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Israel’s New Defense Minister: Netanyahu Loyalist, Settlers’ Friend 

A file photo taken on March 26, 2010 shows Israeli officer general Yoav Galant, chief of the south command, during a press conference near the border with the Gaza Strip. (AFP)
A file photo taken on March 26, 2010 shows Israeli officer general Yoav Galant, chief of the south command, during a press conference near the border with the Gaza Strip. (AFP)
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Israel’s New Defense Minister: Netanyahu Loyalist, Settlers’ Friend 

A file photo taken on March 26, 2010 shows Israeli officer general Yoav Galant, chief of the south command, during a press conference near the border with the Gaza Strip. (AFP)
A file photo taken on March 26, 2010 shows Israeli officer general Yoav Galant, chief of the south command, during a press conference near the border with the Gaza Strip. (AFP)

Israel's new defense minister Yoav Galant is a former general, a staunch ally of Benjamin Netanyahu and a vocal advocate of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. 

In the military, the 64-year-old oversaw Israel's 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and later commanded the "Operation Cast Lead" offensive against its Hamas rulers in 2008-2009.  

Since entering politics in 2015, he has served as minister for education, housing and immigration -- and has been a prominent backer of Israel's settlements, regarded as illegal under international law, that are today home to some 475,000 settlers. 

Some observers fear a radical change in policy on the occupied West Bank under Netanyahu's new government. 

Shlomo Neeman, who heads the Yesha Council, an umbrella group representing Israeli settlers living in the West Bank, welcomed Galant ahead of his appointment on Thursday. 

"Yoav Galant is a man who has done a lot for the settlement of Judea and Samaria," he said, using the Jewish biblical terms for the West Bank. 

Ahead of his nomination, Galant's predecessor Benny Gantz spoke with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, stressing "the important ties forged between the Israeli defense establishment and political echelon and the Palestinian Authority".  

Galant, born in the Mediterranean port of Jaffa in 1958 to Polish Holocaust survivors, was a career soldier.  

He was an officer in the elite marine unite known as Flotilla-13 when it carried out an operation against the Palestinian Fatah movement in Lebanon in 1978.  

The unit killed around 20 Palestinian gunmen, etching the operation into the Israeli military's history books.  

Top general  

Between 1982 and 1984, Galant took a break from the army to become a lumberjack in Alaska.  

Galant reached the rank of general in 2002, serving as former prime minister Ariel Sharon's military attaché.  

Galant would later rise to become commander of the southern military command, overseeing Israel's 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, including the evacuation of 8,000 settlers from the Palestinian enclave. 

He then commanded Israel's "Operation Cast Lead", a 22-day operation in Gaza that killed 1,440 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.  

A United Nations report accused both Israel and Hamas of war crimes during that conflict.  

Nominated as the army's chief of staff in 2010, Galant was mired in scandal over the appropriation of public land to build his house.  

An investigative report led to a petition in the supreme court which did not result in criminal charges, but posed potential legal problems to his appointment.  

Instead, Benny Gantz, whom Galant now succeeds at the defense ministry, was selected.  

After leaving the army, he became director of a drilling company owned by Franco-Israeli tycoon Beny Steinmetz, but resigned in 2014 to enter politics.  

In 2015, Galant served as housing minister as part of the center-right Kulanu party, though he later joined Netanyahu's right-wing Likud in 2019.  

Under previous Netanyahu governments, Galant served as both immigration and education minister between 2019 and 2021. 

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Iran Leader Khamenei Sees His Inner Circle Hollowed Out by Israel 

Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei looks on, in a televised message following the Israeli strikes in Tehran, Iran, June 13, 2025. Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via Reuters
Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei looks on, in a televised message following the Israeli strikes in Tehran, Iran, June 13, 2025. Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via Reuters
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Iran Leader Khamenei Sees His Inner Circle Hollowed Out by Israel 

Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei looks on, in a televised message following the Israeli strikes in Tehran, Iran, June 13, 2025. Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via Reuters
Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei looks on, in a televised message following the Israeli strikes in Tehran, Iran, June 13, 2025. Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via Reuters

Iran's 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei cuts an increasingly lonely figure.

Khamenei has seen his main military and security advisers killed by Israeli air strikes, leaving major holes in his inner circle and raising the risk of strategic errors, according to five people familiar with his decision-making process.

