Israel’s surveillance into Hezbollah was so extensive that it revealed Islamist terror commander Fuad Shukr’s four extramarital affairs, according to a New York Times report published on Sunday.
Shukr had reportedly planned to marry all four mistresses after feeling guilty over the adultery, European and Israeli intelligence officials told the Times.
Shukr’s matrimonial plans reportedly came after he sought guidance from Hezbollah’s highest religious cleric, Hashem Safieddine, in early 2024. The religious cleric was thought to have succeeded the eliminated Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah and was also eliminated in an Israeli airstrike in October.
The religious leader had reportedly arranged for Shukr’s romances to be legitimized in the form of four separate over-the-phone wedding ceremonies for each mistress.
It is unclear if the weddings were ever completed as Shukr was eliminated in Beirut in July alongside three women, at least one of whom is thought to have been his wife, and two of his children. Several Arab outlets reported that the wife killed was one of Shukr’s mistresses.
Shukr had been hiding in the residential building when he received a call from someone the Wall Street Journal reported had likely infiltrated Hezbollah’s internal communication network to move to the 7th floor of the building. The move ultimately led to his elimination.
Israel's surveillance on Shukr, as well as the assassination of Nasrallah, was the culmination of extensive spy infiltration and intelligence gathering from the terror group that spanned decades, the NYT report revealed.
The NYT investigation, based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former Israeli, American, and European officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified operations, revealed just how extensively Israeli spies had penetrated Hezbollah as part of two decades of methodical intelligence work in preparation for an all-out war that many expected would eventually come.
The Israeli spies recruited people to plant listening devices in Hezbollah bunkers, tracked meetings between Shukr and his four mistresses, and had near-constant visibility into the movements of the terror group's leaders, per NYT's report.
Right up until he was assassinated, Hassan Nasrallah did not believe that Israel would kill him, the report claimed. His aides reportedly urged him to leave his underground fortress to a safer location, which Nasrallah brushed off, given his perception that Israel had no interest in a full-scale war. However, he did not realize that Israeli spy agencies had been tracking his every movement for years, according to the same report.
Who was Fuad Shukr?
Shukr, who was a member of Hezbollah for some 30 years, was the Chief of the terror group's military wing and regarded as "number 2" in its echelon, Israeli media reported.
Shukr had lived a secretive life, according to the WSJ, and hardly anyone ever saw him. He lived in and worked in the same building in the southern Beirut neighborhood of Dahiyeh, so he would not need to move around outside.
After he was killed, his neighbor said, “We’d heard his name, but we never saw him. He was like a ghost.”
Shukr gained notoriety for planning the hijacking of a plane in 1985 in order to release 700 prisoners in Israeli prisons. On June 14, 1985, a group of hijackers seized TWA Flight 847 after takeoff from Athens and flew the plane back and forth between Beirut and Algiers for three days. After orchestrating this terror operation, he went into hiding.
According to the US Rewards for Justice, the US provided a $5 million reward for information regarding Shukr. He was involved, among other operations, in the bombing of the US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut on October 23, 1983. Some 241 US military personnel were killed in the attack, and 128 others were wounded.
In addition to positioning a bounty on his head, the US also sanctioned Shukr. On September 10, 2019, The US State Department labeled him as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist" under "Executive Order 13224," which allows the US to prevent the funding of terrorists.
After October 7, when Hezbollah began attacking Israel again, Israeli strikes killed approximately 400 of the group’s operatives, including key commanders. As a result, Nasrallah told Hezbollah fighters and their families to “Abandon your phone, disable it, bury it, lock it in a metal box,” he said.
Jerusalem Post Staff and Gadi Zaig contributed to this report.