New Delhi: Not surprisingly, Israel has refused to comment on the serial pager explosions across Lebanon and Syria on Tuesday that claimed at least nine lives and injured over 2,750 people, including members of the Iran-backed and Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah and civilians.
The blasts affected several areas in Lebanon including Beirut’s Dahieh suburb, southern Lebanon, and in the Beqaa Valley, which are considered to have a Hezbollah presence. Additionally, explosions were reported in Damascus, Syria. It is not clear if only Hezbollah members were carrying the pagers.
In February this year, Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary-general of Hezbollah, told the group’s members to use pagers instead of smartphones, claiming that Israel had infiltrated their cell phone network. Hezbollah then bought a new brand of pagers, Gold Apollo AR-924 models, manufactured by a Taiwanese company, which were recently imported into Lebanon. However, Gold Apollo founder Hsu Ching-Kuang said they were assembled by a company named BAC Consulting KFT in Hungary that had the right to Gold Apollo's brand, under a licence that had been in place for three years.
According to a report in The New York Times, Israeli intelligence services intercepted the deliveries and rigged the pagers with small amounts of explosives. Citing American and other officials, the report stated that the explosive material, as little as one to two ounces, was implanted next to the battery in each pager. A switch was also embedded that could be triggered remotely to detonate the explosives.
However, as usual, Israel has maintained a stoic silence as has been the case in earlier instances when attacks were carried out on foreign soil targeting perceived adversaries of the Jewish People. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) declined to comment when approached by the Associated Press news agency.
This is part of what observers say Israel maintaining a policy of deliberate ambiguity.
What is the policy of deliberate ambiguity?
In the context of global politics, a policy of deliberate ambiguity, also known as a policy of strategic ambiguity or strategic uncertainty, is the practice by a government or non-state actor of being deliberately ambiguous with regard to all or certain aspects of its operational or positional policies. This is typically a way to avoid direct conflict while maintaining a masked more assertive or threatening position on a subject. It is broadly a geopolitical risk aversion strategy.
Israel’s policy of maintaining silence after conducting covert operations, particularly involving assassinations or targeted killings, is rooted in a long-standing approach that allows it to operate in the complex landscape of West Asia and beyond. This policy has been a hallmark of Israel’s intelligence and military actions for decades, especially when it comes to operations carried out by its intelligence agency, the Mossad.
What have been the earlier similar instances of Israel maintaining a policy of deliberate ambiguity?
One of the most famous examples is the series of assassinations of those responsible for the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, where Palestinian terrorists killed 11 Israeli athletes. In response, Israel launched Operation Wrath of God, in which Mossad agents tracked down and eliminated key members of the terrorist organisation responsible for the massacre.
The targets were members of the Palestinian armed militant group Black September and operatives of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). Authorised by then Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in the autumn of 1972, the operation is believed to have continued for over 20 years. While Mossad killed several prominent Palestinians during the operation, they never managed to kill the mastermind behind Munich, namely Abu Daoud.
Another such instance was the assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, a Lebanese militant leader who was the founding member of Lebanon’s Islamic Jihad Organization and number two in Hezbollah's leadership. Information about Mughniyeh is limited, but he is believed to have been Hezbollah’s chief of staff and understood to have overseen Hezbollah’s military, intelligence, and security apparatuses. He was one of the main founders of Hezbollah in the 1980s. He was often referred to as an ‘untraceable ghost’.
Mughniyeh was killed on February 12, 2008, by a car bomb blast at around 11 pm in the Kafr Sousa neighborhood of Damascus, Syria. Mughniyeh was at a reception marking the 29th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution hosted by the Iranian ambassador to Syria. Mughniyeh left the party shortly after 10:30 pm and walked to his Mitsubishi Pajero. The spare tyre had been replaced by one with a high explosive, which was detonated as Mughniyeh walked past. The blast completely destroyed the car, left minimum damage on nearby buildings and killed only Mughniyeh. Israel officially denied being behind the killing, but Mughniyeh reportedly had been a target of Mossad assassination attempts since the 1990s.
Another such target was Mahmoud Abdel Rauf al-Mabhouh, who was the chief of logistics and weapons procurement for Hamas’s military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. He was assassinated in hotel in Dubai on January 19, 2010, in what is widely seen as a Mossad operation.
Initially, Dubai authorities believed al-Mabhouh had died of natural causes. However, results from a preliminary forensic report by the Dubai police found that al-Mabhouh was first paralysed by an injection of succinylcholine (suxamethonium), a fast-acting muscle relaxant. He was then electrocuted and suffocated with a pillow. The assassination sparked a diplomatic crisis as it was found that Mossad agents allegedly used forged foreign passports to carry out the killing.
Then again, on July 31 this year, Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, was assassinated along with his personal bodyguard in the Iranian capital Tehran by an apparent Israeli attack. Haniyeh was killed in his accommodation in a military-run guesthouse after attending the inauguration ceremony for Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.
The cause of Haniyeh’s death is under investigation by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. According to Hamas, Haniyeh was killed by a “Zionist” raid on his residence. However, Israel has declined to give any comment.
Several Iranian nuclear scientists were assassinated or killed in mysterious circumstances. Israel was widely believed to be behind these killings, as part of an effort to slow down Iran’s nuclear programme. Once again, Israel did not comment, maintaining its policy of ambiguity.
Is Israel the only country that has adopted this policy of deliberate ambiguity?
No. According to observers, Russia and China are also believed to have adopted this policy in the past.
One of the most notorious examples of a Russian assassination abroad was the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB officer and outspoken critic of Putin, who defected to the UK. Litvinenko had been investigating ties between the Russian government and organised crime and accused Putin of ordering the assassination of dissenters. He was poisoned in London in 2006 with radioactive polonium-210, an extremely rare and lethal substance. The slow-acting poison caused a painful and prolonged death, and a subsequent British inquiry found that the assassination was likely ordered by the Russian state.
In 2015, Mikhail Lesin, a former Russian minister of press and mass communications and founder of the state-sponsored media outlet RT, was found dead in a Washington hotel room. Although the official cause of death was ruled as blunt force trauma resulting from a fall, many suspect foul play, given Lesin’s connections to the Kremlin and his knowledge of Russia’s propaganda and media apparatus.
In 2018, Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence officer who had defected to the UK, and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent called Novichok in Salisbury, England. Skripal had previously been convicted of passing information to British intelligence and was released in a spy swap in 2010, after which he settled in the UK. The poisoning triggered an international outcry, as Novichok is a rare nerve agent developed by the erstwhile Soviet Union, pointing to the Russian state as the likely perpetrator.
As for China, several reports indicate that Uyghur activists and leaders living in exile, particularly in Turkey, have been targeted for assassination by Chinese agents. In 2021, Turkey arrested multiple individuals suspected of working as Chinese operatives who were allegedly plotting to assassinate Uyghur dissidents living in the country.
The pager explosions in Lebanon and Syria is yet another instance of a country maintaining a policy of deliberate ambiguity after carrying out a covert operation on foreign soil.
