It’s rare to see the work of a foreign spy agency leading international headlines, but that’s exactly what happened last week when thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah blew up in 2 waves of timed explosions. Experts say it’s the work of the Israeli agency Mossad, which has quite a history of covert operations around the world…

What is Mossad?
Mossad is Israel’s foreign intelligence service. Its role is to gather foreign intelligence, analyse it, and carry out covert operations in Israel’s interests… It has a different role to Shin Bet, which is Israel’s interior intelligence service that gathers intel inside Israel and Palestine. 

So, it’s a spy agency?
Yep. The framework of these 2 agencies is a bit like ASIO and ASIS here… ASIO is a bit like Shin Bet – its remit is to gather and analyse intelligence within the nation’s border, and ASIS is more akin to Mossad as our overseas secret intelligence agency – but we’re not suggesting ASIS carries out the sort of work Mossad does because our circumstances are very different. And while Mossad has been linked to a number of high-profile international operations throughout history, it has confirmed nothing.

Which ones?
One mission that’s been reported on a lot is the capture of Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann. He was one of the architects of the Jewish death camps in World War II who escaped after the conflict. It took 2 decades before Mossad agents tracked him to Argentina where he was living under another name. Israel didn’t have an extradition agreement there, so reports say they grabbed Eichmann off the street, drugged him and flew him back to Israel disguised as an airline worker who’d suffered a head injury.

That’s full on
Sure is… Another operation famously linked to Mossad is one codenamed “Wrath of God” which involved an alleged assassination campaign to avenge the murders of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games by Palestinian militants. It took agents 16 years to track down those involved and after each assassination, reports say the dead man’s family received flowers and an unsigned card that read, “A reminder we do not forget or forgive.”  

How do they get close to their targets?
It’s been reported that Mossad agents have used remote-controlled assault rifles and poisoned chocolates/toothpaste to get to their targets. They’re also big on disguises. In an operation in 2010, 2 agents dressed as tennis players followed Hamas military leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh into his hotel room in Dubai and allegedly murdered him using anaesthetic and a pillow. Reports say they were among a group of 26 agents working the case – and after looking into it, authorities claimed they used fake passports from dual citizens of Britain, Ireland, France, Germany and Australia to get in without a visa. 

How were they discovered by authorities?
Interpol noticed the same set of people had been following al-Mabhouh in the months before his murder, and when Mossad’s tactics were revealed, the countries – including Australia – were very unhappy. Australia kicked out an Israeli diplomat over the affair, and Ireland and Britain did the same. The UK’s Foreign Secretary at the time David Miliband described the misuse of British passports as “intolerable.” For Israel’s part, their Foreign Minister at the time Avigdor Lieberman said, ”Israel never responds, never confirms and never denies”… 

Did that change anything about the way Mossad operates?
Yep. But not only that – reports say more recently the war in Gaza, which Israel is under immense international pressure to end, has seen Mossad being a lot more careful about where it carries out operations. Experts on the Middle East say Israel doesn’t want to risk alienating allies by creating an international scene in their countries, so it’s conducting operations in enemy territory. 

Has Mossad been involved in recent incidents?
Along with speculation Mossad is responsible for the Hezbollah device explosions last week, reports say that many believe the agency is also behind the death of Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh in July. He was staying in a guesthouse next to the Iranian presidential palace after the swearing in ceremony of its new president Masoud Pezeshkian, when a bomb exploded in his room. Reports claim the device had been smuggled in by Israeli secret agents at least 2 months before, and that they waited until Haniyeh – who was a frequent visitor to Iran – was inside before triggering it remotely. 

What was the fallout?
Well, Israel hasn’t confirmed it was responsible, but experts say it was a major embarrassment for Iran that suspected Israeli agents could get inside one of the most tightly-guarded compounds in Tehran and plant a bomb that stayed hidden for weeks. Adding to that, Haniyeh’s death came hours after the IDF killed Hezbollah chief Fuad Shukr in a targeted missile strike on a flat in Beirut, where reports say he’d been lured by a fake message. 

Some big losses for Hamas and Hezbollah…
Yes – and Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah have all vowed retribution. In the aftermath, there has been a lot of talk about what the broadening Middle Eastern conflict could bring, particularly if Iran commits to something much bigger. And as that’s going on, Israel is pushing back harder on Hezbollah on its northern border – which brings us to last week’s device attacks. Now, it’s important to note again that Israel hasn’t commented on the explosions, but experts say no other country had the motivation or capability to pull-off such a complicated scheme. 

What are world leaders saying? 
The nature of the device attacks shocked many in the international community and world leaders have joined the United Nations in calling on both Israel and Hezbollah to walk back from the brink of a full-scale war. That’s unlikely though, with the head of Mossad, David Barnea, saying in January that the agency was “obliged” to hunt down Israel’s enemies. He said: “It will take time, as it took after the massacre in Munich, but our hands will catch them wherever they are.”

Squiz Recommends:

Listening: An episode of the ABC’s If You’re Listening podcast with Matt Bevan, called The Extraordinary Assassination of Ismail Haniyeh… If You’re Listening isn’t your average news pod. It’s Matt’s witty, short form take on current affairs, and as the title suggests, this ep looks at the probable involvement of Israel in the death of Ismail Haniyeh, and how Mossad has changed the way it operates over the past 15 years. 

Watching: The movie Munich starring Eric Bana and Daniel Craig deals with the assassination plot to track down the killers of the 11 Israeli athletes murdered at the 1972 Munich Olympics, told from the perspective of a Mossad agent. Find it on Netflix or Stan.