What happened last night in Israel was unprecedented. While investigators are still gathering details, Israeli authorities believe that a car-sized Iranian turboprop drone launched by Yemen’s Houthi militia group managed to enter Israeli airspace undetected, flew over the American consulate in Tel Aviv, and exploded upon impact with an apartment building, killing at least one Israeli and wounding nearly a dozen more. Israeli officials believe that the target of the attack was the U.S. mission and American diplomatic personnel.
The drone, according to a preliminary assessment, was launched from Yemen. It flew over 1,000 miles until it was over the Mediterranean Sea, which allowed it to evade detection by U.S. assets in the region or Israeli radar – a technological achievement that may change Israel’s security posture moving forward. One analyst who spoke with Business Insider speculated that the drone might have been a modified variant of the Iranian “Samad” family of drones, though its increased range and maneuverability make this drone unique.
This attack could be a sign of events to come.
The technical sophistication apparent in the ordnance the Houthis managed to detonate in the heart of Israel’s financial, economic, and technological capital came from Iran. But according to the Wall Street Journal, Russia may soon be getting in on the act.
The Ansar Allah terrorist sect may soon receive “advanced antiship missiles” from Moscow, intelligence relayed to the Journal suggests, augmenting the Houthis’ already robust capabilities. “Russian anti-ship weapons would represent a qualitative leap and add more teeth to the existing Houthi maritime threat,” the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies analyst Behnam Ben Taleblu told reporters. Some are cautioning that the signal is designed to compel Washington to cancel its plans to provide Kyiv with additional defensive and offensive weaponry, but the continued disruption of Western commerce in the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait would suit the Kremlin just fine.
“The Houthis are the first entity in the history of the world to use anti-ship ballistic missiles ever,” Navy vice admiral Brad Cooper told CBS’s 60 Minutes last month. After “ten years of being supplied by the Iranians very sophisticated, advanced weapons,” he added, the terrorist group is not just well equipped but very adept at the use of sophisticated munitions. And despite the Biden administration’s reluctant and belated decision to engage the Houthis in January (following months of unmolested attacks on merchant and Navy vessels in the region), the terrorist group is not only undeterred – it is expanding the scope of its campaign of regional aggression.
Jerusalem will not duplicate Biden’s lethargic approach to reining the Houthis in, according to a report via The Jerusalem Post:
Israeli officials told Ynet that “there will be a response to the shooting of the Iranian drone by the Houthis” and that they would not rule out the possibility of a retaliatory action on Yemeni soil, saying such action was “on the table.”
Had the Biden administration taken a more proactive and vigorous approach to neutralizing the Houthis’ capabilities, Israel would not be obliged to expand to Yemen the theater of operations in the war Hamas inaugurated on October 7. The prospects of a regional war grow larger by the day, not because Israel cannot “take the win,” as Biden reportedly told Benjamin Netanyahu following a full-scale direct Iranian attack on the Jewish state, but because hostile foreign actors are killing its citizens. Jerusalem is obliged to defend them and the sovereignty of Israel’s borders.
Biden’s hesitancy was fueled by his apprehension over the prospect of a “wider war” in the Middle East. But his hesitancy is what is going to give him the war he so cravenly sought to avoid.