We know who did it.......

Israel notified US ahead of Tuesday’s Lebanon operation but gave no details of what was planned, sources say

From CNN's Oren Liebermann and Kylie Atwood

Israeli officials notified the US it was going to carry out an operation in Lebanon on Tuesday but did not give any details on what they were planning, according to three sources familiar with the matter, including in a call between Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant early Tuesday morning.

The fact that no details about what the operation would entail meantUS officials were left in the dark until reports of hundreds of exploding pagers emerged a short time later, the sources said.

CNN has learned that Israel was behind the audacious attack, which has heightened tensions in a region already on edge, and it was a joint operation between Israel’s intelligence service, the Mossad, and the Israeli military. The Lebanese government condemned the attack as “criminal Israeli aggression.”

A shock to senior US officials: Tuesday’s explosions came as Secretary of State Antony Blinken was traveling from Washington to Cairo, stunning US diplomats who watched the breaking news in real time on their airplane TVs. On Wednesday, Blinken said during a news conference in Egypt that the United States “did not know about nor was it involved in these incidents.”

Mitigating the aftermath: The US conveyed to Iran via a backchannel that it was not involved in the attack and that Iran should not escalate, a separate US official told CNN. Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon was injured by the exploding pagers, according to Iranian state media. Throughout the course of the nearly year-long war in Gaza, the US has consistently sent indirect messages to Tehran about not escalating.

Latest attack: On Wednesday, walkie-talkies detonated in a fresh wave of explosions in Lebanon, a security source told CNN. It’s not immediately clear who was responsible or if the US was notified.