Image is of destruction and damage inside Israel, sourced from this article.
Iran and Israel have struck each other many times over the last few days. There has been a general focus on military facilities and headquarters by both sides, though Israel has also struck oil facilities, civilian structures and hospitals, and in return for this, Iran has struck major scientific centers and the Haifa oil facilities.
Israel appears to have three main aims. First, to collapse the Iranian state, either through shock and breakdown by killing enough senior officials, or via some sort of internal military coup. Second, to try and destroy Iranian nuclear sites and underground missile cities, or at least to paralyze them long enough to achieve the first and third goals. And third, to bring the US into a direct conflict with Iran. This is because the US better equipped to fight them than Israel is (though victory would still not be guaranteed depending on what Iran chooses to do).
Iranian nuclear facilities are hidden deep underground (800 meters), far beyond the depth range of even the most powerful bunker busters (~70 meters or so), and built such that the visible ground entrances are horizontally far away in an unknown direction from the actual underground chambers. Only an extremely competent full-scale American bombing force all simultaneously using multiple of the most powerful conventional (perhaps even nuclear) bunker busters could even hypothetically hope to breach them (and we have seen how, in practice, American bunker busters have largely failed to impair or deter Ansarallah). There are several analysts on both sides who have concluded that it is entirely impossible to physically prevent Iran from building nukes.
I fully expect the US to join the war. I believe the current ambiguity is a deliberate invention of the US while they work to move their military assets into position, and as soon as they are ready, the US will start bombing Iran. After that, Iran’s leadership must - if they haven’t already - harden their hearts, and strike back with no fear, or risk following the path of Libya, Syria, and Iraq, either into either surrender, occupation, or annihilation. Every day where they do not possess a nuke is a day where lives are being lost and cities are being bombed.
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Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
https://nitter.privacyredirect.com/ME_Observer_/status/1935620132836950250#m
???
edit: this is the guy that is so much of a frothing at the mouth rabid fascist that even canada and the uk sanctioned him personally
This is a threat to Iran but more importantly it’s a threat to the US. Israel cannot sustain a prolonged conventional war with Iran. I’m not sure they could even win it if it went nuclear but I don’t know enough about their arsenal or what the political reaction would be to say that. Only with direct US intervention could they win. The US doesn’t want to get involved though because the US military is also not really capable of winning without sustaining casualties it doesn’t want to.
In the long term, Israel nuking Iran would likely be much worse for the US than direct US intervention though. Firstly Iran would respond by destroying all of the oil infrastructure in West-aligned countries, significantly harming the global economy. Secondly the US Dollar would totally lose its supremacy in international politics to the nuclear umbrella. Thirdly Pakistan might start flinging nukes too and who knows how India, China, and Russia will respond to that.
Right now the US isn’t figuring out how to attack Iran. They’ve been doing that for decades. They’re trying to guess whether they should cave to Israel’s threat or not.
Every accusation is a confession.
There is still a non 0% chance that Shitrael will nuke Iran and that alone should be extremely alarming to the entire world. They would likely do it via a submarine launch close to Iran’s waters such that interception and even warnings would be difficult, if not impossible. And you just know that there will be a ton of “people” celebrating it as a “brilliant” attack, without stopping for even a single second to consider the implications of such an extreme escalation, not to mention the downstream effects.
They also have air launched nuclear weapons, which IMO would give Israel plausible deniability if they used one on a nuclear site.
No matter the facts of the strike, the media will work overtime to convince us that any radiation was from the site itself. Israel could even claim the site isnt as deep as suggested.
Politically, governments don’t rely on the media as much as they rely on available intelligence. Would they believe the IAEA’s assessment? What if they said Israel didn’t? Would they admit the truth, even if would inevitably push a bunch of states to proliferate? Would the Americans (who will be the first to know for sure) provide cover? Would Trump run his mouth if Israel nuked someone without his consent?
Europe and five eyes would parrot the narrative, but there are a lot of countries doing testing under the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty
Oh, so there are.
Yo what the fuck. If this is the “surprise” that they’ve been hinting at this week …
Edit: ok based on what they’ve lead onto so far (“make the pager attack look small” and “trick up their sleeve that will decide the war by the end of the week”) plus their previous behaviour, I wonder if they managed to compromise the Iranian missile stockpiles somehow?
My pet theory is that the attack they were alluding to was the failed hack of Khamenei’s self-driving car. Apparently, the driver noticed the Ac was acting funny and flagged it, and it turned out to be a hacked car
Why in the hell does he have one of those??? Jesus christ, world leaders shouldn’t be driving cars where hacking is even a possibility
I might be getting a detail wrong, I just dont see how you could hack a normal car to steer into traffic
It could have electronic steering potentially. If they had a way to disable any mechanical backups, that could probably cause a collision.
Killing Khameini? Ngl I wouldnt buy into the strongman claims on social media. Both sides have engaged in what could more likely be psy ops than reality -
Israelis: claiming air superiority, knowledge of Khameini’s location, CCTV inside missile cities, burning tyres, public appeals to recruit dissidents, claims of imminent US involvement nearly every night this week.
Iran: claiming F-35s being shot down, “compromising” Israeli air defence missiles, telling civilians to flee Tel Aviv and Haifa, various claims that the missile attacks are a fraction of their capabilities, and various ominous claims of iminent escalation.
Not that none of this are based on truth, but that their public announcements over social media are intentional to either tie up security resources of the other side, or to mislead the public (and hopefully influential politicians of the other side) of their capabilities.
Id call it propaganda, which overlaps somewhat, but the targets of these claims are as much the political classes of the various nations at play as it is civilians and military personnel.
I think it’s certainly possible a number of F35s have been shot down, particularly with relatively inexperienced pilots (at SEAD anyway) and if Iran is smart about their use of anti-aircraft platforms (similar to the two F117s that were hit in Yugoslavia)
Oh absolutely. Whether or not Iran has evidence to prove it, they know that the Americans and Israelis know the status of rhe F-35s, and the announcements of their destruction is as much to create panic; especially amongst the Imperialist politicians who aren’t privy to sensitive military affairs. Even without evidence they’ll be asking very difficult questions such as “has our decades-long, massively expensive wunderwaffen program just eaten shit in Western Iran?”.
For the average civilian, they dont need to give visual evidence just yet. They may not ever, in fact, if they believe it would give up sensitive information such as:
What weapon hit it?
Where did the weapon impact it?
Where in Iran did it go down?
How much of the wreckage is intact?
We only got pictures in Pakistan and India because the line of contact is highly populated and the fighting occurred over civilian airspace. If a jet goes down in Iran there’s a good chance it was operating over military sites that (should) have been cleared of civilians very quickly.
Could just easily go down in some isolated mountain region with extremely sparse human population. Iran is fucking huge and the terrain is extremely rough over most of the country.