Twenty-eight years ago this month, Hizballah—with the help of its Iranian patrons—detonated a massive bomb at the AMIA Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires, leaving 85 dead and hundreds wounded. On the 2012 anniversary of the bombing, Hizballah attacked a bus carrying Israeli tourists in Burgas, Bulgaria, killing six. But the Lebanese-based terrorist group has had no success in murdering Jews outside of Israel since then, although not for lack of trying. Oved Lobel argues that Israeli counterterrorism is the reason why:

While Israel has demonstrated the capability to assassinate almost any Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Hizballah operative or Iranian nuclear scientist—or even al-Qaeda leaders working under the auspices of the IRGC—including in Iran itself, Iran is suffering an ever-expanding backlog of people it needs to avenge.

In 2008, an alleged joint CIA-Mossad operation killed Hizballah’s terrorist mastermind Imad Mughniyeh in Syria. In response, the IRGC attempted multiple attacks, both assassinations and bombings, across the world. All of them failed; . . . planned and attempted attacks from Azerbaijan to Georgia to India to Thailand to Cyprus and across Africa, the Middle East, and South America since 2006 were all foiled, while Hizballah’s global stockpiling of ammonium nitrate for explosives was revealed by Israeli intelligence. In 2012 alone, the year of the Burgas bombing, there were reportedly at least nine IRGC plots against Jewish or Israeli targets across the world, including a previous attempt in Bulgaria.

It appears the reason Israel is able to conduct such operations, including infrastructure sabotage against Iranian military and nuclear targets, is because of its comprehensive intelligence penetration of the IRGC and every other relevant organization in Iran at every level, something obvious for several years and publicly acknowledged by multiple Iranian officials.

On Tuesday, a Hizballah drone attack injured three people in northern Israel. The next day, another attack, targeting an IDF base, injured eighteen people, six of them seriously, in Arab al-Amshe, also in the north. This second attack involved the simultaneous use of drones carrying explosives and guided antitank missiles. In both cases, the defensive systems that performed so successfully last weekend failed to stop the drones and missiles. Ron Ben-Yishai has a straightforward explanation as to why: the Lebanon-backed terrorist group is getting better at evading Israel defenses. He explains the three basis systems used to pilot these unmanned aircraft, and their practical effects:

These systems allow drones to act similarly to fighter jets, using “dead zones”—areas not visible to radar or other optical detection—to approach targets. They fly low initially, then ascend just before crashing and detonating on the target. The terrain of southern Lebanon is particularly conducive to such attacks.

But this requires skills that the terror group has honed over months of fighting against Israel. The latest attacks involved a large drone capable of carrying over 50 kg (110 lbs.) of explosives. The terrorists have likely analyzed Israel’s alert and interception systems, recognizing that shooting down their drones requires early detection to allow sufficient time for launching interceptors.

The IDF tries to detect any incoming drones on its radar, as it had done prior to the war. Despite Hizballah’s learning curve, the IDF’s technological edge offers an advantage. However, the military must recognize that any measure it takes is quickly observed and analyzed, and even the most effective defenses can be incomplete. The terrain near the Lebanon-Israel border continues to pose a challenge, necessitating technological solutions and significant financial investment.