News Digest — 8/25/25
Sa’ar To Discuss Gaza, Security With US Leaders In First Washington Visit
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar departed for Washington on Sunday night (24th) for a series of diplomatic meetings, the Foreign Ministry announced.
Sa’ar is slated to meet US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday (27th), marking their second meeting this year. The two previously conferred in February during Rubio’s visit to Jerusalem.
The visit comes as Israel weighs a possible IDF ground operation to retake Gaza City from Hamas, nearly two years into the ongoing war against the terror group.
While in Washington, Sa’ar is also scheduled to meet with US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. The two last met in Jerusalem in May, shortly after the murder of two Israeli embassy staffers outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington.
This marks Sa’ar’s first official visit to Washington since assuming the role of foreign minister in November.
In addition to meetings with US officials, Sa’ar will hold talks with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, meet with AIPAC leadership, and host a reception honoring American Jewish leaders and Christian supporters of Israel.
Netanyahu: Houthis Are Learning The Hard Way The Heavy Price Of Attacking Israel
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz arrived Sunday (24th) at the Command Center of the Israeli Air Force in Tel Aviv, in order to observe the Air Force attacks on targets of the Houthi regime in Yemen.
Arriving at the base along with Netanyahu and Katz were IDF Chief of Staff LTG Eyal Zamir and Air Force Commander MG Tomer Bar.
During the visit, Netanyahu said, “Today the Air Force has once again attacked strategic targets in Yemen, the Presidential Palace in the heart of Sana’a, the city’s power station and the fuel tanks which supply it.”
“The Houthi terrorist regime is learning, the hard way, that it will pay, and is already paying, a very heavy price for its acts of aggression against the State of Israel.”
Praising the soldiers themselves, Netanyahu said, “I wish to congratulate the IDF Chief of Staff, the Air Force Commander and our pilots on an impeccable mission. All our planes have returned to our territory.”
“Whoever attacks us – we attack them. Whoever is planning to attack us – we will attack them. I think that the entire region is getting to know the strength and the determination of the State of Israel.”
An investigation by the Israel Air Force on Sunday (24th) found that the ballistic missile launched by Yemen’s Houthis on Friday night (22nd) contained cluster munitions, the first time during the war that they used this category of weapon.
On one hand, such a weapon tends to have a less harmful impact if it achieves direct hits as opposed to a classic ballistic missile.
But on the other hand, this kind of missile can have a higher chance of causing at least some harm because it splits into many parts, which can have many impact sites.
On Friday (22nd), the IDF said that the Houthi missile fired from Yemen that triggered sirens across central Israel likely fragmented in mid-air, but it was unclear if this was planned by the Houthis or a defect in the missile.
Magen David Adom said that there were reports of shrapnel impacting a house, in the central Israeli moshav of Ginaton. The fragment landed in the house’s backyard.
As a result of the missile launch, loud booms were heard around Tel Aviv and Ramat Gan. The IDF said it made several attempts to intercept the missile.
During the 12-day war between Israel and Iran, Iran occasionally used cluster bomb warheads with smaller explosions attached in its attacks on Israel.
According to an initial investigation in June, somewhere around seven kilometers above the ground, when Iran used cluster munitions, the missile would split into several smaller bombs, each of which had an impact of an eight-kilometer-radius.
Each one of the smaller bombs carried around two kilograms of explosives. The cluster bombs were used in an Iranian attack on Azur.
IDF Soldiers Raid Weapons Depot In Southern Syria, Arrest Terror Suspects
IDF troops from the 474th Brigade in the 210th Division arrested and interrogated terror suspects and raided weapons depots in southern Syria, the military said Sunday (24th).
Soldiers seized RPG missiles, IEDs, Kalshnikov type rifles, and large amounts of ammunition.
The IDF added that all the weapons were confiscated by soldiers.
Following intelligence gathered in recent weeks, soldiers, along with field investigators from Unit 504, apprehended and questioned several suspects in the area, the military said.
The IDF has conducted several raids in southern Syria in recent months since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
More than 300 weapons were located and confiscated by Israeli troops.
