In January, Moroccan officials arrested a Lebanese man, affiliated with Hizballah, carrying what appeared to be stolen identification papers. Emanuele Ottolenghi explains why the incident is cause for concern:

What was a Hizballah operative with forged documents doing in Morocco? . . . To answer this question, look no further than a decade of simmering tensions between the North African kingdom and Iran, which controls Hizballah as a proxy. Twice in a decade, Morocco broke relations with Iran—the first time, in 2009, officially over an Iranian clerical official’s statement that Bahrain, the tiny Gulf kingdom, really belonged to Iran.

In 2018, barely a year after Tehran had reopened its embassy, Morocco’s foreign minister, Nasser Bourita, publicly accused Iran of dispatching senior Hizballah operatives and supplying weapons and training to the Polisario Front, a group Morocco is fighting over sovereignty in the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara. Algeria, Morocco’s neighbor, backs Polisario.

Beyond these spats, Morocco has accused Iran of efforts to spread its revolutionary brand of Shiism among Morocco’s predominantly Sunni population, something Iran has certainly done zealously across Western Africa and among Moroccan immigrants in northern Europe. There is little evidence these attempts have won significant backing in Morocco, but not for want of trying.

The arrival of a Hizballah operative in January, less than a month after Jerusalem and Rabat normalized relations, may not be a coincidence, especially given that, barely two months earlier, Polisario leaders ended a three-decade-long truce with Morocco, potentially reigniting a conflict that has known little respite since 1975 and that could ignite an already unstable region. What better way to turn the screw against a more powerful adversary than relying on asymmetrical warfare like terror attacks through a proxy?

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.