Will a deadly drone attack that might have targeted a major American diplomatic facility at the heart of Tel Aviv finally impel Washington to exact a “very big price” on its perpetrators?

As President Trump accepted the Republican nomination at Milwaukee Thursday night, an explosive-laden Iranian-made Samad-3 drone hit a Tel Aviv apartment, killing a 50-year-old man and injuring eight others. The building at Ben Yehuda Street was one block away from the American embassy annex.

“In the early hours of Friday morning an Iranian explosive UAV likely fired from Yemen crossed into Israel and crashed into an apartment building in the center of the city of Tel Aviv, not far away from the American embassy,” the spokesman for the Israel Defense Force, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said. 

The IDF published a map of the hit, noting that the “impact site” was near a “diplomatic building.” Was it targeted? Expressing “shock” and offering condolences to the victim, the American ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, added, “We are thankful that our U.S. Embassy Branch Office personnel are all safe.”

The drone attack, Admiral Hagari said, was part of a nine-months multi-front assault on Israel that, he noted, also poses a “global threat.” The “U.S. Central Command and its allies have intercepted many of these Iranian backed attacks on international shipping routes in the Red Sea,” he said.  

For decades a top mission of America’s formidable military has been to secure the global freedom of navigation. Now it seems unable to defeat a sandal-shod army, the Houthis, which controls parts of Yemen, one of the world’s most impoverished countries. In one of his first acts as president, Mr. Biden removed the Houthis From America’s list of terrorist organizations. 

For nine months Israel has been fighting “a multifront war,” Admiral Hagari said. “Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the militias in Iraq and Syria, as well as the Houthis in Yemen — all the Iranian proxies — and Iran itself.”

Can Washington help end that assault — or at least secure the release of five living American hostages held in Gaza since October 7?

“To the entire world, I tell you this,” Mr. Trump said at Milwaukee Thursday night. “We want our hostages back, and they better be back before I assume office, or you will be paying a very big price.” He did not specify what kind of price, but the direct threat was clearer than President Biden’s oft-repeated, yet mostly ignored “don’t” warning against widening the war. 

By speaking of “our hostages” Mr. Trump made clear that America has a direct stake in the Mideast assault on Israel. Currently, in contrast, Washington increasingly balances out the support of Israel by condemning its treatment of Palestinians. 

The parents of one American hostage, Omer Neutra, led a chant of “bring them home” at the Republican convention. Yet, the Washington Post lamented on its X account Friday, the American parents of a man who is languishing in captivity ignored “Israel’s assault on Gaza that has killed over 38,000 Palestinians, according to local officials. Experts have warned of looming famine.”    

Israelis, including opposition leaders, are expressing alarm at the growing number of sanctions that the Biden administration is imposing on Israelis it considers extremists. Beyond harming a war against Hamas terrorists, these sanctions undermine trust in Israel’s judicial system.

If America no longer has confidence in its democratic ally, why would much more biased parties trust Israeli courts? Instead they launch a global lawfare against the Jewish state. 

On Friday a Hague-based United Nations organ, the International Court of Justice, pronounced Israel’s presence in the West Bank and Gaza “illegal” and said Jewish settlements there “should be withdrawn as soon as possible.” Reading out the ICJ’s lengthy advisory opinion, its president, Nawaf Salam, also said Israel is guilty of the crime of “apartheid.”

In his past capacity as Lebanese ambassador to the UN, Mr. Salam often condemned Israel in the harshest terms, raising doubts about the ICJ’s impartiality. Lebanon is dominated by Hezbollah, and its benefactor, the Islamic Republic of Iran. 

Iran has unleashed the armies it has meticulously built for decades with the aim of erasing Israel off the map. The ICJ advisory opinion on Friday completely ignored that Iran-inspired aggression. It noted, for one, that Israel left Gaza in 2005. Yet, it returned in October, which makes it an “occupier” of the Strip. 

Ignoring the unprovoked attack that necessitated Israel’s return to Gaza seems to undermine the ICJ’s credibility. To enhance America’s interests, Washington could now cease heeding such a ruse of “international law,” and, instead, start looking for ways to exact a “big price” from enemies of America and our allies.