“Israel has attempted several times to eliminate the former leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, Hassan Nasrullah, but only succeeded after radically changing its approach toward the group and rebuilding its intelligence collection.”
Oku.Az“Financial Times” writes about this referring to intelligence officials.
Former senior intelligence officer Miri Eysin told the newspaper that over the past 20 years, Israel has expanded its information gathering on Hezbollah and has paid attention not only to its military wing, but also to the group’s political activities, the growing relations with Iran and Syria.
According to him, helping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the civil war opened Hezbollah’s structure to Israel and made it possible to obtain a clear “intelligence picture”: who has been promoted, who is involved in corruption, who is currently returning from a trip with a mysterious purpose, etc. At the same time, as Hezbollah recruited new fighters for the harsh war, Israel had the opportunity to plant spies and track down potential deserters.
Furthermore, due to the war in Syria, a large amount of information useful to Israeli intelligence has been made public. In particular, obituaries in the form of “martyr posters” periodically published by “Hezbollah” have proven useful. These posters contain little information about the origin of the fallen fighter, the place of his death, as well as his acquaintances who shared this information on social networks. The funerals were even more important because the group’s top commanders stepped out of the shadows, however briefly.
A former high-ranking Lebanese politician noted that Hezbollah’s support for Assad led to Israeli intelligence success.
Over time, Israel increased its attention on Hezbollah: the intelligence was based on an unquestionable technical advantage: spy satellites, sophisticated drones, and cyber attacks that turned phones into listening devices.
According to the “Financial Times” investigation, Israel has collected so much information that a special team of experts has been created. They have created algorithms to examine terabytes of images to detect the slightest changes and detect improvised explosive devices on roadsides, vents above tunnels or the sudden appearance of concrete reinforcements marking a bunker.
After Israel identified the next Hezbollah fighter, information about his movements was entered into a special database. The database included the fighter’s wife’s phone, the car’s odometer, the drone flying overhead, hacked surveillance cameras and even the remote control of a modern television that allows sound to be recorded. Any deviation from the usual pattern of behavior was an alarm signal for Israeli intelligence and allowed, for example, the identification of mid-level commanders of anti-tank units.
“Israel had a lot of capabilities, a lot of intelligence waiting to be used. We could have used these capabilities earlier in this war, but we didn’t,” the former official said.
In recent years, Israeli intelligence has periodically identified the location of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrullah, who lives primarily in bunkers.
According to the newspaper’s sources, in October 2023, when Israel was attacked by Hamas and attacked by Hezbollah, Israeli planes were ordered to bomb Nasrullah’s location, but returned to base after the White House requested to cancel the operation. .
As a result, it was destroyed on September 28 while in an underground headquarters in the southern suburbs of Beirut. Stroke It happened during the meeting of Hezbollah leaders on Friday. According to “Le Parisien”, to Israel that Nasrullah will soon come to this place Iranian “Mole” reported.
By the way, let us note that the Israel Defense Forces (SAXAL) have announced that they have killed almost all the leaders of the Lebanese Hezbollah movement in recent months, and the corresponding has published an infographic. Among the movement’s leaders, only regional commander Abu Ali Rida is reported to have survived.
