Israel News
Daily Alert
Iran Protest Death Toll Could Top 30,000
on January 24, 2026
(TIME) Kay Armin Serjoie -
As many as 30,000 people could have been killed in the streets of Iran on Jan. 8 and 9, two senior officials of the country's Ministry of Health told TIME. Stocks of body bags were exhausted, the officials said, and semi-trailers replaced ambulances.
The Health Ministry's two-day figure aligns with a count of 30,304 gathered by physicians and first responders and also shared with TIME. That number does not reflect protest-related deaths of people registered at military hospitals or that happened in unreported locales. Les Roberts, a professor at Columbia University who specializes in the epidemiology of violent death, said "the 30,000 verified deaths are almost certainly an underestimate."
Inside Iran's Brutal Protest Crackdown: "It Feels Like Everyone Is Dead"
on January 24, 2026
(The Times-UK) Gabrielle Weiniger -
"It feels like everyone is dead. It feels like Armageddon," Iranian activist Rozita, 37, told The Times in the first message she had been able to get through since the internet blackout. "We were just ducks in front of the bullets. We are not armed. We are simple people. We are educated in universities, not in battle. We are looking for a peaceful life. We are not able to fight these shameless, brutal people."
"For five days in a row, we were all out, we tried to overpower the regime. But they would come out, attack with their guns and wipe out the streets, they killed anyone outside. If you got injured and tried to run, they shoot you in the back of the head. If you're filming from your window, they shoot you....I'm sorry that I'm still alive. I feel guilty that I'm not dead and the others are."
One protester injured by regime forces survived by hiding in a body bag among the dead at the Kahrizak Forensic Medical Center, south of Tehran, the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center reported.
U.S. Weighs Complete Military Withdrawal from Syria
on January 24, 2026
(Wall Street Journal) Lara Seligman -
Washington is considering a complete withdrawal of American troops from Syria, U.S. officials said, as Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa moved to wrest control of the northeastern part of the country from an American-backed Kurdish-led militia. The SDF's defeat last week by Syrian government forces has led the Pentagon to question the viability of the American military mission in Syria, according to three U.S. officials.
Roughly 1,000 American troops are in Syria, most scattered across the northeast where they are co-located with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). A handful of the troops are stationed at Al Tanf Garrison in Syria's south. Their primary mission is to prevent the resurgence of Islamic State, and the soldiers frequently conduct patrols and operations with the SDF.
Much of the assault's success was the result of Arab tribal forces, who were once loyal to the SDF, switching sides to back the government. The SDF still controls the cities of Kobani and Hasakah, where there are large Kurdish populations.
Sharaa's army is riddled with jihadist sympathizers, including soldiers with ties to al-Qaeda and ISIS and others who have been involved in war crimes against the Kurds and Druze, two of the officials said. In December, two U.S. soldiers and an American civilian interpreter were killed near Palmyra by a member of the Syrian security forces who was set to be fired for holding extremist views.
During the recent operation against the Kurds, U.S. forces shot down at least one Syrian government drone near a facility where American troops are stationed.
U.S. Defense Strategy Names Israel a "Model Ally"
on January 24, 2026
(U.S. Department of War) The Pentagon published its National Defense Strategy for 2026 on Friday. It notes that "Israel has long demonstrated that it is both willing and able to defend itself with critical but limited support from the United States. Israel is a model ally, and we have an opportunity now to further empower it to defend itself and promote our shared interests."
Rafah Crossing Opening between Gaza and Egypt to Take Place under Israeli Terms
on January 24, 2026
(Israel Hayom) Danny Zaken -
An Israeli diplomatic source said Thursday that the Rafah crossing could open soon in both directions after technical arrangements were concluded that guarantee complete Israeli command over those traversing it. Israel will use remote surveillance cameras and additional tools for monitoring those entering and leaving, with their names and ID papers submitted ahead for Israel's clearance. Moreover, the IDF will maintain a presence around the crossing's perimeter, requiring all travelers to navigate an Israeli checkpoint.
Board of Peace Official: Reconstruction of Gaza Will Not Happen Without Dismantling Hamas
on January 24, 2026
(Ynet News) Itamar Eichner -
A senior official involved in the new Board of Peace said, "The development and reconstruction of Gaza will not happen without the dismantling of Hamas and the demilitarization of Gaza. Trump's preference is for this to happen in good faith and with agreement under significant pressure from mediators, but everyone understands that if it doesn't go the easy way it will go the hard way, and Hamas will be disarmed by Israel. That is the starting point of the plan."
