Israeli Walkie-Talkie Bombs Tapped Hezbollah Communications for 9 Years Before Exploding

Israeli walkie-talkie bombs enabled Mossad to listen in on Hezbollah communications for nearly a decade enabling the targeting of Nasarallah and other senior leaders during the current bombing campaign in Lebanon.

The booby-trapped walkie-talkies began being inserted into Lebanon by Mossad from 2015 onwards. The two-way radios contained oversized battery packs, a hidden explosive and a transmission system that gave Israel complete access to Hezbollah communications.

The Israelis eavesdropped on Hezbollah for nine years while reserving the option to turn the walkie-talkies into bombs in future. The number of walkie-talkie sets sold to the Hezbollah has not been revealed or how the Shia Militia were fooled in to buying them.

The idea for the pager operation originated in 2022, following the success of the two-way radios project, according to the Israeli, Middle Eastern and U.S. officials who spoke with the Washington Post.

Communication intercepts revealed that Hezbollah was looking for pagers to relay orders to mid and lower level operatives instead of mobile phones which could be tracked. In initial sales pitch to Hezbollah two years ago, a new line of Apollo pagers made by a Taiwanese firm were proposed.

The sales pitch came from a woman, a former Middle East sales representative for the Taiwanese firm who had established her own company and acquired a license to sell a line of pagers that bore the Apollo brand. Sometime in 2023, she offered Hezbollah a deal on one of the products her firm sold: the rugged and reliable AR924.

In comparison to the original model from Apollo, the AR924 pager offered to Hezbollah was slightly bulky with an oversized battery that could operate for months without charging. Hezbollah bought the sales pitch that there was no risk that the pagers could ever be tracked by Israel’s intelligence services. Hezbollah’s leaders were so impressed they bought 5,000 of them and began handing them out to mid-level fighters and support personnel in February 2024.

In reality, the fake AR924 pager was assembled in Israel. The bomb component was carefully hidden as to be virtually undetectable even if the device was taken apart.

Israeli officials believe that Hezbollah did disassemble some of the pagers and may have even X-rayed them to allay suspicions.