Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah: Did spies track terror leader by dusting him with chemical?

Israel assassinated Hezbollah’s leader after he was smeared with a chemical agent that allowed spies to track his movements, it was claimed on Monday.

Hassan Nasrallah shook hands with an Israeli agent who passed on the unknown substance, according to a Saudi Arabian news channel.

The agent would have been an Iranian visiting Beirut where Nasrallah was killed in an air strike on Friday, news outlet Al Hadath claimed.

Security sources have suggested the substance could have been identified by a sensor or camera aboard a low-flying drone.

An Israeli statement on his killing noted the operation had been “directed by” the country’s Intelligence Directorate.

Israeli “micro-drones” maintain constant coverage of the Lebanese capital and are small enough to be invisible to the naked eye when flying over buildings.

Alternatively, Nasrallah or one of his close associates, may have been sprayed with an invisible chemical marking agent.

If a chemical wasn’t used, another explanation would be that a source provided details on his whereabouts.

Nasrallah’s body was recovered intact from beneath the remains of the building.

In total, more than 20 Hezbollah members were killed by the Israeli Air Force.

Marking agents such as Nitrophenyl Pentadienal, known as “spy dust” were used by the KGB during the Cold War.

Israel is known to be at the forefront of research also involving the US and the UK into the challenges of contemporary urban warfare.

The country is also thought to have a connected network of hidden cameras and bio-sensors in Beirut monitoring key sites and the local population.

One of these technologies is called “Bionet”, described by a security source as “a deployable network of rapidly proliferating biological and biomimetic nodes that can infiltrate a city to detect and relay data”.

The Israelis are also using Artificial Intelligence to sort through high volumes of data relating to Hezbollah human targets and present the information in the most relevant form.

This system is understood to be saving its agents hundreds of hours of sifting through signals and messages gathered by intercepts. Another new technology apparently used by Israel to infiltrate Hezbollah is called “EMS Persona”.

This is a pool of realistic, diverse “virtual humans” with verifiable digital histories used to communicate with sympathisers online.