Those in the area suspected of being involved in the smuggling and trade of weapons from Syria to its neighboring country, Lebanon, were detained and questioned by the IDF.
Hezbollah’s Infiltration: Israel Cannot Trust Lebanon’s Army – Peled Arbeli
Lebanese Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah has infiltrated the Lebanese Army’s intelligence Directorate, Tal Beeri, Head of the Research Department at the Alma Center for the Study of Security Challenges in the North, said in an analysis published Sunday (24th), explaining that the IDF cannot treat the Lebanese Army as an independent entity.
Beeri noted that over the years, Hezbollah had “placed a significant number of Shiite officers” into prominent leadership positions, effectively taking over control of Lebanon’s military intelligence.
He continued, “For years, Hezbollah has operated numerous Shiite officers within it for its own benefit and has concentrated efforts to consolidate its influence because of the Intelligence Directorate’s central role in the Lebanese Army and its significant impact on the army’s operational activity. Continued cooperation with Hezbollah from within the army compels Israel to take defensive measures.”
“The army commander, with the backing of the President and the Lebanese government, must immediately dismiss and discharge any officer or soldier, in any unit of the Lebanese Army, who is connected to and cooperates with Hezbollah. Reassignment to another position is not sufficient.”
On August 22, the IDF revealed that Suheil Gharb, the head of military intelligence in southern Lebanon, had been involved in obstructing the investigation into the death of an Irish UNIFIL officer.
“Gharb assisted Hezbollah in concealing details of the incident and in tampering with evidence. In addition, Gharb helped in attempts to prevent the prosecution of the operatives. Gharb, a Shiite, is well-known as a collaborator with Hezbollah and maintains close contact with Waliq Safa, head of coordination and liaison in Hezbollah.”
It was later reported that on January 27, 2025, Gharb transferred information from the joint operations room of the Ceasefire Monitoring Committee to Hezbollah.
“Among other things, he passed on prior information about the intentions of the Lebanese Army to conduct raids and patrols that could harm Hezbollah’s activities and assets. Gharb was appointed by President Joseph Aoun (while serving as army commander) as the army’s representative on the monitoring committee,” Beeri added.
Due to Hezbollah’s significant influence within the Lebanese Army, Beeri agreed that most of the current , ongoing “disarmament activity” taking place south of the Litani River is happening in coordination with the terror group. “This coordination is reflected in the providing of prior information, coordinating arrival to certain areas, and with high probability even returning “confiscated” weapons to Hezbollah (the revolving door method).”
It was also recently revealed that Brigadier General Maher Raad, head of the military intelligence office in Shiyyah (who was later transferred to another position within the intelligence directorate), had overseen smuggling operations in the country alongside senior Hezbollah figures, notably Safa.
Additionally, another Shiite officer from the military intelligence directorate, Yahya Husseini, who served in southern Lebanon and worked for Hezbollah, was exposed.
Husseini was a lieutenant colonel and served as an intelligence officer in the Hasbaya sector in southern Lebanon. Husseini, who was promoted in 2017, was linked to the August 2010 Lebanese Army shooting incident against the IDF in the Al-Adisa area, during which IDF soldiers were killed and injured,” Beeri concluded.
According to various reports, Husseini (at Hezbollah’s guidance) persuaded Lebanese soldiers to open fire. At the end of 2017, the Lebanese Ambassador to the UN, Nawaf Salam (now Lebanon’s prime minister), denied that Husseini cooperated with Hezbollah.
The Coming Battle Of Gaza City – Maj. (ret.) John Spencer
Gaza City is a sprawling metropolis. Streets are lined with tightly packed mid-and high-rise apartment blocks, some rising 10 to 15 stories. These areas create urban canyons that restrict visibility, funnel movement, and expose troops to fire from above.
Between the larger roads, narrow alleyways wind through crowded residential quarters where vehicles cannot pass and soldiers will be forced to move on foot, often without line of sight to supporting units. Inside these neighborhoods, nearly every structure can be fortified, every doorway booby-trapped, and every basement connected to Hamas’ tunnel grid.
