Hezbollah pagers: Israel's superiority over the Islamic Republic

In a Tuesday address to the country’s Olympic and Paralympic teams, Khamenei called on officials to compensate athletes who withdraw from matches against Israel, describing it as a "sacrifice" for national and religious ideals.

The directive is nothing new in Iran where athletes face pressure to forfeit matches against Israeli opponents, but with waning compliance, the country's supreme leader reiterated the country's hardline approach.

Some athletes are even going as far as shaking hands with Israeli competitors as cracks begin to show, a gesture that would have been unthinkable under Khamenei’s system.

Last year, Iran’s Weightlifting Federation (IRIWF) imposed a lifetime ban on Mostafa Rajaei after he shook hands with an Israeli athlete at the World Masters Championships in Kraków. Rajaei, who secured second place in his category and stood on the podium draped in the Iranian flag, greeted Israel's Maksim Svirsky, who finished third.

The two were photographed shaking hands and conversing, sparking outrage from the IRIWF and the Iranian government, which prohibits its athletes from engaging directly with Israelis. The IRIWF condemned Rajaei's actions as an "unforgivable" violation.

Iran’s hardline stance against Israel in sports has become a longstanding policy since 1979, with athletes pressured by government-controlled sports federations to either forfeit or intentionally lose matches. Those who comply are often rewarded handsomely. Some reports suggest that athletes who refuse to compete against Israel receive rewards equivalent to gold medalists.

"Our athlete refuses to compete or play against a Zionist opponent, and because of this, they pay a price. We must not neglect the well-being of this athlete," Khamenei said. The Iranian leader also emphasized that it is the government’s duty to address the livelihood and employment needs of the athletes, many of whom are under immense financial strain.

But as the Islamic Republic tries to uphold its anti-Israel stance, more athletes are fleeing the country to seek freedom. Since the 2022 Women, Life, Freedom uprising and the death of Mahsa Amini, the number of defecting athletes has skyrocketed.

The International Olympic Committee’s Refugee Team included 14 Iranian athletes in the 2024 Paris Olympics, athletes who had fled Iran due to political repression and the forced policies within the sports sector.

Iranian judoka Saeid Mollaei, left Iran and since competed under Mongolia’s flag, facing off against Israeli opponents regularly in global competitions.

This wave of defections has been fueled not only by the government’s anti-Israel policy but also by the corruption in Iran’s sports federations. Female athletes, in particular, face additional challenges due to the mandatory hijab, which has sparked international criticism.

Khamenei has also praised athletes who dedicate their victories to the Palestinian cause, such as those who have offered their medals to Ismail Haniyeh and taken photos with the Palestinian flag. He described these acts as "a display of spiritual strength and self-confidence of the Iranian nation" against its enemies. According to Khamenei, such gestures “carry a lot of meaning in the world."

In this week's address, Khamenei commended Iranian women athletes for wearing the hijab during international events, seeing this as a sign of their "national, religious, and Islamic identity."

He even went so far as to praise male athletes who refuse to shake hands with women during award ceremonies, calling it "meaningful" and a demonstration of "self-confidence."

The security cabinet of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to add "returning the residents of the north safely to their homes" to the formal war aims of the conflict which began on October 7.

Israel also provided nearly 100 rapid response units on its northern border with 9,000 Arad rifles according to the ministry of defense.

Around 60,000 residents of Israeli border communities have been evacuated since Hezbollah joined the conflict in solidarity with Palestinian Hamas fighters. Tens of thousands of Lebanese civilians have also fled the ongoing fighting.

Each Israeli unit has been outfitted with combat and rescue gear, medical supplies, uniforms, and protective equipment, the Israeli ministry of defense added.

The initiative "is part of our policy to bolster border defense while enhancing self-reliant production capabilities", its director general Maj. Gen. (Res.) Eyal Zamir said.