He noted that the very fact that Muslim and Arab states, including Turkey and Qatar, have signed a document stating that Hamas must disarm and Gaza be demilitarized is a "huge achievement" for Israel. "First, Hamas will need to surrender its heavy weapons - rockets, machine guns - and identify all tunnels to be dismantled. Then it will have to turn in Kalashnikov rifles. We start with the most dangerous threats - missiles, production labs and tunnels. This is a strategically critical issue, and then we move to light arms."
The inclusion of Qatar and Turkey in the Board of Peace "is simply part of integrating all regional actors for this issue....Overall, we moved from a situation where the UN was entirely against Israel, to a Board of Peace that the UN decided to hand responsibility over to, and that supports Israel's goals of disarmament, demilitarization and reconstruction and ultimately regional peace and expansion of the Abraham Accords."
Israeli Intelligence Helped Prove to U.S. that Iran Executed Protesters
on January 24, 2026
(Israel Hayom) Danny Zaken -
President Trump said he had received a commitment from Iran's leadership to halt the execution of more than 800 detainees who had taken part in protests. However, Israeli intelligence helped the U.S. establish that Iran's regime did carry out mass executions of protesters.
Video: Israel's Bobsled Team Qualifies for 2026 Winter Olympics
on January 24, 2026
(X) A.J. Edelman -
The Israeli bobsled team has qualified for the Milan Winter Olympic Games to be held on Feb. 6-22, 2026.
U.S. Options in Iran
on January 24, 2026
(Wall Street Journal) Sune Engel Rasmussen -
A limited U.S. strike against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran's main security force, is unlikely to decide the outcome of the popular uprising, analysts, lawmakers and former administration officials say. "As long as the protesters are not heavily armed and ready to organize as a guerrilla [force], how will bombing the Revolutionary Guard help them?" said Rasmus Christian Elling, associate professor and Iran expert at the University of Copenhagen. "A complete neutralization of the repression apparatus will likely require thousands of strikes over a long period."
There are nonmilitary options to put pressure on the Iranian leadership, including cyberattacks on military and civilian institutions, more sanctions on the country's oil sector, and boosting antiregime messaging online. Ultimately, there is little foreign powers can do to fundamentally shape the outcome of popular uprisings, analysts say.
"I do not think foreign help can shift the needle that much. This is about the balance of power on the ground," said Peyman Jafari, an expert on Iranian social movements at William & Mary University. He noted that in the 2024 election more than 13 million people voted for the most hard-line candidate on the ballot.
Successful revolutions also require divisions and defections in the security establishment, which hasn't happened yet in Iran. Moreover, history suggests that foreign support has rarely been the determining factor in helping popular revolts topple autocratic leaders.
In Iran, the Balance of Power Has Been Shifting from Ayatollah Khamenei to the Revolutionary Guards
on January 24, 2026
(New York Times) Declan Walsh -
Israeli airstrikes that pounded Iran's capital last June caused the greatest single blow to Iran's military in decades, wiping out the top leadership of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Now the IRGC's new leaders have responded to nationwide protests with breathtaking brutality, opening fire on unarmed protesters and massacring thousands of people. On the surface, the bloody crackdown affirmed the unity of Iran's ruling system.
"The regime is ideologically bankrupt, economically at a dead end, and unable to rescue itself," said Ali Vaez, the Iran project director for the International Crisis Group. "But it still has the will, and a fearsome capacity for repression."
For years, the balance of power in Iran has been quietly shifting from Ayatollah Khamenei, 86, to the Revolutionary Guards. They control a media empire, large parts of the economy, oil exports, seaports, an intelligence agency and an air force. Iran's government has survived at least four earlier waves of protest, many of which also stirred speculation of regime change.
Iran's Long History of Purity Politics and National Failure
on January 24, 2026
(Washington Post) Sohrab Ahmari -
A half century under the Islamic Republic has left Iran more vulnerable than ever to foreign invasion and even internal dissolution. The Islamic Republic is in retreat on nearly every front. Its nuclear program lies in rubble. Since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack, Israel has degraded a ring of Iranian proxies. At home, the Tehran regime struggles to uphold Islamic morality norms.
