"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s defense focused Sunday on a wiretap of his confidant Natan Eshel that former attorney-general Avichai Mandelblit said he had ordered stopped, pressing its argument that investigators pursued Netanyahu beyond the limits of the permission they received.
Testifying for a sixth day at the Jerusalem District Court, Mandelblit said investigators should have sought his approval before tapping someone involved in Netanyahu’s personal and political affairs. Police had obtained a court warrant, but Mandelblit said the operation had not been brought to him beforehand.
Defense lawyer Amit Hadad argued that Netanyahu was the real target of the surveillance. Prosecutor Keren Tzviran countered that the warrant concerned suspicions against Eshel himself, and that references to Netanyahu did not make every suspected offense listed in it an allegation against the prime minister.
The exchanges continued Hadad’s effort to establish where Mandelblit’s permission began and ended, and whether investigators gathered evidence outside those boundaries. Under Basic Law: The Government, opening a criminal investigation into a sitting prime minister requires the attorney-general’s consent.
Mandelblit, who authorized the investigations and later approved the indictment, was called to testify by the defense. His account has distinguished between approving subjects for investigation and supervising individual police actions: he said he expected major steps to come before him, but did not require investigators to seek permission for everything they did. The Eshel wiretap, he maintained, was precisely the kind of sensitive operation that required his attention. “It angered me very much,” Mandelblit said of learning about it. He said he had expected the proposal to be presented in advance and had instructed investigators to stop the surveillance once it came to his attention.
He explained that listening to someone handling political and diplomatic matters for Netanyahu risked capturing sensitive conversations. He did not recall specific political material emerging from the intercepted calls.
Hadad sought to show that the connection to Netanyahu was central to the operation. Citing the warrant, he pointed to its description of Eshel’s contact with the principal suspect, identified as a senior elected official, and argued that Eshel provided investigators with a way to listen to Netanyahu.
Tzviran disputed that reading. She said Eshel was himself a suspect and that, for example, the suspicion of obstruction concerned him rather than Netanyahu.
The questioning also exposed a broader disagreement over how precisely Mandelblit’s authorizations defined the investigation. Hadad asked whether he had approved inquiries into particular offenses. Mandelblit replied that he authorized subjects for investigation, distinguishing that decision from the specific offenses investigators identify when warning someone before questioning them as a suspect.
Investigations into alleged gifts may have gone beyond A-G orders
Later, Hadad returned to the early development of Case 1000, which concerns expensive gifts Netanyahu allegedly received from wealthy businessmen. Netanyahu is charged with fraud and breach of trust in that case and denies wrongdoing.
Hadad questioned whether permission to examine an apartment associated with businessman James Packer extended to investigating gifts from Arnon Milchan. He suggested investigators had gathered evidence beyond what Mandelblit allowed. Mandelblit repeatedly said he did not remember the detailed instructions Hadad described and did not recall investigators acting against such a restriction.
That exchange followed questioning last week about how the gifts inquiry developed. Mandelblit maintained then that testimony from Milchan’s assistant, Hadas Klein, describing a regular supply of gifts had changed his assessment of the evidence and justified moving to a full criminal investigation.
Hadad’s questioning has sought to reconstruct what investigators had already done before that point, testing the timing and scope of Mandelblit’s consent against their accounts and the records of his instructions."
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-912786
"
Two Iranian officials, one of them a Revolutionary Guards member, confirmed to The New York Times on Saturday that the Islamic Republic is preparing to target US diplomats and personnel, the newspaper said.
The unnamed officials US officials were seen as “fair game” given the number of Iranian officials and their relatives that the US and Israel have killed.
A US official was also quoted by the Times as saying there was evidence Tehran has operatives in the US who are “not just simply Iranian nationals.”
The Times report came days after US national intelligence chief Jay Clayton warned in a memo to Secretary of State Marco Rubio that Iran has “substantially increased” its efforts to target US citizens in the Middle East and beyond.
Clayton’s memo emerged shortly after the State Department announced it was scaling back staff at the US embassies in Jordan, Lebanon, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Earlier in the week, Washington also ordered nonessential US embassy staff and their families to leave Saudi Arabia, following increasing attacks by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
Israeli intelligence in recent months has also indicated that Iran was seeking to target US and Israeli officials, according to several media reports.
