How Israel Fooled Hezbollah With Pager's Stealthy Design and A Cover Story

Exactly a month ago, on September 17, a coordinated attack using weaponised pagers resulted in simultaneous explosions in the southern suburbs of Beirut and other Hezbollah strongholds. The devices detonated after beeping to signal incoming messages, lead to 39 deaths and over 3,400 injuries. Many victims suffered severe injuries, including eye damage, missing fingers, and gaping abdominal wounds, reflecting their close proximity to the devices at the time of explosions.

The explosives were concealed within the pagers, which had been delivered to Lebanon earlier that year as part of an Israeli strategy aimed to decimate Hezbollah. The agents who made the pagers developed a battery that concealed a small but powerful charge of plastic explosive, along with a novel detonator that was undetectable by X-ray, according to a Lebanese source with firsthand knowledge of the devices and teardown photos of the battery pack examined by news agency Reuters.

To address the issue of not having a believable backstory for the bulky new product, they set up fake online stores, pages, and posts that misled Hezbollah into thinking the devices were legitimate, as revealed by a Reuters review of web archives.

The hidden design and feature of the pager bomb and the carefully crafted cover story for the battery, described here for the first time, reveal details about a years-long operation that has dealt unprecedented blows to Israel's Iran-backed enemy in Lebanon and has increased tensions in the Middle East, bringing it closer to a regional war.

Pager Design Concealed Explosive Mechanism Inside

A thin, square piece containing six grams of white pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) plastic explosive was sandwiched between two rectangular battery cells, according to a Lebanese source and photos.

The space between the battery cells, not visible in the photos, was filled with a highly flammable strip that acted as the detonator, the source said.

This three-layer assembly was placed in a black plastic sleeve and covered with a metal casing about the size of a matchbox, the photos showed.

The design was unusual because it didn't use a standard miniaturized detonator, which is usually a metallic cylinder, according to the source and two bomb experts. All three spoke on condition of anonymity.

Without metal parts, the material used to trigger detonation had an advantage: like the plastic explosives, it couldn’t be detected by X-ray.

Hezbollah's Pager Screening and Battery Drain Concerns

When Hezbollah received the pagers in February, they checked for explosives, two people familiar with the matter said, scanning them with airport security devices to see if they set off any alarms. Nothing suspicious was found.

The devices were likely designed to create a spark within the battery pack, which would ignite the detonating material and cause the PETN sheet to explode, the two bomb experts said after reviewing the pager-bomb design.

Since the explosives and packaging took up about a third of the volume, the battery pack contained only a small fraction of the power expected for its 35-gram weight, according to two battery experts.

"There is a significant amount of unaccounted for mass," said Paul Christensen, an expert in lithium batteries at Britain’s Newcastle University.

At one point, Hezbollah noticed that the battery was draining faster than expected, according to a Lebanese source. However, this did not seem to cause major security concerns, as the group continued to give out the pagers to its members just hours before the attack.

Deadly Explosions Hit Lebanon

On September 17, thousands of pagers exploded at the same time in the southern suburbs of Beirut and other Hezbollah areas, mostly after they beeped, signaling an incoming message. Many victims were rushed to the hospital with eye injuries, missing fingers, or deep abdominal wounds, suggesting they were near the devices when they exploded. In total, the pager attack, along with a second attack the next day using weaponized walkie-talkies, killed 39 people and injured over 3,400.

Two Western security sources said the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad was behind the attacks using pagers and walkie-talkies. The day after the attacks, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant praised Mossad’s "very impressive" results, which many in Israel saw as a hint of the agency’s role.

US officials said they were not informed of the operation beforehand.

The Weak Link

From the outside, the pager's power source looked like a regular lithium-ion battery pack used in many consumer electronic devices. However, the battery, labeled LI-BT783, had a problem: it was not available on the market.

Hezbollah has strict procedures for checking what they buy, according to a former Israeli intelligence officer who was not involved in the pager operation.

