In an interview by Jackson Richman, Elliott Abrams, the U.S. special representative for Venezuela and Iran, discusses the dangers of returning to the 2015 nuclear agreement with Tehran (formally known as the JCPOA), and how Washington might go about negotiating a better deal. He first addresses the successes of the White House’s “maximum-pressure campaign” of economic warfare against the Islamic Republic:

The purpose of the campaign was to build leverage that can be used to force Iran to stop doing the many malicious things it’s doing. . . . We were very critical of the JCPOA for many reasons. [One] is that it covered nuclear activities only. It didn’t cover their missile program. It didn’t cover Iran’s support for terrorism and its many malign activities throughout the region. How do you get Iran to stop doing all of that when they don’t want to? The answer is you need to build up a lot of pressure on them. The leverage is there, which means the campaign has succeeded. Now the question is how that leverage will be used.

Returning to the JCPOA is not like turning a light switch on, off, on, off. Five years have passed since the JCPOA was agreed upon. The first [of its sunset clauses] has already come [into effect in the form of repealing] the arms embargo, and frankly, it’s unbelievable when you think about it that any American administration would have agreed to such a short amount of time to go by before allowing Iran to be able to import and export such serious weaponry as advanced combat jets. And there are more sunsets coming in the next few years.

You can’t just say, “OK, we’re back in JCPOA this morning.” The United States will have some demands of Iran, like exporting the enriched uranium that it now possesses far in excess of what it agreed to in 2015. And the Iranian government has asked for sanctions relief.

My hope is that the next administration recognizes that we have the upper hand. Iran’s economy is reeling. Iran’s people despise this regime, as they showed in [the mass protests of] November of last year. There is no reason that we have to make all sorts of concessions to Iran. They are the ones who need relief.

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.