World roundup: August 25 2025

Stories from Israel-Palestine, Rwanda, France, and elsewhere

TODAY IN HISTORY

August 25, 1580: An army under the Duke of Alba, Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, fighting on behalf of King Philip II of Spain, defeats an army under António, Prior of Crato, at the Battle of Alcântara, part of the War of Portuguese Succession. Both António and Philip were claimants to the then-vacant throne of Portugal, and this victory allowed Philip’s army to capture Lisbon and eventually led to Philip’s crowning as King of Portugal in March 1581. The crowns of Portugal and Spain were held in personal union (the “Iberian Union”) until the 1640-1668 Portuguese Restoration War.

August 25, 1920: The two-week Battle of Warsaw ends with a surprising, arguably even miraculous (hence the moniker “Miracle on the Vistula”) Polish victory over the invading Russian Red Army. The costly defeat seems to have ended any Russian ambitions of a decisive victory in what is known as the Polish-Soviet War, and with Polish leaders having been similarly disabused of their chances for victory the two sides began peace talks in earnest in autumn 1920. An armistice was reached in October followed by the Peace of Riga in March 1921, in which Poland recognized Soviet governments in Belarus and Ukraine while those states ceded some 135,000 square kilometers of territory to Poland. That land reverted back to Belarus and Ukraine during and after World War II.

Polish soldiers during the battle (Polish Central Military Archives via Wikimedia Commons)

MIDDLE EAST

SYRIA

Sky News Arabia is apparently reporting that Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa is in “advanced stages of negotiations” with Israeli officials over a security pact that would restore a 1974 Syria-Israel armistice that the Israeli government voided after the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s government. Full terms are unknown, but it sounds like the deal would in a basic sense restore control of most of southern Syria to the Syrian government, including its airspace, after the Israeli military (IDF) effectively assumed control of the region late last year.

Whether that means a withdrawal from the territory that the IDF has physically occupied remains to be seen, as does the question of an Israeli “humanitarian corridor” in support of the Druze community in Suwaydah province. Sharaa is understandably not thrilled about that idea, but with community leader Hikmat al-Hijri now calling on “all free countries and people, to stand with us as the Druze sect in southern Syria, to announce a separate region to protect us,” clearly sectarian tension in that province isn’t subsiding. And if the Israeli government is planning on ceding back that territory it’s got a funny way of showing it—Syrian officials accused the IDF on Monday of occupying additional territory near the Mount Hermon high point in the occupied Golan. The Syrian government called the seizure “a direct threat to regional peace and security.” The IDF claimed that its soldiers simply acted against a group of individuals who “were identified approaching the area in a manner the military deemed as a threat.”