400 of the casualties were in critical condition, advisor to Lebanon’s health minister Bassem Ghanem told Reuters, in an apparent major blow to the Iran-backed group which is set to ratchet up already flaring regional tensions.

Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon Mojtaba Amani was among the wounded but suffered non-life-threatening injuries, Iran’s state-run news outlets said. Unconfirmed reports in Tehran said his eyes were "severely injured" in the attack.

Hezbollah, which has been locked in escalating cross-border combat with its southern neighbor for almost a year, blamed Israel for the attack and vowed retaliation.

"We hold the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal aggression ... This treacherous and criminal enemy will certainly receive its just punishment for this sinful aggression", the Iranian-backed group said in a statement.

The attack was a result of a joint operation between Israel’s Mossad, and the Israeli military, CNN reported Tuesday. Israel placed explosive material in a batch of Taiwanese-made pagers which were imported into Lebanon and destined for Hezbollah, the New York Times reported, citing American and other officials briefed on the operation.

"Over 3,000 pagers were ordered from the Gold Apollo company in Taiwan... Hezbollah distributed the pagers to their members throughout Lebanon, with some reaching Hezbollah allies in Iran and Syria," The New York Times reported citing officials. "Israel’s attack affected the pagers that were switched on and receiving messages."

Israel has not yet commented on any role in the incident but has repeatedly assassinated adversaries in combat zones and beyond in the past.

Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araghchi condemned the explosions as an act of "Israeli terrorism".

The United States denied any involvement in the explosions and cautioned Iran against escalation.

“We would urge Iran not to take advantage of any incident to raise instability in the region,” state department spokesman Matthew Miller said.

It was not immediately clear how the pagers were detonated, and the apparent attack comes after Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah urged his fighters last year to ditch smart phones and adopt less traceable means of communication.

Unverified surveillance camera videos posted online by Lebanese users appeared to show detonations felling a man at an outdoor fruit market and in a supermarket checkout aisle.

Other footage showed what appeared to be a hospital ward crowded with wounded men and also the inside of a bedroom with a mirror and cupboard torn apart by a blast.

Fourteen people were also wounded in the Syrian capital Damascus and its outskirts in explosions around the same time, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

Hezbollah fighters have been a party to Syria's civil war for over a decade.

The explosions are expected to further fuel the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel that has rumbled since the group’s Palestinian allies Hamas attacked Israel on October 7.

Israel’s security cabinet on Monday upgraded the country’s war aims to include securing its Northern border, where Israeli and Lebanese communities have been evacuated for almost a year.

The Israeli military announced on Monday it had furnished border units with 9,000 new rifles and that it had foiled a suspected assassination attempt on an unnamed senior security official.

An explosive device found in Israel was equipped with a remote activation mechanism, a camera and cellular technology that enabled it to be activated by Hezbollah from Lebanon, the defense ministry said in a statement.

The assassination attempt on a senior security official was imminent and was foiled after the discovery of a Claymore explosive device, known to be used by Hezbollah.

The explosive device found in Israel was equipped with a remote activation mechanism, with a camera and cellular technology, enabling it to be activated by Iran’s biggest proxy, Hezbollah, from Lebanon.

The Israeli military said that the device was similar to the Claymore explosive used in an attack by Hezbollah in September last year, in Yarkon Park in Tel Aviv, which was intended to target a senior Israeli official.

“The assessment within the security establishment is that the Hezbollah operatives involved in this latest incident were also behind the September 2023 attack,” a statement read, adding that the operation “had been under surveillance for an extended period”.

Ronen Solomon, an Israeli intelligence analyst, said the operation also bears similarities to a bombing attack in March last year in northern Israel. A Hezbollah operative had infiltrated the border and seriously injured a man in the area of Megiddo with an explosive device.

“Israel knows all the people behind all these units. Some have been assassinated, including Saleh Arouri who was the Hamas external connection working with Unit 2500. They’re using Hamas’s south Lebanon branch,” he said.

