Thread by @SpencerGuard

Hezbollah Pager Operation. A few personal thoughts.

1) Historic & unprecedented. I cannot find a similar intelligence/military operation with such secrecy, lethality, ingenuity, audacity, impact. While there have been other major intelligence operations in war (breaking Enigma, various spies inside governments) or surprise attacks (D-Day, Pearl Harbor, Inchon landing) but nothing so targeted lethal use of force, precise - proportionate & distinction, as many enemy hit, over such a wide geographic area.

2) Physical Impactful. In a single operation, the terrorist group Hezbollah was significantly impacted. Not only in physical injuries - unknown but reported in the thousands. The attack also exposed the Hezbollah network not just in Lebanon but in other places in the Middle East where Hezbollah agents or affiliated agents were carrying this specific pager issued by Hezbollah.

3) Psychological impact. War is a contest of will. It includes psychology and emotion. The psychological impact is massive. Hezbollah cannot trust their equipment, cannot communicate (rumored to have switched to pager out of concerns Israel was monitoring their comms), will likely change many elements of their operations with the potential to make further mistakes that can be exploited. With a single push of a button, fear was produced in mass in Hezbollah forces.

4) Timing. Why now? There will forever remain a lot of unanswered questions about the pager operation. War is fought within many interconnected domains of influence. Hezbollah is an Islamic Regime in Iran proxy force in Lebanon that has been been directly and continuously attacking Israel since October 8th. But Israel is fighting many enemies on many fronts. What it does and when it does it must factor many stakeholders to include their enemies, allies, domestic & international populations/context, other plans, other ongoing operations.