Houthi drone attack and Iranian nuclear weapons threaten Israel’s strategic future

As Israel moves ever closer to victory over Hamas, it was reminded Friday that Iran has more proxies ready to strike: the next battle in the Islamic Republic’s broader war against the Jewish state has only just begun.

The good news: Israeli forces appear to have eliminated a senior Hamas leader last week, and the group is said to be increasingly open to some kind of ceasefire and hostage release without Israel having to cease its operations in the Gaza Strip.

Bad news: On Friday, a successful drone attack took place in Tel Aviv, which the Yemeni Houthi militia claimed responsibility for. In addition, dozens more rockets were fired by the Lebanese Hezbollah. At the same time, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Iran would produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon in just one to two weeks.

The drone, an Iranian-made long-range weapon, killed at least one person and injured several others.

Early indications suggest that the attack slipped through Israel’s vast surveillance systems due to human error. Nevertheless, it is a major blow to the already ailing Israeli Defense Ministry – and a sure signal from Tehran that the regime is fully focused on maintaining attacks on the Jewish state.

Meanwhile, continued Hezbollah attacks make war in the north seem inevitable.

But Hezbollah is better armed and more sophisticated than Hamas; pushing it back from the border is a far more difficult undertaking than Israel’s Gaza offensive.

This is especially true given the fact that the Israeli population is already shaken and tired of war.

And while President Biden, who spent most of his first term empowering Iran and most of the Gaza war hampering Israel, certainly bears a significant share of the blame, Israelis could well blame Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well.

But under Bibi or his successor, the key question is: How can Israel effectively deter Iran, especially if it joins the nuclear club, since the American side has no will to do so?

It is not enough to simply wait for Donald Trump to win in November and then hope that he will pursue a policy of containment and pressure against the Islamic Republic: Tehran can inflict enormous damage on its own or through its henchmen by the day of the inauguration.

In other words, Biden’s continued weakness poses the risk of a regional conflagration.

Consider this another reason why he should (at least) drop out of the re-election race and focus on his job without domestic political calculations.