The U.S. is intensifying drone strikes against Al Qaeda elements in Yemen. Two Thursday drone strikes – the sixth and seventh in the last two weeks – killed at least nine suspected terrorists.

The heightened activity comes as the West scrambles to deal with a suspected Al Qaeda plot. Dozens of embassies were closed after intelligence officials intercepted a conference call between Al Qaeda’s leader Aymin al-Zawahiri and leaders of Al Qaeda affiliates from around the region.

Yemen subsequently announced that it had foiled a major terror attack. It is unclear if this disrupted attack was related to the intercepted call, and at least some analysts expressed more general skepticism about the Yemeni claim.

The Washington Institute’s Daniel Green has recommended that the U.S. shift its strategy toward fighting Al Qaeda in Yemen. Sana, says Green, must be empowered to expand into areas where Al Qaeda is powerful:

Given AQAP’s persistence in Yemen, U.S. policymakers need to rethink their strategy against the group. This means facilitating the long-term expansion of Yemeni security forces and government services to areas where al-Qaeda’s influence is most developed in order to complement and eventually replace the current drone-centered strategy. In particular, Washington should help Sana launch a decentralized pacification campaign that mirrors AQAP’s structure and soft-power strategy while applying counterinsurgency best practices, thereby leveraging the local population against the group.

Efforts at institution building in Yemen, however, have historically been undermined by Iran:

Photographs recently released by the Yemeni government suggest that an interdiction last month by the United States Navy and Yemen’s security forces seized a class of shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles not publicly known to have been out of state control… Such missiles, in the hands of militants, would pose new threats to military and commercial aviation and would mark an escalation in illegal arms trafficking in the Arabian Peninsula. Yemen has asserted that the missiles were bound for rebels in the country’s northwestern frontier, and both the United States and Yemen have suggested that the shipment may have come from Iran.

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