RITTER: 'Pager' Attack on Hezbollah Likely 'Revenge' for Attack on Israel's 8200 Unit
RITTER: 'Pager' Attack on Hezbollah Likely 'Revenge' for Attack on Israel's 8200 Unit
Israel will continue to escalate the war with Hezbollah and the U.S. will be fully supportive because Washington is in Israel’s pocket
Scott Ritter, the former UN weapons inspector, said in an interview published Tuesday that the “pager” attack on Hezbollah fighters believed carried out by Israel was likely an attempt at revenge after an earlier attack on the headquarters of the Israeli military’s intelligence agency Unit 8200.
“I think what happened with the pagers is more an act of revenge than part and parcel of the grand strategy of Israel towards Hezbollah,” he told the “Dialogue Works” podcast.
Ritter said the attack does not change the “battlefield outcome.”
“This was an act of revenge by unit 8200. That’s it. Pure and simple. Now, 8200 could have been sitting on this capability and they could’ve pulled the trigger while at war, but once you go to war…those pagers disappear….electronics disappear,” he said.
He noted that Israel and Hezbollah are engaged in a hybrid war and while things are active on the front, life is more normal in the rear, and “Unit 8200 gets to pull this off one time. They did it. It’s done.”
Al Mayadeen reported last week that Hezbollah managed to strike Israel’s Glilot Base, which “resulted in significant casualties within the Israeli intelligence unit, with fatalities reaching 22 and 74 members reported injured.”
The late-August attack was in response to Israel’s assassination of Fouad Shokor, a top Hezbollah commander, who was in Beirut.
At least nine people were killed and 2,750 injured, 200 critically, in the Israeli attack, according to the Associated Press.
Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesman, said the U.S. was unaware of the attack.
The AP wrote:
Experts said the pager explosions pointed to a long-planned operation, possibly carried out by infiltrating the supply chain and rigging the devices with explosives before they were delivered to Lebanon.
TREND FORECAST: Israel will continue to escalate the war with Hezbollah and the U.S. will be fully supportive because Washington is in Israel’s pocket. Indeed, the U.S.’s top negotiator to bring the two sides together and ease tensions is a Jewish man who was born in Israel, Amos Hochstein. The former lobbyist who said he fell in love with Lebanon in 1995.