Pager attack: Did Israel adapt Operation Rubicon with violence?

Israel’s indiscriminate attack on Lebanon, using civilian communication tools – pagers and walkie-talkies – resembles Operation Rubicon, with the key difference being that Israel inflicted indiscriminate mass casualties on the targeted country, while the joint US-Germany spying scandal remained confined to mass snooping.

Considered to be one of the longest and most sophisticated intelligence operations led by the CIA in partnership with its German counterpart BND, Operation Rubicon began in the early 1970s during the Cold War years and ended in 2020 following a remarkable expose by the Washington Post and German public broadcaster ZDF.

Creating shell companies and using them as a front was a tactic used by the CIA and BND. They secretly owned a Swiss company called Crypto AG, which sold rigged encryption machines to various governments around the world for decades, allowing the CIA and BND to decrypt the communications of foreign governments, including those of allies and adversaries.

Israel’s recent attack on Lebanon became possible due to these same tactics. Many security experts say that Israeli spies have used front companies to manipulate Lebanon-bound pagers and walkie-talkies, infiltrating the manufacturing or distribution chains and sabotaging the devices with remotely detonating explosives.

In the Israeli operation, a front company in Budapest allegedly licensed the technology. In Operation Rubicon, Crypto AG, secretly controlled by the CIA and BND, sold compromised encryption devices worldwide.

Switzerland has long prided itself on its neutrality in international affairs, especially during the Cold War. When Operation Rubicon was revealed, Switzerland's ability to protect its sovereignty and neutral standing in global politics was called into question. It also led to a loss of trust in the Swiss industry and likely impacted future business relationships.

Operation Rubicon's exposure caused diplomatic fallout, raised questions about the ethics of intelligence-gathering, and highlighted the risks and rewards associated with covert operations. While some defended it as a legitimate tool during the Cold War, others viewed it as a breach of trust that damaged international relationships and raised serious ethical concerns.

But Israel’s case is different. Its operation pushes the boundaries of what is considered “fair game” in espionage. The sheer scale and brutality of planting explosives in a vast number of devices at once set it apart from standard covert actions. It cannot be portrayed as business as usual in light of the indiscriminate killing and maiming it caused in Lebanon. At least 37 people died and an estimated 3,500 were wounded.

While espionage has long been accepted as a necessary, if murky, part of statecraft, this operation crossed the red line by shifting from intelligence-gathering to inflicting mass casualties.

An Intricate Operation

There are a few prevailing theories. The most likely explanation is that Israeli agents embedded the explosives directly into the devices during the manufacturing process using a front company in Budapest. This company, which reportedly licensed the pager technology from a Taiwanese firm, may have been the covert vehicle through which the explosives were introduced.

Others speculate that the devices might have been modified at a later stage, somewhere between manufacturing and distribution. This theory holds that the explosives could have been inserted after the devices left the factory floor but before they reached the hands of their users, possibly at a transit point or in a third-party country.

Besides embedding explosives, the operation involved miniaturising explosives, ensuring normal device operations along with a detonation mechanism that can be operated remotely.

Israel’s device attack, another war crime?

Supply chain attacks, like those seen in both the Israeli operation and Operation Rubicon, can be designed for one of two main purposes: espionage or sabotage. While both rely on the covert manipulation of devices or systems during their manufacturing or distribution, their goals, methods, and consequences differ.

Unlike the quiet listening of Operation Rubicon, Israel's approach was designed for maximum visibility—explosions, casualties, and a message sent loud and clear. The victims, unaware that the devices they carried were rigged to kill, represent not only the human cost but also spread terror in society.

Operation Rubicon, despite causing widespread anger and diplomatic fallout, can ultimately be regarded as within the accepted norms of intelligence work because it was, at its core, an espionage operation. And espionage is thousands of years old, which falls into grey areas of international law.

On the other hand, sabotage, especially when it leads to civilian casualties, can amount to terrorism or war crimes.

With Israel’s campaign of ethnic cleansing in Gaza, the Zionist state had already made it clear that humanitarian and moral considerations are not a part of its calculus. Now, by transforming communication tools into bombs, it has introduced a new level of indiscriminate violence into the intelligence landscape.

The Israeli operation did not differentiate between a Hezbollah leader in the field and a lower-level operative carrying a device amongst his family members or innocent bystanders.

The UN human rights chief Volker Turk on Friday called pager and walkie-talkie attacks "a war crime."

Even former CIA director, Leon Panetta, who at one point oversaw Operation Rubicon, described the pager attack as “a form of terrorism”, which should prompt a “serious discussion” around the world.