Hezbollah Chief: We Were Outsmarted by Israel

It is seldom that any of Israel’s terrorist enemies forthrightly admit that they have been outfoxed by those devilishly clever Israelis, whose Mossad keeps running circles around every one of its enemies, from Hamas in Gaza, to Hezbollah in Lebanon, to Assad-ruled Syria, to Iran, where Mossad managed to penetrate every aspect of the country’s nuclear program, and to create a rich target list for the IDF to destroy during the 12-day Israel-Iran war.

So when Hezbollah chief Sheikh Naim Qassem admitted to his group’s grievous losses in Israel’s exploding pager caper, his confession of having been outsmarted deserves our attention. More on his admission can be found here: “Hezbollah Chief Admits Underestimating Israel’s Surveillance Ahead of Pager Attack, Warns Resistance ‘Has Limits,’” by Ailin Vilches Arguello, Algemeiner, July 10, 2025:

Hezbollah chief Sheikh Naim Qassem admitted that the Lebanese terror group severely underestimated the extent of Israel’s surveillance and intelligence capabilities ahead of last September’s pager attack, exposing major security failures within its ranks.

In an interview released Tuesday with the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah, Qassem revealed that Hezbollah had failed to grasp just how advanced and far-reaching Israel’s surveillance capabilities were.

He explained the group suspected possible wiretapping but “did not realize the extent — that it was near-total and very extensive.”

Even though Hezbollah knew Israel had been conducting aerial surveillance for years, Qassem — who succeeded longtime terrorist leader Hassan Nasrallah after Israel killed him last year — said that the group “couldn’t grasp how deep” the surveillance extended.

However, he denied any significant infiltration of Israeli spies within Hezbollah’s senior ranks, stating that no evidence has yet been found of “vast human infiltration.”…

Oh, I don’t know why, after so many intelligence defeats, he’s now so sanguine that there has been any “vast human infiltration.” I’m betting that Mossad has plenty of local Lebanese talent now working for it inside Hezbollah, a group that in Lebanon has made enemies of the Christians, the Sunnis, and even some Shi’a Lebanese, who regard Hezbollah not as a heroic “resistance,” but as the cause of so much destruction of Shia-populated areas of south Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley. Contrary to Western reports, not all the Shi’a in Lebanon are supporters of Hezbollah; a considerable number wish the group would disappear so that it would not keep bringing down the wrath of the IDF.

While only a few dozen Hezbollah members were killed by the exploding pagers, close to 4,000 were wounded, many so severely that they are no longer fit for the battlefield. This was one of Mossad’s most spectacular undertakings.

However, Israel maintained troops at several posts in southern Lebanon beyond the ceasefire deadline, as its leaders aimed to reassure northern residents that it was safe to return home….

The reason that the IDF has kept some troops at five outposts in southern Lebanon, defined as the area between the Litani River and the Israeli border — is Hezbollah’s failure to observe the ceasefire. It has failed to withdraw all of its troops north of the Litani, as it had committed to doing, and it continues to try to set up new outposts in southern Lebanon, and even to attempt to infiltrate across the border into the Galilee. The IDF keeps hitting them, hard, and Hezbollah now has another enemy to worry about — the Lebanese National Army, that has been patrolling in earnest the area south of the Litani, emboldened by Hezbollah’s weakened state, and even confronting Hezbollah operatives and forcing them northward, something it would never have dared to do in the past.

In his Tuesday interview, Qassem revealed that an investigation conducted after the pager operation uncovered significant weaknesses in Hezbollah’s procurement process stretching back over a year.

“We didn’t know the supply chain had been exposed,” the terrorist leader said….

The pagers were ordered by Hezbollah from a dummy company in Taiwan, set up by the Mossad. The price of the pagers was low enough to be attractive to Hezbollah buyers, but not so low as to raise suspicions.

When asked about international pressure to disarm and recent Israeli strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Qassem warned that “resistance will not wait forever. There are limits.”…

Qassem’s meaning is clear. Hezbollah won’t hold back much longer from re-engaging with the IDF. But the impression he is attempting to give — of Hezbollah eager to return to the fray, and unable to restrain itself much longer — is not the real picture. What constrains Hezbollah from launching rockets and missiles into the northern Galilee is that it has been severely weakened by the IDF, which has destroyed 80-90% of the 150,000 missiles and rockets Hezbollah had amassed before the war broke out with Israel on October 8, 2023. Sheikh Qassem wants to explain to his people how it was that the exploding pager caper was possible.

Sheikh Qassem did not hold back. He admitted that Hezbollah had failed to understand just how deeply Israeli intelligence had penetrated the terror group, a moment of candor that would reassure his operatives that their new leader was unafraid to present the real story, unlike his predecessor, the braggart warrior Hassan Nasrallah, who kept uttering threats of attacks against the Jewish state that he could not possibly have carried out, and continually boasted, from his hiding places — which he had to change every night — about nonexistent blows struck by Hezbollah operatives against the Jewish state..

“There is no third option between victory and martyrdom. We do not have surrender as an option,” the terrorist leader said.

But of course he had to say that, to keep up the morale of his troops, for many Hezbollah operatives are said to now be quitting the group because they have not been paid; Iran can no longer deliver, through Syria that is now under new, Sunni, management, the weapons and money to Hezbollah that it provided when Assad was still ruling in Damascus. Naim Qassem had to address the low morale of his operatives, first by leveling with them on the failures of the terror group to detect the exploding pagers in time, and then by assuring them that they need not worry, if they are pushed too hard by the IDF in southern Lebanon, their “resistance” will soon be able to begin again. He ended with that burst of bravado: either victory or martyrdom will be our fate; “we do not have surrender as an option.”