"A complex and cumulative operation".. Sources reveal how the occupation was able to penetrate Hezbollah's first ranks

There has been much controversy over the Israeli occupation’s ability to penetrate Hezbollah and access all the details that helped it assassinate most of its first-tier leaders, including the party’s Secretary-General, Hassan Nasrallah.

At the same time, the occupation has not stopped targeting the party's locations, and it even continues to bomb places it says belong to Hezbollah's intelligence apparatus in the Lebanese capital, Beirut. So how did the occupation reach the party's leadership with such precision? And how does it reach the places from which the party runs its intelligence?

Israeli bombing

The developments on the ground are constantly reinforcing the occupation’s ability to easily reach all its goals within Hezbollah. After the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, the Secretary-General of Hezbollah, and after the attempted assassination of the party’s senior leader Hashem Safieddine, the occupation was able to kill a senior member of Hezbollah’s intelligence arm, named Hassan Khalil Yassin, during a raid on southern Beirut.

The Israeli military said it targeted the headquarters of the Lebanese Hezbollah group's intelligence service in Beirut and was assessing the damage from the attack, which came on Friday after a series of strikes on senior figures in the group.

The Israeli army said in a statement that its warplanes, based on accurate intelligence information, bombed sites belonging to Hezbollah's intelligence branch inside Beirut. The statement confirmed that the raids hit intelligence gathering units and devices, command headquarters, and other infrastructure.

The Israeli army indicated that Hezbollah's "intelligence department" is considered the central institution responsible for building Hezbollah's intelligence image regarding Israel and its army. It leads intelligence efforts against Israel and possesses strategic capabilities for gathering information.

The Iranian source indicates that the Iranians have become aware of the danger of WhatsApp, and have banned it on a large scale. They have recommended that all leaders of the Iranian regime not deal with WhatsApp in any important matters or messages related to work, whether in politics or the military aspect.

He says the difference between Iran and Lebanon is that Iran is trying to block all Western technology applications and develop its internal networks, but the entire Lebanese communications network is under American supervision and Lebanon cannot confront that.

He also said that after collecting all the data and messages from the phones of the families of the first leaders, the occupation began the second phase of tracking the party leaders, based on the families’ messages on the phones, and used modern technology to determine the locations of the leaders.

He also pointed out that the surveillance cameras in the homes in the southern suburb were one of the reasons that exposed the party’s leaders, as hundreds of Lebanese living outside Lebanon place surveillance cameras in front of their homes to monitor their homes while they are outside Iran, and the occupation was able to penetrate these cameras and benefit from their inventory, which they documented with videos and recorded.

However, the Iranian source indicates that there is a crisis in Hezbollah, which is that after entering Syria, the membership of recruits expanded in Syria as well as in Lebanon, which opened the door for the infiltration of some elements into the party who work with the occupation and gathered information about the leaders through discussions with party elements in the middle and lower ranks.

The Iranian source explains the crisis of Iranian and Hezbollah intervention in Syria and its impact on Hezbollah’s security structure, and points out that the party has intervened militarily in Syria since 2012, which has caused it to be financially, humanly and militarily drained.

He said that the party resorted to compensating for the crisis in its human losses by opening large recruitment centers in Syria through which it recruits people, which was the door that was the reason for the party’s penetration.

He points out that the party opened its doors to the entry of tens of thousands of new members, and the occupation infiltrated these members, which allowed the occupation to obtain a large amount of information that helped it reach the party’s top leaders.

He also said that the infiltration operation affected the entire first rank due to the phones and that the party has not yet found any solution to this crisis because, according to the Iranian source, it is a non-secret party and therefore the movement of its leaders in secret in Lebanon will face great difficulties, whether now or later.

Another hacking story

Electronic surveillance technology plays a vital role in these strikes. The Israeli military has previously said it has security cameras and remote sensing systems trained on areas where Hezbollah operates, and that it regularly sends reconnaissance drones across the border to spy on its opponents, Reuters reported.

Israel's electronic eavesdropping, including hacking into cell phones and computers, is widely considered among the most sophisticated in the world, the report says.

Cell phones, which can be used to track a user's location, were banned from the battlefield after Hezbollah realized their danger in favor of older means of communication, including pagers and couriers who deliver verbal messages in person.

Hezbollah also uses a private, fixed communications network dating back to the early 2000s. If conversations are overheard, code words for weapons and meeting locations are used, and they are updated almost daily and delivered to units via courier, Reuters reported.

Hezbollah also began to suspect that Israel was targeting its fighters by tracking their cell phones and monitoring video footage from security cameras installed on buildings in border communities.

On December 28, Hezbollah urged residents of the south in a statement distributed via its Telegram channel to disconnect any security cameras they owned from the internet. By early February, another directive was issued to Hezbollah fighters: no cellphones were to be used anywhere near the battlefield.

Hezbollah fighters have also begun leaving their phones behind when they carry out operations. Another Lebanese intelligence official said Hezbollah sometimes conducts surprise checks on field units to see if their members are carrying phones.

Even in Beirut, senior Hezbollah politicians avoid bringing phones to meetings, two other sources said.

In a televised speech on February 13, 2024, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned his supporters that their phones were more dangerous than Israeli spies, saying they should break them, bury them, or lock them in an iron box.

Source: Arabi Post