Even as Washington continues to pursue an agreement with Tehran in which it will offer the ayatollahs sanctions relief in exchange for their putting parts of their nuclear program on pause, Iran-backed Houthi guerrillas in Yemen launched rockets at a Saudi oil-production facility—one of several similar attacks in recent weeks. Mohammed Alyahya comments:

When President Barack Obama negotiated the nuclear deal with Iran [in 2015], we Saudis understood him to be seeking the breakup of a 70-year marriage. . . . Sold disingenuously to the American public as an arms-control agreement, the deal is an assault on the regional order that the United States established in the aftermath of World War II. Explicitly hostile to Saudi Arabia—to say nothing of America’s other greatest ally in the region, Israel—the deal replaces the former American-led regional security structure with a concert system in which Iran, backed by Russia and China, becomes America’s new subcontractor while America’s former allies—the Gulf States and Israel—are demoted to second-tier status.

Instead of friendship, America seems more inclined to use its old friends as human shields for Iran. Earlier this month, when Iran conducted a ballistic-missile strike near the U.S. consulate in Erbil, Iraq, it falsely claimed to be targeting an Israeli facility. A senior Biden official then confirmed the Iranian claim. While other officials later denied it, the damage was done. An American official had assisted Iran in getting the most out of its propaganda by action.

In Riyadh, it is not forgotten that the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014 was followed swiftly by the rise of a Russian-Iranian alliance in Syria that leveled most of the major cities of that country and awarded Moscow with a military base on the eastern Mediterranean—cementing Russia’s first foothold in the Middle East since the collapse of the Soviet Union. When the Saudis protested Obama’s passivity, he told them they must “learn to share the region with Iran.”

Why should America’s regional allies help Washington contain Russia in Europe when Washington is strengthening Russia and Iran in the Middle East?

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.