TEHRAN- Israel has been making desperate attempts to deter Yemen’s Ansarullah movement from firing missiles and drones at its cities and towns.  

Over the past weeks, missiles and drones from Yemen have struck Israel nearly every day, sending millions of Israelis scrambling for shelter. 

Early Friday morning, the Yemeni army launched a drone and missile that set off air raid sirens in broad swaths of Israel. The attacks caused multiple injuries. 

Shortly after Israel launched war on Gaza in October 2023, the Yemeni army began to target strategic and military sites in Israel in a show of solidarity with Palestinians in the enclave. Most Yemeni projectiles have penetrated Israel’s sophisticated aerial defense system.

Late last month, an American missile defense system battery were used in the interception of a ballistic missile launched at Israel from Yemen.

But the THAAD, or Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System, has failed to protect Israel from Yemeni attacks. 

An Ansarullah official said Friday’s missile launch highlights yet more failure by the US military’s THAAD. 

“Every new day that passes in the life of this aggression on Gaza means more development of Yemeni weapons and another failure for the Zionists and Americans,” Nasruddin Amer, a senior member of the Ansarullah media authority, said in a post on X.

Israel must realize that no system can reliably protect it from missiles traveling at hypersonic speeds, and must therefore stop the war on Gaza, Amer said, Al Jazeera reported.

In response to the Yemeni attacks, Israel has repeatedly bombarded ports, oil infrastructure and the airport in the country. Israeli leaders have also threatened to kill Ansarullah officials. But Israel has remained in the crosshairs of the Yemeni fire. 

The United States and partner forces have also launched multiple rounds of coordinated airstrikes against Yemen. 

The Yemeni army began to target Israeli-linked vessels in the Red Sea in November last year. The attacks later expanded to US and UK warships after they started to hit Yemen in support of Israel. 

Neither the US nor Israel has been able to incapacitate Yemen. 

 A former Israeli defense official and senior research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, an Israeli think tank, has elucidated the reasons behind Israel's inability to prevent Ansarullah attacks. 

“Israel has many years of familiarity with those enemies (Hamas and Hezbollah). There is intelligence and there is the important element of a ground maneuver, and in Yemen we can’t do that. The scale here is different,” said Eyal Pinko said, the Washington Post reported. 

Israel is located 2,000 kilometers from Yemen, which makes it almost impossible to stage a ground invasion into the country.  With regards to the long distance, Israel has to orchestrate complex air missions to fly to Yemen, which are costly and limited in what they can achieve.

The Yemeni army’s weapons and infrastructure are less known to Israel, making the regime’s counterstrikes somewhat less effective.