Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Israel preparing for new strikes on Iran, anti-government protests in Serbia, and political violence in Australia.
Netanyahu Echoes Call for Regime Change in Iran
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a forceful directive to the country’s military and security agencies just days before a critical parliamentary election. His message: overthrow the Iranian regime.
“There is only one way to remove this threat once and for all,” Netanyahu told new officers of the Israel Defense Forces at their graduation ceremony on Wednesday, arguing that as long as Iran’s current leadership remains, Israel faces an “existential threat.”
That objective is nothing new. For years, Netanyahu has described Iran’s existence as a threat to Israel’s security, citing its common refrain of “death to Israel” and arguing that Tehran seeks to develop a nuclear weapons program. Iran’s repeated insistence that its nuclear advancements are only for civilian purposes has done little to assuage Israel’s fears.
Now, with Netanyahu’s Likud party facing a crucial parliamentary vote on Oct. 27, the right-wing leader is turning to a tried-and-true playbook to try and secure enough votes to remain in power.
The election will be the first one since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. The attack ultimately led to devastating conflicts in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran—all of which have sparked fierce condemnation from rights activists who have accused Israeli forces of perpetrating war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
Many analysts see the vote as a litmus test on Netanyahu’s leadership, including his handling of the deadliest attack on Israeli soil since its founding and his headstrong approach to some of the world’s biggest institutions, such as the United Nations. By focusing on Iran’s continued threat to Israel, Netanyahu hopes that he can convince voters why his Likud party should be in office.
Israeli forces have stepped up training exercises with the United States to double down on this messaging. On Monday, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made a surprise visit to Ovda Air Base in southern Israel, meeting with Netanyahu. On Wednesday, U.S. officials told the New York Times that joint strikes against Iran are expected to resume after the U.S. midterm elections next month.
Iran “is truly an Evil Regime, and I can only hope the American Public, and the World, understands how EVIL they are!” U.S. President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday, echoing Netanyahu’s command that Tehran must never have a nuclear weapon.
In response, the Iranian regime denounced a return to active fighting. “We see the next conflict as an existential threat,” said Mehdi Mohammadi, an advisor to top Iranian negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. “The third war in two years means a threat to existence. Our strategy is ‘zero red lines.’”
Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran’s security council, added that fresh U.S.-Israeli attacks will result in Iranian strikes on oil facilities, undersea cables, data centers, and artificial intelligence facilities across as many as seven Persian Gulf countries.
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What We’re Following
Vucic’s biggest challenge yet? Thousands of Serbian students held their final campaign rally in the capital of Belgrade on Thursday ahead of snap parliamentary elections on Sunday. The youth-led movement aims to challenge authoritarian leader Aleksandar Vucic, who resigned from the presidency last month so that he could pursue the prime minister’s office.
Anti-government protests first erupted in November 2024, when a collapsed railway station canopy killed 16 people. Demonstrators accused Belgrade of poor state oversight, negligence, and corruption. In response, Vucic launched a fierce crackdown on political dissent, using excessive force, arbitrary arrests, and digital repression to undermine the protests.
Still, the youth-led movement never fully disappeared. Polling suggests a tight race between Vucic’s right-wing Serbian Progressive Party and the Student List group, even with Vucic earning the support of the United States.
Sunday’s vote could be the biggest political threat to Vucic’s reign since he came to power in 2014. He served as prime minister for three years before becoming president in 2017. During that time, democratic freedoms in Serbia have steadily dropped, with Freedom House, the World Press Freedom Index, and Transparency International all noting record declines.
Political violence in Australia. On Thursday, Australian authorities charged a man with threatening a lawmaker’s staff with a weapon, just days after another parliamentarian was targeted in a historically rare political attack. Threats against Australian politicians and their offices doubled between 2021 and 2025.
Australian lawmakers are among the most publicly accessible in the world, but the recent spate of attacks has convinced some experts that this tradition may need to be reconsidered, especially for women politicians.
Earlier this week, lawmaker Helen Haines was hit by a Toyota Land Cruiser outside of her office in the state of Victoria, leaving her in critical condition. Both her legs were amputated. Then, on Thursday, a 56-year-old man entered the office of Hannah Beazley, a Western Australian representative, and demanded to speak to her while wielding wooden sticks. No one was injured.
The two attacks do not appear connected, but they prompted Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to denounce rising political violence during a recent briefing on misogynistic threats targeting lawmakers. “There has been a normalization of behavior that can be very aggressive in a way that wasn’t happening a couple of decades ago,” Albanese said.
State Department evacuation orders. The U.S. State Department ordered nonessential embassy staff and their families to leave Saudi Arabia on Wednesday as Houthi strikes risk escalating regional tensions. Several U.S. embassies in other Gulf countries are already under “restricted operations” that limit the number of personnel stationed there.
“Iranian-supported Houthis have increasingly engaged in hostilities against Saudi Arabia, including attacks on civilian airports and other critical infrastructure resulting in civilian casualties and severe travel disruptions,” State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott wrote on X on Wednesday.
That includes recent deadly assaults on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport and heavy strikes on Saudi energy facilities. The U.S. Embassy in Riyadh was already working with a skeleton crew after a drone strike in March badly damaged the building, and Washington had ordered its diplomats to refrain from using any Saudi airport without special permission.
Still, U.S. personnel had begun returning to their posts in recent months as fighting between Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s Houthi rebels reignited.
Odds and Ends
For more than a month, South Korean authorities have tried to free a female dusky shark trapped in a canal in the port city of Busan. From spraying water to deploying nets, officials have resorted to several unsuccessful tactics to encourage Bukangi, named after the city’s North Port, to swim back out to sea.
On Wednesday, a floating platform finally managed to herd Bukangi out of the canal. However, celebrations did not last long, as the huge shark swam right back into the port overnight on Thursday. Experts argue that it is critical for the animal to return to open water, but it appears that Bukangi isn’t finished visiting the city.