The intelligence was reportedly why US President Donald Trump was smuggled aboard a catering plane out of a NATO summit in Turkey in July, and why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took off for the US that same month from an air force base rather than Ben Gurion Airport...."
https://www.timesofisrael.com/2-iranian-officials-confirm-tehran-preparing-to-target-us-diplomats-personnel-report/
"The struggle over Lebanon's future is being fought not only on the battlefield and in the corridors of power in Beirut, but also, and perhaps above all, in the media. In recent years, news outlets have become another battleground between supporters and opponents of Hezbollah, with each side seeking to portray events in a way that advances its political agenda.
While the media battle once centered on Hezbollah's military achievements, it has now shifted to a far more sensitive question: Does the Iranian-backed terrorist organization still enjoy the support of Lebanon's Shiite community, its principal power base?
The latest round in this media confrontation followed the release of a poll conducted by Statistics Lebanon among 800 Lebanese Shiites in September 2026. The results, published on Oct. 9, pointed to a possible shift in attitudes within the Shiite community. According to the survey, 66.4% of respondents supported transferring Hezbollah's weapons to the Lebanese state, while 29.6% favored maintaining the status quo. Moreover, 71.1% believed that decisions on war and peace should rest exclusively with the state.
The findings received prominent coverage in media outlets opposed to Hezbollah, including the Al Arabiya and Al Hadath television networks. They presented the figures as evidence of a significant change taking place within the Shiite community.
The message was clear: Even among the population traditionally regarded as Hezbollah's strongest bastion of support, the legitimacy of its continued independent military operations is increasingly being called into question. A starkly different picture emerged in Al-Akhbar, a Lebanese newspaper widely regarded as a mouthpiece for Hezbollah. An article published on Oct. 21 raised questions about methodological flaws in the poll, a lack of transparency surrounding its funding and significant discrepancies between its findings and those of previous surveys.
For example, another poll conducted roughly five months earlier found that 87.5% of Shiites opposed disarming Hezbollah. Al-Akhbar cited the discrepancy to challenge the conclusion that the Shiite community was turning its back on the organization.
Yet the latest survey itself paints a more complex picture than either camp has presented. Despite broad support for transferring Hezbollah's weapons to the state, 59.5% of respondents still expressed confidence in the organization. In other words, criticism of Hezbollah's military policies does not necessarily translate into opposition to its continued existence as a political force.
Indeed, the battle for public opinion unfolding in Lebanon exposes one of the most consequential questions facing the country today. The issue is not merely whether Hezbollah will be disarmed, but whether the Shiite community is prepared to distinguish between its loyalty to the organization and its support for the continuation of Hezbollah's armed struggle.
The answer could shape Lebanon's future just as profoundly as the outcome of any military confrontation."
https://www.israelhayom.com/2026/10/25/are-lebanons-shiites-turning-their-backs-on-hezbollah/
"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could order "one last strike" against Iran even if he loses Tuesday's election for the 26th Knesset, according to sources familiar with the deliberations cited by The New York Times. Netanyahu may believe that whoever succeeds him would hesitate to carry out such an operation.
Similarly, US President Donald Trump could order another attack to demonstrate that his authority as commander in chief remains undiminished, the newspaper reported.
Trump is preparing for the US midterm elections on Nov. 3, just over a week away, as he faces growing political pressure over his Middle East policies. Netanyahu, meanwhile, faces a crucial Israeli parliamentary election on Tuesday, Oct. 27. Both elections could dramatically alter the balance of power in their respective countries, adding another layer of complexity to the calculations being made by all sides.
Within the Trump administration, officials are expressing concern that Iran has reached the "advanced stages" of planning attacks against American officials. On the other side, Iranian leaders appear convinced that Israel and the United States are preparing to launch their third major offensive against the Islamic republic in 16 months...."
https://www.israelhayom.com/2026/10/25/netanyahu-could-order-strike-on-iran-even-if-he-loses-election/
