Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has formally asked U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio to support an immediate end to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), according to a letter dated 19 August. Saar wrote that UNIFIL has failed in its core mandate of preventing Hezbollah fighters from positioning south of the Litani River and said the peacekeeping deployment, established in 1978, was intended to be temporary. He called for operations to cease without delay, asserting Israel can no longer rely on the mission to contain the Iran-backed group.