Created in 1978, after Israel invaded Lebanon to end Palestinian terrorist attacks from the country, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) had its size, budget, and remit expanded dramatically after the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war, when it was tasked with keeping both the IDF and Hizballah out of the southern part of the country. Later this month, UNIFIL’s mandate will be up for renewal at the UN Security Council. Tony Badran argues that, as effective reform is unlikely to occur, the U.S. would do best to use its veto power to dismantle the force:

Over the previous decade and a half of its deployment, UNIFIL has not achieved a single one of the objectives outlined [by the Security Council in 2006]. Let’s start with the more recent flagrant failures. In July, a Hizballah cell infiltrated Israel from the area that UNIFIL is mandated to keep free of any armed personnel. . . . In December 2018, the IDF uncovered a number of commando tunnels that Hizballah dug into Israel, right under UNIFIL’s nose. To this day, UNIFIL has not been able to inspect all the relevant sites for this activity.

UNIFIL is now effectively another UN aid agency. The mission highlights its work with the local population and its delivery of assistance, as recently as the COVID-19 crisis, to municipalities often run by Hizballah.

An inherent flaw in UNIFIL’s mandate lies in its requirement to coordinate with the Lebanese authorities. This renders its work dependent on Hizballah’s acquiescence. Even should the U.S. extract a concession for the force to inspect sites, the structural flaws will remain. So will the aversion of troop-contributing countries to adopt a more aggressive posture, for fear of retaliation.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.