How Israel's Spies Penetrated Hezbollah - with Ronen Bergman

Video Description

LISTEN ON APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY: https://lnk.to/SzcEv9 Visit our website to sign up for updates, access transcripts and more: https://arkmedia.org/ Dan on X: https://x.com/dansenor Dan on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dansenor The string of Israeli successes against Hezbollah — culminating in the killing of Hassan Nasrallah — last September was partly the work of Israeli military and intelligence agencies infiltrating Hezbollah’s networks, planting booby-trapped communication devices, and tracking the leaders’ movements to dismantle the group's military capabilities. This campaign crippled Hezbollah by also destroying thousands of missiles and disrupting its leadership, delivering a blow to Iran’s regional strategy. An investigative report recently published by the New York Times delves into how deeply Israeli intelligence had penetrated Hezbollah ranks. Our guest today is one of the report’s authors: Ronen Bergman. Ronen Bergman is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine and Senior Correspondent for Military and Intelligence Affairs for Yedioth Ahronoth, an Israeli daily. Ronen has won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Israel-Hamas war and the pre-war intelligence failures. The New York Times’ investigative report, co-authored by Ronen: “Behind the Dismantling of Hezbollah: Decades of Israeli Intelligence” - https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/29/world/middleeast/israel-hezbollah-nasrallah-assassination-intelligence.html Timestamps: 0:00 Introduction 2:17 Immediate reactions to Gallant's registration 6:57 What surprised Ronen in this story? 13:27 How Israel began gathering intelligence after the 2006 war 15:45 The network of human intelligence sources developed by Israel 19:47 2012 as a turning point 23:38 Were Hezbollah's capabilities overestimated? 26:33 Did Hezbollah's leadership know they had been infiltrated? 27:38 How the pager attack was orchestrated 32:12 The evolution of tools: from walkie-talkies to pagers 35:51 How Israel pushed Hezbollah to use the pagers 39:30 To what extent was the targeted use of pagers a planned part of the operation? 44:10 The moment the operation was almost exposed 46:59 The assassination of Nasrallah 54:53 How long would it take Hezbollah to rebuild itself? #Hezbollah #IsraeliIntelligence #MiddleEastPolitics #HassanNasrallah #RonenBergman #NewYorkTimes