Like the Yarkon Park attack, the latest assassination attempt was planned for 6am, usually when a target would be out in some part of their daily routine, like running.

“I understand that Lebanon wanted to do it remotely by cellphone, so it’s not something that was to be done with a timer or an agent on the ground in the vicinity. This was a long distance operation but it was a complicated operation and something you need to have a circle of operatives,” Solomon added.

Solomon said that what is surprising now, is that even amid a war when Israel’s borders are locked down, that the infiltration was possible, pointing to links with Arab-Israeli or Palestinian operatives in the West Bank or East Jerusalem.

Hezbollah has also used criminal gangs in Israel to smuggle weapons and explosives across the borders.

“It makes you wonder how they are infiltrating and suggests that maybe the operatives came from Jordan to Jerusalem. They have to recruit someone from the West Bank. We know this kind of bomb is being smuggled from Jordan,” Solomon said.

The operation would span three units of Hezbollah, 1800, the strategic unit which gets weapons and explosives into Israel. They have been trying such operations since the early 2000s.

Unit 133 handles the operatives on the ground to pull the trigger, and 2500 which is managed by Hezbollah but is a mix of Iran’s Quds Force and Palestinian militias, would also be involved, Solomon explained. It has overseen the recruitment of operatives abroad including Turkey and Africa, as well as inside Israel and the occupied territories.

“Because Israel knows the identity of most people in these units, maybe we will now see more eliminations like we saw before,” he said.

The sudden disappearance of the data has sparked concerns over government transparency, with critics accusing authorities of attempting to downplay the ongoing issue of child marriages in the country.

“Here’s yet another statistic that has become classified! The statistics on newborns from mothers aged 10 to 14 have been removed from the National Organization for Civil Registration’s website. Last year, around 1,500 children were born to mothers under the age of 14,” wrote Iranian journalist Marziyeh Mahmoodi on X Sunday.

Additionally, in a piece published on Etemad earlier this month, Iranian commentator Abbas Abdi also revealed that the organization, which previously provided weekly birth statistics categorized by the mother’s age, has now entirely omitted these figures from public access.

“I anonymously contacted their office and was told, ‘Because a certain newspaper published the statistics and the issue of child marriage became widespread, we were ordered not to publish the data anymore,’” Abdi wrote in a piece published in Etemad.

He added, “I asked, ‘Hasn't there been an order to stop this tragedy of pregnancies among girls under 14?’ They responded, ‘No. The only order is not to publish the statistics!’” He emphasized that access to accurate information is crucial for addressing societal issues, calling the decision both illegal and detrimental to effective policy making.

In 2020, 364 babies were born to girls under the age of 15, according to a report by IranWire citing the Statistical Center of Iran, the latest such figures available. This means that the number of babies born to girls under the age of 15 in Iran has surged by an alarming 312%, rising from 364 in 2020 to around 1,500 in 2023.

Last year, a report from the Research Center of the Iranian Parliament, revealed that 184,000 marriages involving girls under the age of 15 were registered in Iran between 2017 and 2022.

However, Iran's Statistical Center recorded around 25,900 cases of girls under 15 getting married in 2022, less than the 32,000 such cases registered in 2021, suggesting discrepancies in the data released by the government with a significantly lower figure reported by Iran’s government backed Statistical Center.

Despite global standards considering individuals under 18 as "children", child marriages are allowed from the age of 13 for girls and 15 for boys in Iran according to Article 1041 of the Iranian Civil Code.

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has consistently emphasized policies promoting population growth, fertility, and early marriages, setting a goal to boost the population to 150 million by 2050.

In line with these goals, the Rejuvenation of the Population and Protection of the Family (RPPF) law, was enacted by Parliament in 2021 under Khamenei’s directive. The law imposes penalties for actions deemed to oppose childbearing and early marriages, placing population growth above concerns for children's rights.