By paging Hezbollah, Israel took aim at a chip in Iran’s armourhttps://en.majalla.com/node/322321/politics/paging-hezbollah-israel-took-aim-chip-iran%E2%80%99s-armour
By paging Hezbollah, Israel took aim at a chip in Iran’s armour
Actors battling sanctions can't be picky about where the initial product came from. After all, beggars can't afford to be choosers.
Nash Weerasekera
The pager attack on Hezbollah was most likely the result of the distribution of booby-trapped communication devices ahead of time through a front company that was controlled (or compromised) by the Israeli Mossad.
By paging Hezbollah, Israel took aim at a chip in Iran’s armour
Supply chains, front companies, and pagers rarely make for a good spy story. Even when used in real life, as they likely were as part of the recent waves of detonation in Lebanon, the technical aspects of the attack—whether a cyber-attack or an explosive-laced battery, etc.— typically grab most of the attention. The terrifying attack that Lebanon witnessed over the past few days, however, is notable not just because of its effect but also because it appears to have had specific “ingredients” meant to take aim at an enduring weakness in Iran’s procurement strategy.
According to initial reports, the attack was most likely the result of the distribution of booby-trapped communication devices ahead of time through a front company that was controlled (or compromised) by Israel’s intelligence services.
The tactic of lacing components of a cell phone or a communication device with explosives isn’t new: The Mossad booby-trapped a phone as early as the 1970s to kill a Palestinian suspected of being involved in the Munich attack against Israeli athletes. Later in the 1990s, Israel killed Hamas’s chief bombmaker, Yahya Ayyash, using an explosive-laden cell phone and is believed to have used the tactic multiple times since. What’s new here is the scale of the attack, and Hezbollah and its ally Iran are now left wondering just how deep the breach runs.
Iran has long promoted hybrid procurement techniques that mix domestically produced components with commercially available parts and products. For example, its Shahed drone—which Russia now uses on a daily basis to target Ukraine—was used by Iran itself against Israel in April and is also one of the weapons used by the Yemen-based Houthis. It includes a number of off-the-shelf parts that theoretically “anyone” can buy. Some of the engines have been bought from European-based companies or copied by Chinese-based companies.
Actors battling sanctions can't be picky about where the initial product came from. Beggars can't be choosers.
Some critical electronics have been found to be made by leading US brands, with dozens of Western-made components often found in these Iranian-made systems. US interceptions of Iranian shipments to the Houthis have also shown that Iran often ships these systems in parts, which makes them easier to smuggle while also allowing for a lot more flexibility as to how some groups procure parts of the systems delivered by Iran.
Of course, as a country under heavy international scrutiny and sanctions, Iran and proxies such as Hezbollah have had to adapt. They have built a complex network of front companies in various countries aimed at masking the true destination of certain products. Western governments have caught wind of this tactic and are tracking those fronts. In this game of cat and mouse, though, the playing field is far from level: It is far easier to create networks of front companies than it is to track and dismantle those sanction-busting tools.
This has afforded Iran tremendous success in arming its proxies and itself with relatively cost-efficient (and military-effective) systems, even when its own industry was lacking. But for a country whose central economic doctrine is self-sufficiency, Iran has become increasingly reliant on Western technology acquired through an ever-changing network of buyers.
Yet there is a catch. As Iran and its allies focus on acquiring Western components and products and evading the slow-moving hammer of new sanctions, they are also far more vulnerable to security breaches of the kind we saw earlier this week.
To begin with, effectively protecting supply chains is an extremely complicated task, even for governments and major corporations, who don't need to figure out ways to bypass sanctions. This is akin to knowing what the animal you're eating ate or what the animal the animal you're eating ate at all times. The risk of food poisoning grows exponentially with the complexity of the food chain.
This picture shows a communication device on the ground as Lebanese forces (not in the picture) prepare to destroy it in a controlled explosion in southern Lebanon on September 19, 2024.
Multinational corporations—who may only face limited attempts to truly "poison" their supply chains—still pour significant money and resources into protecting themselves against this risk. For their part, defence companies and governments are also increasingly concerned about the risk that a motivated enemy would not only look to disrupt their supply chains but also potentially sabotage them.
Beggars can't be choosers
Iran and its network of proxies are particularly vulnerable to those risks. Actors entirely focused on evading sanctions may be even less attentive to where the initial product came from and who may have been involved in handling them. In a world of sanction-induced scarcity, beggars can't be choosers, and it's always easier to be fooled when you think you're the one fooling the world.
This is also not the first time the Israeli Mossad used fronts to carry out complex operations. The "Red Sea resort" that served to exfiltrate Ethiopian Jews from the country is one of the most notorious examples, but the tactic has been used more than once. It may have served to procure the pagers and walkie-talkies that exploded this week but could just as well have served to feed Iran's appetite for Western tech (spiced up with explosives). The same components may be found in Iranian missiles or drones, whether they end up in the hands of Hezbollah or Russia.
The mere possibility that this is the case is also sure to prompt a witch hunt as Iran and its allies investigate each of their fronts and providers. Those who have acquired Iranian-made weapons—or are thinking about it—may now think twice about whether they truly know what they're buying.
This may well explain how Hezbollah—which touts itself as a heavily secure and shadowy organisation—may have ended up buying thousands of pagers and handheld radios from what likely turned out to be Israeli intelligence operatives.
This photograph taken shows the entrance of a building which reportedly houses the Norta Global company according to company contacts, in Sofia, on September 19, 2024.
We have already learned that the pagers were likely not produced by the Taiwanese-based firm that branded them but came through central Europe. Investigations have turned to a suspicious entity known as BAC Consulting Kft as the possible producer of the deadly pagers, but Hungarian outlet Telex said that BAC Consulting may only have been an intermediary, and the pagers were procured through Norta Global Ltd, a company based in Sofia, Bulgaria. Bulgaria's security agency later said the pagers did not transit through the country's territory, nor were they made in Bulgaria.
Who knows what the name of the last matryoshka doll will be? What's clear is it will probably include Hebrew-speaking salesmen—and these salesmen may have sold more than just pagers to Iran's sprawling sanction-busting networks.
