The Houthis probed Israeli defenses with a ballistic missile, and Iran is likely taking notes

“I believe Iran will view the attack as having symbolic value, but still reflecting the limited capabilities of Iranian-produced ballistic missiles in actually threatening Israel,” Sim Tack, a military and geopolitical analyst, told Business Insider.

The Israeli military confirmed Tuesday that it had launched several interceptor missiles at the Houthi projectile on Sunday morning. These include Arrow 2, part of the upper tier of Israel’s multilayered air defenses.

“It has become known now that at least one Arrow interceptor managed to hit but only damaged the incoming missile, but this was still sufficient to prevent the missile from reaching its target,” Tack said. “On the part of Israel, the attack will likely spur additional thought on procedures to address these recurring threats and the possibility of large ballistic missiles falling on Israeli soil in case interceptions are not entirely successful.”

The Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 both made their first-ever combat intercepts against Houthis missiles on October 31 and November 9, 2023, respectively. The Arrow 3 fires an intercept missile that strikes an incoming ballistic missile outside the Earth’s atmosphere, and boasts superior range and speed over its Arrow 2 predecessor. It is also a hit-to-kill missile, while the Arrow 2 destroys incoming targets by exploding nearby.

The Israeli military, which said it would probe why the Arrow failed to destroy the incoming threat on Sunday, also disputed the Houthis dubious claim that the missile is hypersonic – the group even painted the word “hypersonic” in English on it.

Hypersonic missiles are a class of developing weapons that can maneuver at speeds faster than Mach 5 to evade intercept missiles; there’s no evidence the Houthi-fired missile is in the class beyond its paint job.

The Houthis dubbed the missile Palestine 2, which analysts believe might be a “hybrid” of the short-range Iranian Fateh-110 and Kheibar Shekan medium-range ballistic missiles. The group has previously paraded mockups of both the Fateh-110 and Kheibar Shaken.

The first Palestine missile, which closely resembles the one used in Sunday’s attack, was unveiled in June, with the Houthis claiming it was used for an attack against the southern Israeli port city of Eilat. The Palestine missiles are solid-propellent, making them more advanced than the liquid-propellent ballistic missiles hitherto used by the group.

“I assume that the Houthis are always hopeful that their missiles may break through the Israeli air and missile defenses, but this missile was not fundamentally different from previous types that were launched at Israel,” Tack said. “So at best it would appear this was a repeat attempt, and of course a source for propaganda statements regardless of the outcome of such attacks.”

Sunday’s missile went on a straight trajectory, traveling approximately 1,200 miles from Yemen and reaching Israeli airspace in under 12 minutes. In July, the Houthis managed to hit Tel Aviv with an extended-range Samad drone for the first time, killing one. The drone flew on a less direct and predictable 16-hour route of 1,600 miles, approaching Israel from the west and catching its air defenses off guard.

“At least at the moment, it seems more probable that the isolated nature of the attack — one missile — may not have been seen as a threat by Israel’s air defense network to spur a sustained response,” Ryan Bohl, a senior Middle East and North Africa analyst at the risk intelligence company RANE, told BI.

“Israel does claim to have intercepted the missile, so I don’t think anyone can conclude that it slipped by on its own accord,” Bohl said. “Rather, its geographic range from Yemen is probably the most notable part, as it indicates that Yemen is a viable pathway for such long-range attacks by Iran and its allies and proxies.”

Most Houthi missiles and drones are based on Iranian designs. Iran attacked Israel directly for the first time in April 2024, launching an enormous ballistic missile and drone barrage in retaliation for Israel’s assassination of Iranian officers in Syria. Iran telegraphed that unprecedented attack in advance, and Israel, with help from its allies, intercepted the vast majority of the incoming munitions successfully. The few Iranian Emad missiles that did reach their target, a large airbase in southern Israel, also proved significantly less accurate than previously estimated.

“When it comes to large-scale drone and missile attacks, Iran has to rely on large volumes to try and overwhelm Israeli air and missile defenses,” Tack said.

“If Tehran could achieve strategic surprise in such an overwhelming attack, it is possible that even more missiles would make it through the Israeli defenses, but the recent attacks hardly impact that reasoning or knowledge,” Tack added.

Unless the Houthis are capable of firing more advanced missiles simultaneously, it’s doubtful they can achieve anything more than an “occasional lucky hit” against their distant enemy, Tack said.

“For the Houthis, the attack — successful or not — is a political achievement that serves their domestic goals. It will drive recruitment and allow them to deploy this as propaganda,” Bohl said. “They certainly have learned that Israel’s air defenses are robust, but they probably didn’t glean much more from the incident than they already knew from the April 2024 incident with Iran.”

For Israel, the RANE analyst pointed out that using other, less expensive systems than the Arrow 3 makes sense for attacks with singular or small numbers of missiles. By doing so, Israel can preserve the Arrow 3 for combating larger, more challenging, and technologically sophisticated attacks.

In addition to Arrow and the short-range Iron Dome, Israel operates the David’s Sling system, which covers the mid-tier of its air defense. It decided to begin retiring its older, American-made Patriot PAC-2 systems earlier this year.

Given their geographical distance from Israel, the Houthis are unlikely to become a priority over other Iran-backed militias in the current conflict, especially Hezbollah in Lebanon, which has a vast arsenal of surface-to-surface missiles.

“The Houthis are growing as a threat against Israel, and if there is a sustained supply of such missiles from Iran, it could rival Hezbollah in terms of threat with major attacks,” Bohl said.

“But that requires a sustained build-up that I think is still far-off,” Bohl added. “For now, Iran, followed by Hezbollah, are the most direct threats to Israel via rockets and missiles.”

Steven Horrell, a senior fellow with the Transatlantic Defense and Security Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis, believes Sunday’s attack was “very illustrative of the overall positions” in both Iran and Israel.

“For Iran, the Houthi proxies and others remain a cost-effective and consequence-free way to disrupt the international rules-based order and to hit at Israel,” Horrell told BI.

“For Israel, there is a high level of confidence in the multi-layer missile defense — but this is a reminder that it is not perfect; the risk is never brought down to zero,” Horrell said.

While the US Navy has intercepted numerous Houthi drones and missiles in the Red Sea, the CEPA fellow argued these measures equate to “shooting down arrows and not taking out the archer.”