Hezbollah has been left reeling by a spate of shocking explosions in the past two days that killed at least 32 people and wounded thousands across Lebanon and Syria when their communications equipment detonated without warning.
The coordinated attacks, unprecedented in scope and scale, appear to be the work of Israel’s Mossad spy agency and have ushered in a new era of psychological warfare.
WHAT WAS SAID
Though he did not reference the exploding devices directly, Israel’s hawkish defence minister Yoav Gallant declared yesterday: ‘We are at the start of a new phase in the war’ and praised the work of Israel’s army and security agencies, saying ‘the results are very impressive’.
But regional experts believe the stricken and embarrassed Hezbollah could now seek out retribution in a similar fashion – a punishing black operation on Jewish targets.
‘It’s unlikely they’re going to respond with an airstrike or a drone strike. Now that Israel has expanded the black ops space, which they have done effectively, we will probably see Hezbollah responding to this with another black operation,’ Andreas Krieg, senior lecturer at King’s College London’s school of security studies said.
‘That might not be within Israel, which is going to be very difficult. But it could be Israeli targets overseas – it could be Jewish targets overseas.
‘Hezbollah has a very extensive network of people they can work with and work through across the world to hit these sort of targets.’
Israel has not claimed responsibility for the debilitating attacks in Lebanon and Syria.
But experts are in almost unanimous agreement that the Mossad and the special operations divisions of Israel’s Defence Forces are the only elements with the capability and the motive to orchestrate such a campaign.
