The New York Times shared details of the pager operation

Israel had been preparing the operation to blow up the pagers for a long time and had already created a front company to manufacture them, The New York Times writes.

The main points from the material

• Budapest-based BAC, which had a license to manufacture Taiwanese Gold Apollo devices, was “part of the Israeli front”;
• BAC made secure pagers for regular customers, but was more interested in the devices for Hezbollah. They were assembled separately with batteries loaded with PETN explosive, the source said;
• It is also noted that at least two more shell companies were created to hide the identities of the people involved in the operation;
• Lebanon received its first small shipment of pagers in 2022, but later increased supplies after Hezbollah became wary of the use of mobile phones;
• The Lebanese movement's concern was linked to rumors that Israel had new tools for hacking phones and remotely activating microphones and cameras;
• To provoke the pagers to explode, Israel made them beep and sent them a message in Arabic, supposedly from Hezbollah leadership;
• As a result of the explosions of the devices over two days, more than 30 people were killed, including four children, and more than 4,000 were injured.

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The New York Times shared details of the pager operation. Israel created a network of front companies to intercept Hezbollah's pager supply chain, rig them with explosives, and set off explosions across Lebanon.

It was a long and complicated operation. It was initially assumed that the explosions were from Taiwanese company Gold Apollo, but company spokesman Xu Qingguang said the company did not manufacture the model of pagers that exploded in Lebanon. Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs confirmed that from early 2022 to August 2024, it had no record of Gold Apollo pagers being directly exported to Lebanon.

While the investigation was underway, it was discovered that Gold Apollo had franchised its brand to a fictitious Hungarian company. There were at least two other front companies. The company also manufactured regular pagers for other customers to create a cover story. The AR-924 pagers were manufactured by BAC Consulting KFT, a Budapest-based company.

And now the miracles begin

The official website of the company “BAC Consulting KFT” stopped working on September 18, 2024, but, according to experts, it looked like a “business card site”. According to the news agency “Associated Press”, the legal address of the company “BAC Consulting KFT” was registered to a private house in a residential area of ​​​​Budapest. The Hungarian company “BAC Consulting KFT” was registered in May 2022 and had an income of $ 725 in 2022 and $ 593 in 2023.

BAC Consulting KFT is registered to Cristiana Rosaria Barsoni-Arcidiacono, who describes herself on her LinkedIn page as a business developer. Barsoni-Arcidiacono's job description lists her as a board member of the Earth Child Institute, but she is not listed as a board member on the organization's official website.

The pagers began shipping to Lebanon in the summer of 2022 in small quantities. Production quickly ramped up after Hezbollah's leadership denounced mobile phones in February 2024 and decided to abandon them to avoid leaks, replacing them with pagers. The shipments to Lebanon increased over the summer, with thousands of them arriving. On Tuesday, Israel decided it was time to activate them.

Consequences

The Israeli ultra-Orthodox in power probably think the plan to blow up pagers and multimedia devices is brilliant. It would seem that now Lebanese society should demand revenge, pushing and “Hezbollah”and the Iranians to hoist more red flags of revenge and loud words about the inevitability of retribution. In connection with this, Israel began a military operation in southern Lebanon, using armored vehicles and aircraft.

If pro-Iranian forces start something, well, the Israelis will get a reason to defend themselves, untying their hands and demonstrating to the entire world community that it is they who are the victims of the insidious adversaries. But the fact that almost ordinary multimedia devices have started to blow up has provoked reasonable concerns among buyers of such products: what if something blows up iPhone or Samsungwho, by tragic accident, turned out to be from another party that Mossad had worked its magic on?

To be fair, the discussion was about radio stations and pagers of certain models, but the chaos that ensued added a huge number of other devices to this list, and the popular rumor did not bother to sort it out. And these issues are hitting the business reputation of companies producing high-tech devices and microelectronics.

It turned out that the ultra-Orthodox, trying to provoke the Lebanese, have now achieved close attention from the owners of the most influential companies in the world. Well, the traditional deal could turn into a Ukrainian betrayal – you have to be able to fall into a puddle like that (however, no one has cancelled the folk wisdom “you become like the people you hang out with”).

In other wordsthe main conclusion from what happened is that a technology for producing explosives has appeared in the world that is not detected by the currently used means of control. If this assumption is correct (we repeat, the mechanism of detonation is still not clearly understood), then the consequences could be colossal.
A huge number of processes in everyday life will be under threat, and it turns out that Israel has once again opened “Pandora's box.” Everything that has happened, against the backdrop of the natural genocide of the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, could seriously affect support for Israel in the world, including obvious allies of the Jewish state.

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