do something. that you think might invite the Israelis to drop a bomb on your head. Well, the Israelis have now hit a couple thousand people who were part of the Hezbollah supply chain distribution system. I mean, it's not like everyone who has a pager. Lebanon got hit, just the people who had gotten a pager from Hezbollah, the vast majority, if not all of them,

who were affiliated with the organization in an operative way. So the next step here is that the Israelis undoubtedly had observers in the hospitals across Lebanon. on and now have either confirmed or identified hundreds, if not thousands of Hezbollah agents and operatives. And you want to talk about a rich Intel trove. It doesn't get much better than that. Not to mention that a lot of these guys are going to have holes on their thighs and are going to be really easy to identify after they heal because they're going to be limping for the rest of their life. So, you know, got to give credit words due. That was a brilliant operation. And then finally,

it raises the question of what else something has really been up to? I mean, after those intel failures, there was an open question as to whether or not Israel had lost its mojo. Clearly, at least some people within their intelligence services have not. And if you can interrupt a supply chain that is that interesting for pagers, what else can you do? Because, you know, manufactured goods in Lebanon, they don't make anything. Everything is important. So that's an opportunity for the Israelis to reach out and tackle anything that Hezbo might have an independent supply system for. Today, On the 18th, we found basically a second wave walkie-talkies, something else that is hard to hack, that exploded, that probably injured another 300 people. And again, now you've got a bunch of Hezbollah folks walking around missing fingers.

So the Israelis are not done here, and Hezbollah will react here, but we have seen a level of sophistication in Israel today and yesterday that we just haven't seen in the last few years. whether they're doing this because they have some broader plans, who knows, whether they're doing this just because this is the most recent in the tit for tat. I don't have an answer for you on that. But what I can tell you is operationally, Hesbalah has now been marked. And a more traditional assassination campaign now would be so much easier than it was just three days ago.