On Saturday, Ebraham Raisi was announced the victor in the Islamic Republic’s presidential election—winning 62 percent of the vote, according to the regime’s official numbers. While subordinate to the unelected supreme leader, the Iranian president is formally the chief executive, and the face the country presents to the world. Raisi rose to prominence in the 1980s as Iran’s prosecutor general, in which capacity he played a key role in the execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988. Tzvi Kahn writes:

Raisi . . . facilitated the 1988 slaughter by serving on a four-member panel known as a Death Commission, which decided who would live and who would die. The commission would conduct interviews of prisoners—often just a few minutes long—aimed at determining their loyalty to the Islamic Republic. . . . The executions . . . typically took place the same day as the interrogations. The commissions allowed neither lawyers nor appeals. Burials occurred in unmarked mass graves. The regime waited months before notifying the relatives of the victims, refused to tell them the locations of the bodies, and told them not to mourn in public.

During [2009’s failed] Green Revolution, Raisi served as deputy chief justice, making him complicit in the prosecution—and, in some cases, the death sentences—of peaceful protesters who objected to Iran’s fraudulent election.

In 2019, the Trump administration sanctioned Raisi, citing his conduct in the 1988 massacre and the 2009 protests. Now, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has indicated that the Biden administration may lift some non-nuclear sanctions on Iran in order to persuade Tehran to reenter the 2015 nuclear deal. The regime, for its part, has pressed America’s negotiators to lift all nuclear and non-nuclear sanctions, which would include a removal of Raisi from the blacklist. The Biden administration should resist such pressure.

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.