It took them a while
to discover that with help of Iranian electronic warfare specialists,
Hezbollah had chalked up a major success in, their "Harb
Tammus" or the 2006 summer Lebanon War. They had prevented
Israeli electronic warfare units from jamming Hezbollah’s
communications networks in the battle zone of south Lebanon.
In fact, these continued functioning even at the toughest fire-beaten
strongholds holding out against Israeli attackst in the combat
zone. However, to their surprise, after a fierce battle at Qantara
just south of the Litani River, soldiers found the bodies of
three Iranian intelligence officers with documents of identification
and gear that indicated them as operators of local networks
for jamming Israeli radar and communications. Israeli forces
searching through the bunkers they cleaned out in South Lebanon
were amazed to discover that many contained subterranean state-
of the- art communications rooms fitted out with advanced instruments
with Iranian encoding equipment.
Brigadier-General Gal Hirsch, the commander of the IDF's 91
Division, told the press, on 25 July that his troops found rooms
full of Iranian-made equipment during the battle for Bint Jbeil
(an especially tough Hezbollah stronghold in southern Lebanon),
which included eavesdropping devices, computers and modern communications
equipment, up-to-date and detailed military maps of Israeli
strategic targets, and even lists of telephone numbers inside
Israel. Israel’s electronic warfare experts, examining
the sites, were surprised by the quality of the equipment they
found, the network being, among others, connected by optical
fibers which are not susceptible to electronic jamming.
The Iranian electronic engineers’ success proved such
that, on Wednesday, Aug. 9, nearly four weeks into the war,
Hezbollah’s communications networks were still operating
at points only 500 meters from the Israeli border and in spite
of repeated bomb strikes on its Al Manar television and Nour
Radio studios in south Beirut, both stations remained on the
air almost without interruption.
American and Israeli electronic warfare experts, who visited
the combat zone, have concluded that Iran had probably decided
to use the Lebanon conflict as the testing ground for its military,
intelligence and electronic capabilities in preparation for
a future clash with the United States and Israel in a potential
anti-nuclear conflict. A major element, which declassified Israeli
and allied intelligence sources indicate, was concern over the
method that Iranian experts managed to render their Beirut embassy
totally impregnable to western most advanced electronic or sophisticated
hi-tech penetration. Unconfirmed reports even mentioned a war
room in an underground bunker under the embassy, having been
placed at Hassan Nasrallah and his staff's disposal, after Hezbollah's
own bunker communications were destroyed by Israeli bombing
of Hezbollah's Beirut Dahiyah district. Although Israeli and
American intelligence tried to dismiss Hezbollah officers presence
in the embassy, there were several reports that placed Nasrallah
and his high command in the Iranian embassy for some time during
the war.
But not only with electronic warfare did Hezbollah gain considerable
success in penetrating Israeli territorial space. While Iran
has assisted Hezbollah by providing advanced intelligence-gathering
technology such as reconnaissance drones and sophisticated electronic
eavesdropping equipment, Hezbollah HUMINT activities inside
Israel managed to recruit valuable information rendering agents.
One outstanding example, over such recruitment was the network
operated around Omar el-Heib, a Bedouin who served as a lieutenant-colonel
in the IDF and was sentenced to 15 years in prison on espionage
charges last June. Using Lebanese drug dealers, Hezbollah transferred
dozens of kilograms of narcotics to Heib's network, which was
tasked with gathering intelligence on IDF positions and smuggling
these across the border, in exchange. Israeli analysts pointed
out, that the accurate Hezbollah rocket attacks on IDF military
installations, such as the air force monitoring station on Mount
Meron, which was attacked at the outset of the war, must have
been made possible through local intelligence reports delivered
by HUMINT agents.
As for preventative intelligence, against Israeli intelligence
penetration onto their own network, Hezbollah had created a
special counter intelligence department tasked with enforcing
organisational security. This included also an excellent internal
signals security apparatus, ensuring that members rarely used
communications technology that can be monitored by Israel. It
is even rumoured that Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah
himself, has not used a telephone since he became the group's
leader in 1992!
Operational units are also said to have been frequently restructured
in recent years, in preparation of the war, enhancing strict
compartmentalisation of the various elements in the organisation
and thus minimise the risk of infiltration. Finally, Hezbollah's
use of Iranian Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) has been the most
publicised aspect of this intelligence-gathering effort, which
may not have been implemented to its fullest effect, through
Israeli counter measures during the war, but had substantial
public relations result, in raising Israeli concern over these
intrusions into its airspace.
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Read David Eshel's past commentary here |
Until
the fateful date of July 12, 2006, when the Hezbollah triggered
the Second Lebanon War, Israel was accounted an important world
power in the development of electronic warfare systems –
so much so that a symbiotic relationship evolved for the research
and development of many US and Israeli, combat-proven electronic
warfare systems. But the first indication of something amiss
on the Israeli side already showed up on day three of the Lebanon
War. Israeli commanders were certain, having cast an electronic
blanket over South Lebanon jamming all Hezbollah communications
and telephone networks, including even mobile phones. The IDF
general staff were under the illusion that they had also knocked
out the communication links between Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut
and his local commanders in the combat zone. But they were wrong.