NEW YORK, December 23. /TASS/. Two retired high-ranking officers of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad disclosed to CBS News the details of the operation to sabotage Hezbollah’s communications devices.

In 2022 the agency started to develop a pager that could hold the right amount of an explosive, they said in an interview. To convince Hezbollah to buy the pagers, Mossad posted ads on YouTube and backed them up with fake online testimonials from customers, according to one of the former agents, who was in charge of the plot. The spy agency fully manufactured the pagers and got into a licensing partnership with Taiwan’s pager manufacturer Gold Apollo after setting up shell companies, including one in Hungary.

Mossad used dummies to test how much explosive is required to be just enough to hurt the pager’s owner, but not the person next to him.

The other retired Mossad agent said the agency also weaponized walkie-talkies, and that work started more than a decade before Israel set them off in September in tandem with the pager operation. According to the man, Mossad sold more than 16,000 of the boobytrapped devices to Hezbollah, acting through shell companies.

According to the agents, the operation allowed Israel to weaken Hezbollah by much. They said Mossad is set to continue fighting the group.

"We want them to feel vulnerable, which they are," said Michael, who spoke with the television channel using a false name. "We can't use the pagers again because we already did that. We've already moved on to the next thing. And they'll have to keep on trying to guess what the next thing is."

On September 17 and 18, numerous explosions of communication devices and other electronic gadgets swept across Lebanon. On the first of these days, a large number of pagers blew up almost simultaneously in different parts of the country. According to the Lebanese Health Ministry, the blasts killed 12 people, including two children, and more than 2,000 others were taken to hospitals with injuries. The next day, explosions affected walkie-talkie radios, phones, and other devices powered by solar energy and lithium-ion batteries. The second wave of attacks killed 25 people and injured 608 others. Hezbollah blamed Israel for the attacks.