The batteries inside the weaponized pagers that arrived in Lebanon at the start of the year, part of an Israeli plot to decimate Hezbollah, had powerfully deceptive features and an Achilles' heel.
The agents who built the pagers designed a battery that concealed a small but potent charge of plastic explosive and a novel detonator that was invisible to X-ray, according to a Lebanese source with first-hand knowledge of the pagers, and teardown photos of the battery pack seen by Reuters.
To overcome the weakness — the absence of a plausible backstory for the bulky new product — they created fake online stores, pages and posts that could deceive Hezbollah due diligence, a Reuters review of web archives shows.
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