The history of military intelligence
is full of nation’s whose personnel made rash, foolish and careless decisions
ending in disaster. Israel has
done this. Yesterday, news broke that the CIA allowed two Hezbollah double agents penetrate and roll up
its Lebanese spy network, in part because U.S. agents met repeatedly at the
same Pizza Hut, using the code word “Pizza” to arrange their rendez
vous.
Now comes an exclusive report from
an authoritative Israeli source with considerable military experience, that IDF
military intelligence (Aman) has out foxed Hezbollah by deliberately
crash-landing a booby-trapped Trojan Horse drone in southern Lebanon.
Here is how the incident was reported by an
unsuspecting Wall Street Journal reporter:
On a recent Saturday afternoon, a
radar operated by French United Nations peacekeepers picked up a pilotless
Israeli reconnaissance drone crossing into south Lebanon. It was given no more
attention than any of the dozens of other surveillance missions flown by the
Israelis in Lebanese airspace each month.
But when the drone passed above Wadi
Hojeir, a yawning valley with steep, brush-covered slopes, it abruptly vanished
from the radar screen. The startled peacekeepers contacted the Lebanese army,
and a search of the rugged valley was conducted in the early-evening gloom.
Nothing was found.
No one can recall the last time that
an Israeli drone malfunctioned over Lebanon and crashed, and there were no
reports of antiaircraft fire. The Israelis have said nothing. Neither has
Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group and arch foe of Israel. The peacekeeping
force is now abuzz.
And now I can tell them what
happened. For over a year, Hezbollah has been attempting to
discover how to jam the ground signals commanding the drone so
as to disable them in flight. When it discovered the downed craft, its
operatives must’ve crowed that they’d finally discovered the key to success.
This bit of hubris is how Aman drew Hezbollah into its net. Its
soldiers dutifully collected the imagined intelligence trophy and brought it to
a large weapons depot it controlled in the area. Once inside the arms
cache, Aman detonated the drone causing a massive explosion. Here is
how the Daily Star described that event:
A huge explosion shook a Hezbollah
stronghold near Siddiqin in the southern coastal city of Tyre overnight, a
security source told The Daily Star Wednesday. The source said the cause
of the blast, which was heard shortly before midnight, could not be determined
due to the heavy security blanket by Hezbollah.
Lebanese security forces were unable
to access the scene of the explosion after the resistance group set up a
security perimeter around the blast site, which is located in a valley called
Wadi Al-Jabal al-Kabir between Siddiqin and Deir Ames, the source added.
Local media said the explosion likely took place at a Hezbollah arms
cache.
Given that Hezbollah is reputed to
have many more missiles and more advanced models than it had before the 2006
Lebanon War, we can only imagine how serious this blow will be to the group’s
war fighting capability. Hezbollah is known to possess some of the most
advanced Iranian rockets (the Zelzal) in anticipation of possible use should
Israel attack Iran. Given the size of the explosion, we should expect
that a good deal of its weapons cache in the south has been destroyed.
Hezbollah is known for being highly
professional and quite crafty in its intelligence capabilities having
penetrated the IDF intelligence network in the 2006 war. That’s why I
find it almost inexplicable that its fighters wouldn’t have at least considered
the craft might be a Trojan Horse. It’s possible that Hezbollah did consider
the idea and searched for an explosive charge & didn’t find one.
In that case, the IDF must’ve very cleverly concealed it.
At any rate, as soldiers, even
brilliant ones, often do, Hezbollah made a fatal error which the IDF exploited.
And before Israel’s supporters jump for joy at another Israeli victory in
the unending war on terror, remember that in 1999, a Hezbollah cell phone was
brought to the vaunted IDF Unit 8200 headquarters for examination. The
soldiers preparing to view it joked “If it explodes, we’ll know.” It did
indeed explode seriously wounding the two senior Israeli intelligence officers.
Not to mention the major amount of egg it splattered on the face of
Israel’s renowned intelligence agency.
The moral being, in this dirty game
called asymmetrical warfare, you and your enemy circle each other warily
seeking to exploit any weakness. And you will make
mistakes because you are only human. The fatal assumption is that your
opponent is the only dumb one who will make them, and you never will.
An additional embarrassment for
Hezbollah is that the destroyed arms cache is located south of the Litani River
in a zone which is forbidden to contain any armaments. This means that
the group has committed a major violation of the UN ceasefire resolution 1701.
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