Lebanon pager attacks ‘done under my auspices’: Trump

US President Donald Trump has said that Israel's terrorist pager attacks against Lebanon in September last year took place with his greenlight.

In an interview with Time in the Oval Office, Donald Trump shed light on his involvement in the act of aggression against Lebanon, saying he supported the pager attacks carried out by the Israeli regime.

“All of those attacks were done under my auspices, you know, with Israel doing the attacks—with the pagers and all that stuff,” Donald Trump said, adding, “They let me know everything.”
“And sometimes I’d say no—and they’d be respectful of that.”

In a follow-up statement, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung confirmed the news, stating that the US president did indeed support the Lebanon attack. “The definition of auspices is support and approval. President Trump supported the action,” he told the Daily Beast.

On 17 September last year, thousands of wireless communication devices belonging to members of the resistance movement Hezbollah exploded in unison in different locations across Lebanon and Syria, killing at least 12 people, including a 9-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy, and injuring around 3,000 others, mostly ordinary citizens.

A day after the attacks, UN human rights experts condemned the malicious manipulation of thousands of electronic pagers and radios to explode simultaneously across Lebanon and Syria as “terrifying” violations of international law.

Exclusive: Pager terror victims in Lebanon say more would join resistance front now

Israeli terror campaign cannot dissuade thousands of young Lebanese men from supporting the resistance and more would join now, victims tell Press TV website.

Many victims were bystanders taking money from cash machines or shopping at food markets.

It took two months for the Israeli regime to officially claim responsibility for the attacks.

The indiscriminate pager bombings, first reported in the southern suburbs of Beirut, were followed by the detonation of walkie-talkies the next day, which also resulted in hundreds of casualties.

Israel’s history of targeting civilians, including women and children, in Lebanon and Palestine continues to defy international law and basic war ethics, according to experts.

They assess that the use of such unconventional methods indicates the regime’s inability to defeat the resistance movement in Lebanon and signals their desperation.

Hezbollah officials have continuously emphasized that the United States has been directly involved in acts of aggression against Lebanon, including decisions and executions such as the assassination of senior Hezbollah leaders, including Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.

They say Washington has provided its proxy, the Israeli regime, with arms and intelligence against Lebanon tenfold over the past 25 years.

On Tuesday, the Israeli regime targeted southern and eastern parts of Lebanon, killing at least four civilians and injuring students at two local schools.

During the latest brutal escalation of the war against Lebanon in late 2024, the Israeli regime killed more than 2,700 people in Lebanon and injured thousands. An estimated 1.5 million people, approximately a third of Lebanon’s population, have been displaced.

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.ir