Drone Attack on Tel Aviv Provokes Rapid Response

[Pelican Press 0]

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Drone ******* on Tel Aviv Provokes Rapid Response

TEL AVIV, *******—Just past 3 a.m. on Friday morning, the buzz of an engine followed by a massive ********** woke Israelis across the country’s second largest city of Tel Aviv. Near the site of the blast—caused by the detonation of an explosive drone—shrapnel punctured nearby structures and the shockwave shattered windows, including those in some units of my apartment building 250 feet away.

Ten people were treated for injuries and one man, 50-year-old Yevgeny Perder, ***** in his home when the Iranian-made drone struck near a residential building. The air raid sirens, which typically alert Israelis to incoming attacks, ******* to sound.

By sunrise, the Houthis—Iranian-backed rebels in charge of parts of Yemen—had

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for the lethal strike, which hit a block from the U.S. Embassy branch office in Tel Aviv. The ******* group has been behind a series of disruptive

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in international waterways since November, ostensibly in response to *******’s war against ****** in Gaza, and continues to threaten global shipping despite multiple U.S. air campaigns against Houthi sites. The Yemeni militants have also targeted ******** cities repeatedly, though Friday marked its first deadly breach of the country’s sophisticated air defenses.

In response, Jerusalem launched its first-ever strikes against the militants in Yemen on Saturday, sending warplanes to hit Houthi facilities some 1,120 miles from ******** territory. The campaign targeted the Red Sea port of Al Hudaydah, which the ******* Defense Forces (IDF) says is used by Iran to transfer weapons to the group. At least six people reportedly ***** as a result of the *******, local officials

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.

“The ***** currently burning in Hudaydah is seen across the Middle East and the significance is clear. The Houthis attacked us over 200 times. The first time that they harmed an ******** citizen, we struck them. And we will do this in any place where it may be required,” ******** Defense Minister Yoav Gallant

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. “The blood of ******** citizens has a price. This has been made clear in Lebanon, in Gaza, in Yemen, and in other places—if they dare to ******* us, the result will be identical.”

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A residential building in central Tel Aviv shows blown-out windows and other damage from the blast caused by a Houthi drone ******* on July 19, 2024. (Photo by Charlotte Lawson/The Dispatch)

A residential building damaged by the blast in central Tel Aviv.

Yet the Houthis’ efforts to hit Israelis at home have persisted, after its spokesman declared “

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” with ******* on Sunday. That same day, the IDF said it had

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a ballistic missile shot from Yemen toward *******’s southernmost city of Eilat. The group also

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attacks on ships traversing the Red Sea over the weekend and, thanks to Iran, it is well-equipped to continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

The rebels now boast a formidable arsenal of long-range ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones, including Iranian-made unmanned aerial systems (UAS) that have been used by Russia to devastate Ukrainian cities and by Iranian proxies in Syria and Iraq to ******* U.S. forces. In January, one such drone successfully struck Tower 22 in Jordan,

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in the first deadly aerial ******** on U.S. ground troops since the Korean War.

According to an

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, the Tel Aviv ******* was also likely carried out using an Iranian-made drone—a modified Samad-3 model—which used a GPS system to travel over the Red Sea to Eritrea before flying over Sudan, Egypt, and the Mediterranean Sea to ******* Tel Aviv from the west. The military said it was tracking a drone coming from an Iranian-backed group in Iraq around the time of the *******, pointing to likely collaboration between the proxies. Despite detecting and tracking the Houthi projectile for at least six minutes, air traffic controllers didn’t classify it as a threat, allowing the UAS to break through due to what the IDF said was human error.

The ******** air force has since doubled the number of operators assigned to monitoring radar systems and increased its aerial patrols, but the breach demonstrated the complex challenge posed by Iranian ******* drones, particularly when used in concert with other projectiles or launched simultaneously by multiple militants. The systems fly slow and low, and often along indirect routes, making their detection and interception more difficult than other aerial weapons like rockets. In northern *******, Hezbollah has used the unmanned systems to target ******** troops stationed along the border with Lebanon with deadly effect.

“You have to remember that Israelis are facing a multifront war. They’re concentrated on what’s happening in Gaza, on what’s happening in Lebanon. The West Bank is inflamed and of course, we have threats from Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. So they’re stretched thin,” Joe Truzman, an analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told The Dispatch. He called the fact that Friday marked the Yemeni group’s first deadly ******* after months of thwarted attempts “a real testament to *******’s aerial defense system and its air force.”

Yet the Houthis are unlikely to be easily deterred. Like ******, the ********** army is willing to bring down an asymmetrical war on its people if it means furthering its ideological goals. The Shi’ite group grew its influence in Yemen throughout the 2010s before seizing control of swaths of territory, including the country’s capital, Sa’ana, in 2014. Like Iran, which saw in the group an opportunity to expand its own regional influence, the Houthis espouses a deeply anti-West, anti-******* worldview. Their flag bears the Arabic slogan: “**** is great, ****** to America, ****** to *******, a curse upon the Jews, victory to Islam.”

The fighters’ war on global shipping has persisted despite U.S. air campaigns and is unlikely to slow with *******’s latest ******* on Hudaydah.

“Even though it was a ***** against the Houthis, it’s absolutely not going to deter them. I wouldn’t be surprised if it actually encourages them to continue this campaign of ******* at commercial shipping vessels,” Truzman said. “And they will absolutely try to hit Tel Aviv again.”

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#Drone #******* #Tel #Aviv #Provokes #Rapid #Response

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