Iranians like me, who are part of the diaspora, can cheer the unraveling of a cruel and irrational order under the weight of its internal contradictions and external hubris. Iranians haughtily view such nations as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the UAE as their civilizational inferiors, yet they are the countries pulling ahead, achieving prosperity, stability, or, at the very least, normality. Despite its civilizational pedigree, Iran today is poor, repressive, dysfunctional, corrupt, and suffering one of the world's most severe cases of brain drain.
Why do Iranians have so little to show for their last revolution? How has it ended up wasting 50 years? The answer lies, in part, in the absolutism of Iranian political culture and statecraft. A yearning for purity drives the country toward passionate idealism.
After the 1979 revolution, Iran's purifying ambitions included cleansing the wider Middle East of what the Islamists deemed "pollutants" - the Jewish state, the U.S., and Arab regimes judged guilty of accommodating both. The Islamic Republic's leaders chanted "Death to America" at the global hegemon, while fielding an air force largely frozen in the 1970s.
By contrast, comparable powers in the region, such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey, sheltered their aspirations for development and independence within the reality principle and under Western alliances, even tutelage. The citizens of these countries today enjoy rising living standards, relative security, and passports that open access to many international destinations.
The writer is the U.S. editor of UnHerd.
Syrian Government Offensive Threatens Pro-West Kurds with Large-Scale Massacre
on January 24, 2026
(Jerusalem Post) Jonathan Spyer -
The Syrian Kurds have found themselves abruptly plunged into a war for survival. The Syrian government of President Ahmed Sharaa is very clearly set on creating a centralized, authoritarian, Sunni Islamist regime, under the tutelage of Turkey and with the support of Qatar and Saudi Arabia. This project ruled out any acquiescence to the continued existence of the secular, West-oriented, Kurdish-led autonomous zone. What had held the Syrian government in check until now was a tacit U.S. guarantee to the Kurds. Once that disappeared, an offensive soon followed.
Ilham Ehmed, a top Kurdish official, said, "Footage seen in recent days has...[shown that] Damascus's forces have decapitated women - both fighters and civilians." I have seen the footage. It includes the dreadful desecration of corpses, the harassment and tormenting of female prisoners, and that efforts to behead Kurdish women have taken place. We have this footage because the jihadi perpetrators are proud of it and place it online.
So the Syrian Kurds, who fought and defeated the Islamic State a decade ago, are now mobilized in their heartlands and prepared for a new jihadi assault, this time carrying the banners of the internationally recognized authorities in Damascus. Government forces, equipped with tanks and artillery and accompanied by a tribal Islamic horde, are waiting at the edge of Kurdish-majority Hasakeh province. The urgent question now is whether the assumption by the Damascus authorities of rule over northeastern Syria can be achieved without a large-scale massacre with which the authorities in Damascus have increasingly become associated.
ISIS May Prosper from Syria's Dangerous Turn
on January 24, 2026
(Wall Street Journal) Jonathan Spyer -
While I was staying in Hasakah, Syria, last April, a Kurdish commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces told me he expected to be fighting the new government in Damascus within a year. The new Islamist rulers of Syria, he said, were never going to tolerate the Kurdish-led SDF. He was right. The attempt is underway.
Some 50,000 ISIS prisoners and their family members are held in jails supervised by the SDF. Government forces have taken Al-Hol camp, home to 24,000 relatives of Islamic State fighters. Footage has emerged of the government's men greeting the inmates with joyous shouts of victory, encouraging them to flee. In Shaddadi prison in Hasakah, hundreds of ISIS fighters have made their way to freedom thanks to attacks by government forces.
For 15 years, the SDF - secular, progressive in its attitude toward women, aligned with the West - built the most stable and sanely governed part of Syria. In its place will likely be jihadist chaos, the murder of female Kurdish fighters, and hundreds of ISIS men escaping incarceration and rallying again.
The writer is director of research at the Middle East Forum and editor of Middle East Quarterly.
Reaching a Comprehensive Security Agreement between Israel and Syria
on January 24, 2026
(Ynet News) Tzachi Hanegbi -
The 1974 Disengagement of Forces Agreement between Israel and Syria after the Yom Kippur War held for 50 years, until the collapse of Bashar Assad's regime in December 2024. There has been ongoing diplomatic dialogue between Israel and the new regime in Syria for some time. I had the opportunity to take part and was impressed that shared interests outweigh the points of division.
Ahmad al-Sharaa, Syria's president, has tied his country's fate to the U.S. and the West. In the Arab world, he is aligned with the moderate Sunni axis led by Saudi Arabia. The current Syrian leadership's hostility toward Iran and Hizbullah is deep and genuine.
