“At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members - including fighters and medics - detonated simultaneously across Lebanon.” Reuters

“Israel's Mossad spy agency planted a small amount of explosives inside 5,000 Taiwan-made pagers ordered by Lebanese group Hezbollah months before Tuesday's detonations, a senior Lebanese security source and another source told Reuters… Hezbollah fighters have been using pagers as a low-tech means of communication in an attempt to evade Israeli location-tracking… Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate against Israel, whose military declined to comment on the blasts.” Reuters

Both sides see the attack as a serious security breach for Hezbollah:

“The mechanism behind the explosions is unclear. The AP reported that the pagers used lithium batteries and heated up before exploding… Some security experts believe compact bombs were placed in the pagers; Sky News Arabia reported that an explosive heat-sensitive chemical called pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) was put in the pagers and that their battery temperatures were remotely increased, triggering the explosion…

“Israel has weaponized personal communications devices against its adversaries in the past. It used an exploding phone to kill a Hamas bomb maker in 1996… If Israel is behind the pager attack — which was far more extensive and destructive than past attacks harnessing phones — it would demonstrate that Israeli forces have achieved a new level of sophistication in their ability to carry out strikes on enemy soil.”
Nicole Narea, Vox

“Whatever their source for 1980s tech was, suffice it to say that Hezbollah will not be a return customer. Pagers got distributed to thousands of significant figures within the Iranian proxy terror army, as a means to keep Israel from penetrating their sensitive communications. Instead, Hezbollah walked into a trap that the Israelis waited for months to trigger…

“And one has to wonder what else the Israelis did with those pagers… They may have also been able to track the data on these pagers by modifying the code… Hezbollah may have handled its pager program incompetently, but they understand what operational security is. Both they and the Iranians have to be asking themselves what Israel may have gotten from months of pager data before setting them to explode today, and what that means for any previous plans for both offense and defense.”
Ed Morrissey, Hot Air

“This week, Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told reporters that the hour is nearing when Israeli forces will have to confront Iran’s cat’s-paw in southern Lebanon directly, in order to return the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along Lebanon’s border under fire and have not yet been able to return. Today’s operation may be a prelude to the next phase of Israel’s defensive war…

“The degree to which Israeli intelligence has penetrated Iran’s security services and those of its terrorist proxies is astounding, and it may have a deterrent effect on the Iranian regime. But Hezbollah will not be deterred into voluntary submission. The pager strikes are only the opening salvos of a more dangerous conflict, which now seems all but inevitable.”
Noah Rothman, National Review

“Beyond its devastating effect on Hezbollah, the attack signals the beginning of a new and very dangerous era in cyberwarfare. Any device that is connected to the internet can potentially be transformed into a weapon. The circuits of a ‘smart’ appliance can be manipulated so that they malfunction in a dangerous way. In the Stuxnet cyberattack against Iran’s nuclear program, malware caused centrifuges to spin so wildly that they became unstable and self-destructed…

“In the future of what’s called [the] ‘Internet of Things,’ the errant device could be your phone, refrigerator or television. With each new advance of weapons technology, designers imagine they’ll have exclusive use of the deadly tools of war. The United States once had what seemed a monopoly on drones, for example, but they’re now a pervasive instrument of war. Even the audacious 007 would know that his enemies can turn his weapons against him.”
David Ignatius, Washington Post

Other opinions below.