One of those sources, who regularly attends meetings with Khamenei, described the risk of miscalculation to Iran on issues of defense and internal stability as "extremely dangerous".

Several senior military commanders have been killed since Friday including Khamenei's main advisers from the Revolutionary Guards, Iran's elite military force: the Guards' overall commander Hossein Salami, its aerospace chief Amir Ali Hajizadeh who headed Iran's ballistic missile program and spymaster Mohammad Kazemi.

These men were part of the supreme leader's inner circle of roughly 15-20 advisers comprising Guards commanders, clerics, and politicians, according to the sources who including three people who attend or have attended meetings with the leader on major issues and two close to officials who regularly attend.

The loose group meets on an ad-hoc basis, when Khamenei's office reaches out to relevant advisers to gather at his compound in Tehran to discuss an important decision, all the people said. Members are characterized by unwavering loyalty to him and the ideology of the regime, they added.

Khamenei, who was imprisoned before the 1979 revolution and maimed by a bomb attack before becoming leader in 1989, is profoundly committed to maintaining Iran's system of government and deeply mistrustful of the West.

Under Iran's system of government, he has supreme command of the armed forces, the power to declare war, and can appoint or dismiss senior figures including military commanders and judges.

Khamenei makes the final decision on important matters, though he values advice, listens attentively to diverse viewpoints, and often seeks additional information from his counsellors, according to one source who attends meetings.

"Two things you can say about Khamenei: he is extremely stubborn but also extremely cautious. He is very cautious. That is why he has been in power for as long as he has," said Alex Vatanka, director of the Iran Program at the Middle East Institute think-tank in Washington.

"Khamenei is pretty well placed to do the basic cost-benefit analysis which really fundamentally gets to one issue more important than anything else: regime survival."

KHAMENEI'S SON AT THE FORE

The focus on survival has repeatedly been put to the test. Khamenei has deployed the Revolutionary Guards and its affiliated Basij militia to quell national protests in 1999, 2009 and 2022.

However, while the security forces have always been able to outlast demonstrators and restore state rule, years of Western sanctions have caused widespread economic misery that analysts say could ultimately threaten internal unrest.

The stakes could barely be higher for Khamenei who faces an escalating war with Israel, which has targeted nuclear and military sites and personnel with air attacks, drawing retaliatory Iranian missile fire, insiders and analysts said.

The five people familiar with Khamenei's decision-making process stressed that other insiders who have not been targeted by Israel's strikes remain important and influential, including top advisers on political, economic and diplomatic issues.

Khamenei designates such advisers to handle issues as they arise, extending his reach directly into a wide array of institutions spanning military, security, cultural, political and economic domains, two of the sources said.

Operating this way, including in bodies nominally under the elected president, means Khamenei's office is often involved not only in the biggest questions of state but in executing even minor initiatives, the sources said.

His son Mojtaba has over the past 20 years grown ever more central to this process, the sources said, building a role that cuts between the personalities, factions and organizations involved to coordinate on specific issues, the sources said.

A mid-ranking cleric seen by some insiders as a potential successor to his ageing father, Mojtaba has built close ties with the Guards giving him added leverage within across Iran's political and security apparatus, the sources said.

Ali Asghar Hejazi, the deputy of political security affairs at Khamenei's office, has been involved in sensitive security decisions and is often described as the most powerful intelligence official in Iran, the sources said.

Meanwhile, the head of Khamenei's office, Mohammad Golpayegani, as well as former Iranian foreign ministers Ali Akbar Velayati and Kamal Kharazi, and ex-parliament speaker Ali Larijani, remain trusted confidants on diplomatic and domestic policies issues such as the nuclear dispute, the sources said.

The loss of the Revolutionary Guards commanders nonetheless decimates the top ranks of a military organization that he has put at the center of power since becoming supreme leader in 1989, relying on it for both internal security and Iran's regional strategy.

While the regular army chain of command runs through the defense ministry under the elected president, the Guards answer personally to Khamenei, securing the best military equipment for their land, air and sea branches and giving their commanders a major state role.

As he faces one of the most dangerous moments in the country’s history, Khamenei finds himself further isolated by the recent losses of other key advisers in the region as Iran's "Axis of Resistance" coalition has been hammered by Israel.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, who was personally close to the Iranian leader, was killed by an Israeli airstrike in September last year and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was overthrown by opposition factions in December.