Israel staged attack after Hezbollah members 'raised suspicions' over pagers

Israel decided to blow up the pager devices carried by Hezbollah members in Lebanon and Syria on Tuesday out of concern its secret operation might have been discovered by the group, three U.S. officials told U.S. news portal Axios.

The attack took place as tensions rise between Israel and Hezbollah, which U.S. officials are highly concerned will devolve into all out war.

"It was a use it or lose it moment," one U.S. official said describing the reasoning Israel gave the U.S. for the timing of the attack.

Hezbollah has threatened to retaliate for the pager attack, which killed at least 12 people, including two children, and wounded around 2,800 others.

Hezbollah said many members of its military units and civilian institutions were among the casualties.

On Wednesday morning local time, Hezbollah issued a statement saying it is going to continue fighting against Israel along the border separately from its revenge for the pager attack, adding that Israel should expect retaliation for the operation.

A former Israeli official with knowledge of the operation said Israeli intelligence services planned to use the booby-trapped pagers it managed to "plant" in Hezbollah's ranks as a surprise opening blow in an all-out war to try to cripple Hezbollah.

But in recent days, Israeli leaders became concerned that Hezbollah might discover the pagers. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his top ministers and the heads of the Israeli army and the intelligence agencies decided to use the system now rather than take the risk of it being detected by Hezbollah, a U.S. official said.

The Israeli concerns that led to the decision to conduct the attack were first reported by the Al-Monitor news portal, which said two Hezbollah operatives raised suspicions about the pagers in recent days.

When U.S. President Joe Biden's top adviser Amos Hochstein visited Israel on Monday, Netanyahu, Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant and other senior officials were engaged in hours of security consultations around the issue of the operation being potentially compromised.

When they met with Hochstein, they didn't even give him a hint about what was going on behind the scenes, a U.S. official said.

On Tuesday afternoon local time, several minutes before the pagers started exploding across Lebanon, Gallant called U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and told him Israel was about to conduct an operation in Lebanon soon, but refused to give any specific details.

A U.S. official said the Israelis didn't tell the U.S. about the specifics of the operation, but added that Gallant's call was an attempt to avoid keeping the U.S. totally in the dark.

Nevertheless, U.S. officials said they didn't see Gallant's call as a serious prior notice. "We were not aware of this operation and were not involved," U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters on Tuesday.

Israeli and U.S. officials said Hezbollah could launch a major attack against Israel in revenge, or it could be deterred in the short term by the possibility that there might be more security breaches it doesn't know about and that Israel could exploit.