In what must count as one of the more extraordinary acts of sabotage of all time, as many as 2,800 people, including hundreds of Hezbollah officials, were injured and several killed across Lebanon on Tuesday, according to the country’s health ministry, when the pagers they use to communicate exploded. Somebody transformed the devices into bombs before their distribution, and the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon was among those wounded.
It isn’t as if another smoking gun was needed to establish Iran’s deep integration with members of the so-called arc of resistance it has built around Israel — from Hezbollah to Hamas to the Houthis of Yemen and Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria. Even so, assuming that Iran’s state-run Mehr news agency is properly informed, there it was: a smoking pager, given to the ambassador as well as to Hezbollah.
This looks very much like a decapitation strike, putting Hezbollah’s top command out of action at a moment when speculation is rife that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may be planning to expand the war into Lebanon.
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