Last month, Yemeni militants fired a ballistic missile at the Riyadh airport, prompting the Saudi foreign minister to state that this was a declaration of war on his country by Lebanon. Hyperbolic though the statement may seem, there is indeed a link between the missile and Lebanon: namely, Hizballah, which asserts de-facto control over the government in Beirut. Uzi Rubin explains:

Hizballah does indeed have a presence in Yemen. For the past two years, it has been supporting the Houthi insurgents in their war against the Saudi-led coalition. In the course of that war, ballistic missiles have been regularly launched against Saudi Arabia’s major cities. . . .

While Iran has not officially joined the war, its extensive support of the Houthi side includes supplying weapons, dispatching military advisers and auxiliary troops, and generous financial support. Its involvement has transformed the Yemeni civil war into a major arena in the struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia over the future of the Middle East. . . .

Furthermore, Rubin explains, there is little doubt that the Houthis’ ballistic missiles, as well as many of their rockets and short-range missiles were developed in Iran. The implications are serious:

While the Yemeni civil war draws scant attention in Israel, it could have a significant impact on Israel’s security as well as on the stability of the entire Middle East. Yemen is a key country occupying a strategic location. It controls one of the seven maritime choke points on the planet: the Mandeb Strait. An Iran in control of Yemen might outflank Saudi Arabia from the south, close the Strait to Israeli shipping, and open the Red Sea to the Iranian navy, jeopardizing the security of Sudan and Egypt. This would be a veritable tectonic shift in the Middle East’s balance of power—one that could be another step toward a reincarnated Persian empire, this time under ayatollah management.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.