Although the Lebanon-based terrorist organization is currently focused on defending Bashar al-Assad’s control of Syria and Lebanon, recent statements by its leaders are reminders that it has not lost sight of its core mission of destroying Israel. Hizballah has staged a number of small-scale cross-border attacks, and may also be ramping up its old strategy of attacking Jewish and Israeli targets outside the Middle East. Matthew Levitt writes:

This much is clear: Hizballah remains an immediate threat to Israel, even while it is bogged down in Syria. That much [its leader Hassan] Nasrallah wants us all to know. To be sure, roadside border bombings will continue from time to time, and Hizballah may even claim responsibility for some of these. But because of its desire to avoid opening a second front with Israel at the present time, the Hizballah threat to Israel today is in some ways more acute oceans away—in places as far afield as Thailand and Peru—than it is along its northern borders.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”