"You want to make sure that if they look, they find something," the former spy said, requesting anonymity. "Not finding anything is not good.”

Creating backstories, or “legends,” for undercover agents has long been an important skill for spy agencies. What made the pager scheme unusual is that these skills were used with common consumer electronics products.

For the pagers, the agents tricked Hezbollah by selling a custom-made model, AR-924, under a well-known Taiwanese brand, Gold Apollo.

The Gold Apollo Connection

Gold Apollo’s chairman, Hsu Ching-kuang, told reporters a day after the pager attack that about three years ago, a former employee named Teresa Wu and her “big boss, called Tom,” approached him to discuss a licensing agreement.

Hsu said he had little information about Wu’s boss, but he allowed them to design their own products and sell them under the well-known Gold Apollo brand. Reuters could not identify the manager or confirm if they or Wu were aware they were working with Israeli intelligence.

The chairman said he was not impressed by the AR-924 when he first saw it, but he still added photos and a description of the product to his company’s website, which helped make it more visible and credible. However, there was no way to buy the AR-924 directly from his website.

Hsu stated he knew nothing about the lethal capabilities of the pagers or the larger operation against Hezbollah. He described his company as a victim of the scheme.

Gold Apollo declined to comment further. Calls and messages sent to Wu went unanswered, and she has not made any statements to the media since the attacks.

'I Know This Product'

In September 2023, pages and images of the AR-924 and its battery were added to apollosystemshk.com, a website claiming to have a license to distribute Gold Apollo products, including the rugged pager and its large power source, according to a Reuters review of internet records and metadata.

The website listed an address in Hong Kong for a company called Apollo Systems HK. However, no company by that name exists at that address or in Hong Kong corporate records.

The website was also listed by Wu on her Facebook page and in public incorporation records when she registered a company called Apollo Systems in Taipei earlier this year.

A section of the apollosystemshk.com website focused on the LI-BT783 battery, highlighting its excellent performance. Unlike older disposable batteries used in pagers, it claimed to last 85 days and could be recharged using a USB cable, according to the website and a 90-second promotional video on YouTube.

In late 2023, two battery stores listed the LI-BT783 in their catalogs, according to Reuters. Additionally, two online forums dedicated to batteries had discussions about the power source, even though it was not available for sale. One user named Mikevog wrote in April 2023, “I know this product. It’s got a great datasheet and a great performance.” Reuters could not identify Mikevog.

The website, the online stores, and the forum discussions seemed to be part of a deception effort, said a former Israeli intelligence officer and two Western security officials to Reuters. The websites have been removed since the pager bombs caused chaos in Lebanon, but archived and cached versions are still accessible.

Hezbollah leaders regret buying the pagers and have started internal investigations to find out how the security breach happened and to identify any possible spies.

At the beginning of the year, Hezbollah switched to pagers after realizing that their cellphone communications were being intercepted by Israeli forces, as previously reported by news agency Reuters.

Investigations revealed that Israeli agents used aggressive sales tactics to ensure Hezbollah’s procurement manager chose the AR-924 pager. One person familiar with the situation said the salesperson made a very low offer for the pagers, “and kept bringing the price down until he was pulled in.”

Lebanese authorities condemned the attacks, calling them a serious violation of Lebanon's sovereignty. On Sept. 19, just before he was killed by Israel, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah stated that the device explosions could be seen as a "declaration of war" and promised to retaliate against Israel.

Since Oct. 8, 2023, Hezbollah and Israel have been exchanging fire, with the militant group launching rockets at Israeli military positions in support of its ally Hamas.

Following the attacks, Israel has initiated a war against Hezbollah, including a ground invasion of southern Lebanon and airstrikes that have killed many of its top leaders.

The ongoing internal investigation faced a setback on Sept. 28 when Nabil Kaouk, the senior Hezbollah official leading the procurement investigation, was killed in an Israeli airstrike just 11 days after the pager attack.