Hamas had two decades to prepare, embedding command posts and weapons caches beneath mosques, hospitals, schools, and apartment complexes. Roads, walls, stairwells, and even ceilings may be wired to explode.
Gaza City is believed to contain sites where hostages could be held underground. Commanders expect Hamas to attempt to move to conceal captives in the vast tunnel system or inside fortified civilian structures, both to shield its fighters and to retain bargaining leverage. The advance into Gaza City may bring breakthroughs in intelligence through interrogations of prisoners, the seizure of documents and electronic devices, and the exploitation of tunnel networks to yield new information on where remaining hostages are hidden.
The IDF has adapted in real time, learning lessons in combined-arms maneuver, coordination, urban clearing operations, and civilian harm mitigation. Now it will enter Gaza City with more experience, better integration of technology, and hardened information.
The writer is chief of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point..
Israel Rejects Foreign Criticism Of Construction Plan Near Jerusalem
Israel utterly rejects the statement of foreign governments regarding the approval of a construction plan near Jerusalem, its eternal capital, and rejects the attempt to impose foreign dictates upon it. The historic right of Jews to live anywhere in the Land of Israel – the birthplace of the Jewish people – is indisputable.
There is no other nation in the world that has a stronger, longer-standing, and better documented connection to its land than the Jewish people has to the Land of Israel, and this connection and right do not require the affirmation of foreign governments.
Israel acts in accordance with international law. The establishment of a Jewish state in the Jewish people’s ancient homeland, including the settlement by Jews on the land, was clearly recognized in the British Mandate, which was adopted by the League of Nations in 1922. Under the Mandate, the right of the Jewish people to build their national home extended to the entire territory of “Mandatory Palestine.” These rights were preserved under Article 80 of the UN Charter.
There is no restriction for Arabs to reside in any part of the State of Israel, and a call to deny Jews – and Jews alone – the right to reside in certain areas of the State of Israel has a name: racism. The Jewish people are the indigenous people of the Land of Israel.
At no point in history has there ever been a Palestinian state, and any attempt to argue otherwise has no legal, factual, or historical basis. The presumption of foreign governments to speak in the name of what is best for Israelis is an unacceptable pretension. (Israel MInistry of Foreign Affairs)
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New Poll Finds 89% Of Iranians Want Democracy Over Crumbling Islamic Republic
It’s been nearly half a century since the revolution that turned Iran into an Islamic theocracy, and new polling shows Iranians have had enough.
A comprehensive survey conducted by the Netherlands-based Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran (GAMAAN) found 29% of those surveyed wanted the Islamic Republic to remain in power.
Even more telling, support for both the principles of the 1979 Revolution and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei plummeted to just 11%, down from 18% in 2022.
Breaking down the opposition by demographics reveals predictable patterns. Opposition runs strongest among young, educated, and urban populations.
More than 74% of university graduates rejected the Islamic Republic compared to 66% among those without higher education.
Rural areas showed notably higher support for the current system at 28%–nearly double what pollsters found in cities.
When asked about preferred forms of government, 89% of Iranians expressed support for democracy. However, 43% also said they’d be open to rule under a strong leader, a sentiment more common among rural and less educated citizens.
Both religious rule and military government faced decisive rejection, with two-thirds opposing clerical control and more than 70% rejecting military leadership.
“The demand for a democratic government is widespread among Iranians, though at the same time, a notable portion of society shows an inclination toward individual authoritarianism,” GAMAAN notes.
No political or civil figure currently enjoys majority support in society. Each political cluster represents only a portion (between 5% to 35%) of the population, and no single opposition force is capable of representing the full diversity presented within the country.”
A secular republic attracted 26% support, while 21% backed restoring the monarchy. Another 22% said they lacked enough information to decide, and 11% indicated the specific form of replacement government didn’t matter as long as change occurred.
As for who should lead a new government, exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi led with 31%, followed by former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at 9% and jailed Nobel Laureate Narges Mohammadi at 5%.
