“A form of terrorism”, he described the explosions to his sirens Hezbollah Leon Panetta, former CIA director in the Obama administration and former United States Secretary of Defense.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that this is a form of terrorism,” said Panetta, speaking on CBS’s “News Morning.”
According to the former CIA director, the operation attributed to Israel “directly affects the supply chain. And when terror enters the supply chain, people start to wonder: what’s next?”
Explosions in doorbells and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah members in Lebanon have killed dozens of people – including two children – and injured around 3,000. The Lebanese Shiite group, considered a “terrorist” group by the United States and the EU, attributed the explosions to Mossad and the Israeli secret services.
“This is a tactic that has repercussions. And we don’t really know what’s going to happen,” Panetta explained during the interview. “I think it will be very important for the nations of the world to have a serious discussion about whether or not this is an area that everyone should be focusing on. Because if they don’t try to deal with it now, it will be the battlefield of the future”, warned the former CIA director.
Two versions
Many analysts are still trying to explain exactly how the explosions on Hezbollah’s communications devices occurred: The first version is that, like the assassination of its main bomber, HamasYahia Ayias in 1996, the attack planners infiltrated the telecommunications company’s supply chain, planting explosives in the units.
The second theory is that the attack was carried out through cyber attackcausing device batteries to overheat and explode. “As Sherlock Holmes said, in these cases, if we exclude the impossible, what remains, however unlikely it may be, is still possible”, comments Professor Alessandro Curioni, an expert in the field. cybersecurity. “And at first glance, the only thing impossible is that 1,000 devices could explode at the same time, by chance.”
An expert who spoke to Haaretz explained that a fully charged 50-gram lithium battery produces heat equivalent to detonating seven grams of TNT. As he said, “if you short circuit a lithium battery, it heats up extremely quickly, within seconds.”