Earlier in the day, a Lebanese source told Sputnik that devices other than pagers had exploded in different parts of the country on Wednesday. Lebanese Labor Minister Mustafa Bayram called the blasts "a deliberate crime and a terrorist act" by Israel in an interview with Sputnik.
"Israel's primary objective is to deflect attention from its responsibility for the massacres and genocide occurring in Palestine and to shift the global public agenda," Mehmet Rakipoglu, a researcher with the London-based think tank Dimensions for Strategic Studies, tells Sputnik, referring to a new series of explosions in Lebanon.
The second critical issue is related to Israel's intelligence failures on October 7, 2023, Rakipoglu continued.
"This lapse revealed a significant weakness in Israeli intelligence capabilities. Through these attacks, assassinations, and strikes against Hezbollah, Israel is aiming to restore its diminished intelligence reputation," says the pundit.
Speaking to Sputnik on Tuesday, military analyst Alexei Leonkov alleged that US intelligence services could be behind the explosions, referring to their advanced surveillance tools and ability to remotely interfere with the work of communication devices.
The US has been developing this capability since the 1960s, when it kicked off the Echelon spying program, the expert noted. In 2013, ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden shed light on new instruments employed by American spooks.
Rakipoglu echoes Leonkov by saying that the US could have had a hand in the recent sabotage attack against Lebanon and Shiite movement Hezbollah.
"I'm definitely sure that the United States has some finger on it," the researcher says. "Now that since the US has been a partner during this Israeli genocide, the war on Gaza and also in Lebanon."