Since 2011, Yemen has been in a state of civil war between the Houthis—a tribal, religious, and political group—and the country’s officially recognized government; the conflict became more severe after the Houthis seized the capital in 2014, and Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states intervened to support the government. By this time, it had become clear that the Houthis were receiving massive support from Iran. Julie Lenarz writes:

The Houthis, officially called Ansar Allah, are a homegrown organization that originated in northern Yemen in the 1990s and has fought against Yemen’s governments on and off since 2004. . . . [In the past few years, the] Houthis adopted a strident anti-Western rhetoric that originated in Iran and is frequently [employed] by [Tehran’s] Lebanese terror proxy Hizballah. “God is Great, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse the Jews, Victory to Islam!,” [their official slogan], can be found scrawled on mosques and other public institutions across Houthi-controlled territory. . . .

Before the Houthi rebels entered the capital Sana’a in 2014, Iran started to support the insurgency with weapons, money, and training. . . . [T]he Quds Force, a special-forces unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, . . . had a few hundred military personnel in Yemen to train Houthi fighters. . . . [I]n return, about 100 Houthi members had traveled to Iran for training at a Revolutionary Guards base near the city of Qom. . . .

[The Houthis’] television channel, al-Masirah, is broadcast from Beirut with the assistance of Hizballah, which holds enormous influence over the city’s southern suburbs. [There are also] striking tactical similarities between the Houthi takeover of Sana’a and the events in Beirut in 2008, when Hizballah gunmen seized control of large parts of Lebanon’s capital. . . .

Yemen is the latest project in Iran’s grand plan of ascendancy in the region for which they use the Houthi rebels as a vehicle of projecting power on the Arabian Peninsula. Hizballah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, recently threatened that the next war with Israel could see . . . “thousands, even hundreds of thousands of fighters [come] from all over the Arab and Islamic world to participate—from Iraq, Yemen, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.”

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.