Slain Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was deeply depressed after the Mossad pager operation, which saw the mass detonation of communication devices used by the terror group, killing at least 42 operatives and wounding some 3,500.

Hezbollah-affiliated Lebanese news channel Al Manar aired an interview on Sunday featuring Nasrallah’s son Jawad and his daughter Zainab, in which they spoke about the impact of the operation on their father.

Jawad told the outlet that Nasrallah “wept for the young men” killed and injured in the blasts.

“He considered every one of them his son and felt their pain deeply,” Jawad said.

Zainab confirmed that her mother said Nasrallah cried following the operation.

“The families of the martyrs held a special place in his heart,” she said.

The beeper explosions, which came shortly after Nasrallah’s close confidant and senior Hezbollah member Fuad Shukr was assassinated in an Israeli airstrike, had been too much for him to bear.

Those who encountered Nasrallah after those two events observed that “he [was] no longer with us,” Jawad said.

Nasrallah’s children’s comments echoed that of Mossad agents involved in the operation, who were interviewed by 60 Minutes in December 2024.

“If you look at his eyes, he was defeated,” one agent said, stressing the operation’s profound effect on Nasrallah. “He already lost the war.”

Hezbollah operatives looking at Nasrallah in his first post-pager operation speech “saw a broken leader.”

In a plan that took years to come to fruition, Mossad agents placed small amounts of highly explosive materials inside of walkie-talkies and pagers used by Hezbollah.

Mossad established shell companies in numerous countries in order to deceive Hezbollah, though it’s unclear exactly where the pagers were booby-trapped.

Gold Apollo, the Taiwan-based brand whose pagers were used, denied making the devices and said their name had been licensed to a Hungarian company.

That Hungarian company claimed to have only been an intermediary and that they did not manufacture the devices.

Image - Reuters