In my dialogue with senior Syrian officials, I became convinced that practical solutions can be found for each of the principles Israel must insist on: Our commitment to protect members of the Druze community living near our border with Syria; the need to prevent the deployment of state forces hostile to Israel in areas that threaten our freedom of action in distant arenas; and ensuring the demilitarization of southern Syria as part of the defense concept for the communities of the Golan Heights.
Syria does not raise the issue of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights because there is no chance of change on this issue and because the Trump administration supports that sovereignty without reservation. Determined, continuous and effective action by Syrian regime forces to eradicate the activity of Iran, Hizbullah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad throughout Syria, alongside the complete demilitarization of the area south of Damascus, would expand Israel's room for flexibility.
The writer served as Israel's National Security Advisor from 2023 to 2025.
A Hizbullah Invasion of Northern Israel Nearly Happened on Oct. 7
on January 24, 2026
(Ynet News) Yair Kraus -
Long before Oct. 7, the IDF was aware of Hizbullah's detailed plans to invade the Galilee. On Oct. 7, 2,400 fighters from Hizbullah's Radwan Force and 600 terrorists from Palestinian Islamic Jihad had been standing by with full gear and designated targets in Israel. A second wave of 5,300 Hizbullah fighters was slated to follow. What prevented the attack, Israeli officials now believe, was a single phone call from Tehran.
When the IDF eventually entered southern Lebanon, it uncovered a vast network of prepared weapons caches and infrastructure. I crossed the border nearly ten times with the IDF and saw there was hardly a house without weapons. Even in recent weeks, the IDF has continued locating and destroying weapons stockpiles near the border.
The Genocide Slur Against Israel Poses a Direct Danger to America
on January 24, 2026
(Tablet)
Maj. (ret.) John Spencer -
The casual use of the word "genocide" to target Israel is also dangerous to Americans. If this ahistorical and largely evidence-free way of judging war is allowed to take hold in public discourse and harden into international legal practice, it will be turned on the U.S. and every other military that may have to fight and win in cities. Israel is the test case. If the rules are rewritten here, American soldiers will inherit them in the next urban war.
The Gaza war is one in which an enemy builds a strategy around civilian suffering as the path to victory - a strategy of human sacrifice for political gain. Genocide under international law requires intent to destroy a protected group in whole or in part. Without it, the charge collapses. When genocide becomes a label applied whenever civilian casualties are high, the term loses meaning.
There has been no genocide in Gaza. Israel has not intentionally targeted civilians. Intent matters. Context matters. Israel has taken more measures to reduce civilian harm than any military in history operating in dense urban terrain against an enemy deliberately embedded among civilians. No other military has attempted civilian harm mitigation at this scale, over this duration, while under constant attack.
Israel has conducted this war while facilitating an unprecedented scale of humanitarian assistance, medical access, vaccination campaigns, and civilian protection measures. No historical case of genocide includes a state feeding, vaccinating, providing medical care to, and sustaining the civilian population of the territory in which it is supposedly committing extermination.
Wanting to destroy your enemy is not genocide. It is war. War is not illegal, and in some cases, it is necessary. Moral seriousness does not erase the difference between deliberate murder and collateral harm. It does not treat the kidnapping and murder of civilians as morally interchangeable with deaths caused in the course of lawful military operations.
If civilian harm alone becomes proof of criminality, democratic militaries face an impossible choice: Fight and be condemned, or refrain and concede defeat. Accusations of genocide being leveled against Israel are a weapon aimed at lawful self-defense. If lawful self-defense becomes impossible, democracies will have lost the next wars before they begin.
The writer is chair of urban warfare studies at West Point's Modern War Institute.
Give to support Christians in Defense of Israel
Pray for Israel
Our prayer intercessors will lift up your prayer requests!
Sign
Petitions
Signing a petition is an easy and effective way to have your voice heard.
Stay
Informed
Sign up for The Defender newsletter and the CIDI Action Email.
Clubs & Organizations
Connect to other Israel supporters.
For more information call: (407) 875-1948 • [email protected] • PO BOX 540209 Orlando, FL 32854-0209
Christians in Defense of Israel is a 501(c)(3), tax-exempt nonprofit organization. Contributions are tax deductible to the extent permitted by law.
©2014-present Christians in Defense of Israel. All Rights Reserved.
Click Here to Read our Privacy Policy