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.
What’s Iran’s strategy here? From the footage I’ve seen, the bombs that Isntreal drops are at least 3x bigger in terms of destruction and damage, especially when comparing the rising smoke. And of course they’ve murdered much more civilians. Why is Iran not getting more aggressive? Are they gathering more intel and/or preparing for an actual decisive attack? I know that it’s important to keep your capabilities hidden, but they’re taking way too much damage already. Why do they keep allowing Pissrael to take out prominent army members or even researchers? Are those people decoys or just not very important?
It seems like Isntreal is going to accelerate and intensify their attacks. Not to mention they’ll pull out some unexpected trump cards. Like the terrorist car bombings. There’s no level low enough they won’t stoop to. Chemical and biological weapons aren’t even out of the picture anymore. They are rabid, extremely dangerous, unpredictable, and highly treacherous. There’s no room for hesitation here. They are hell-bent on the collapse of the Iranian regime and they will accomplish that any way they can, including completely obliterating Iran from the face of the Earth, as we’ve seen in Gaza.
And considering how many of their cockroach spies have infiltrated Iran I’m not surprised that other Arab nations have been mostly silent on Gaza. They likely have agents in the highest levels of government in all the surrounding areas, to keep the puppets under threat and obedient. Likely also true for Europe and NA.
Gradually escalate to delay or deter outsiders from joining the war (and to reduce likelihood of an Israeli nuclear strike). Going too aggressive could help justify a nuclear attack in the eyes of Israel’s military staff. A long engagement allows Iran time to nuclearise before disruption to industry becomes paralysing.
Hit strategic assets in waves to work down missile defenses before advanced missiles can be deployed to strike important targets that may not be revealed yet. We didnt know for sure that Netanyahu was in Israel until a couple of days ago, for example. Each strike is being used to calibrate the aiming of subsequent attacks.
Pace the scale of strikes to maximise attrition whilst limiting stock depletion, and keeping reserves under cover for important attacks. Flattening Ben Gurion airport sounds awesome, but the same effect of obstructing civilian movement is had by sending smaller waves and occasional strikes that keep it shut anyway. I also do not think Israel is aware of every missile city in Iran, which will be revealed at the moment launches are detected.
Root out collaborators, moles, spies, and the like before you reveal sensitive military assets. Iranian intelligence has likely realised their grave situation and will need time to make arrests before the saboteurs are organised for a second strike.
If the US joins the war, Iran will likely block the strait of Hormuz or place sea mines, paralysing the oil industry that relies heavily on passage go the gulf of oman. It may even escalate further with strikes on collaborators like Saudi Arabia, which have insanely vulnerable oil infrastructure.
TLDR the idea of a decisive battle to defeat your enemy is sadly a myth, and if Iran has done anything right its that they are preparing for a long conflict that may also include US CENTCOM, the UK, and France.
Iran does not need to get more aggressive. Their strikes are steadily whittling down critical Israeli infrastructure, heavily demoralizing the settler population (Israel had to BAN citizens from leaving on flights out of the country, all of which sold out completely for the next week as of Saturday), and also whittling away at critical stock of anti-missile defenses. There have been noticeably fewer anti-missile munitions launched at Iranian strikes in the past two waves, meaning Israel likely sees that Iran is ready to keep this up to the point Israel may begin to run out of missile defense munitions.
All of this while Iran has not yet used its most basic missile technology or its most advanced missile technology. There is probably very real discussion within Iranian military planning circles of whether or not to push this to the point that we begin to truly see Israel begin to collapse. Many think collapse has already begun, myself included. Iran has popped the bubble of Israeli invulnerability the exact same way Cuban troops did by defeating apartheid South African forces.
Defeating apartheid is much easier than we seem to think. You don’t have to overthrow the regime, you have to make the small, privileged class truly believe that they are no longer safe from the consequences of their actions.
I’ve been casually wondering for like two years now what a collapse of Israel would actually be like, because “collapse” is a really abstract word that gets thrown about a lot and can mean dozens of different things. One possibility among many I’ve imagined (and this might not be the most likely or anything) is that there’s some internal coup inside Israel where the capitalist class basically steps in to force an end to the war because of the hit to profitability because of Iranian strikes. Certainly not out of sympathy to Palestinians or anything like that, they’re just as hateful as the rest of them, it’s just that unlike the relatively powerless bottom-line Zionist settler in some apartment building in Tel Aviv, they have a degree of power and pressure they could exert on the government.
I’m not really familiar with that level of Israeli politics though so idk if that’s even possible, let alone feasible. Maybe Israeli capitalists really would just be willing to die and all their property destroyed if it’s a step towards the potential destruction of Iran, I don’t know what the balance between propaganda and material interests is in their brains
I’ve been wondering in a similar vein does Israel even have an internal deescalation ability? Once the US supported them full force they adopted a policy of being as heinous as possible until the US would pull on their leash finally, but they’ve been given proof over the past two years that the US isn’t going to do that anymore. It’s enough time for an entire generation of politicians to have no institutional power to rein in the genocideers if they even realize they need to pump the brakes. If that’s the case then a coup might be the only way to keep the state together but would be instantly subject to a backstabber conspiracy
Yeah. I have wondered the same about Israel my whole life. It is analogous to apartheid in South Africa, but conditions and privileged class size are dramatically different, so it didn’t seem like a “critical mass” of native peoples would be able to topple it unless every Palestinian refugee from Gaza, the West Bank, and surrounding countries that were displaced by the Nakba suddenly encroached peacefully back to their homeland. Obviously unlikely to happen.
After October 7, I think the actual strategy finally started making sense to me when we started seeing mass exodus of settlers to nations they hold dual citizenship. You do not necessarily need to defeat the Israeli military to beat Israel, you simply need the state to become unsustainable. It is already spread so thin that hemorrhaging settler population is something it simply can’t afford to do. All of its institutions rely on steady influx of settlers as well as a relatively high domestic birth rate. This is only sustained because of the Nazi-esque pseudoscience and mythology that Israel’s privileged class is safe because of their superiority to their neighbors AS A PEOPLE, and if you are Jewish YOU TOO are one of those superior people and you should move to Israel.
The most sad part about it is that there are actually Jews native to Palestine, before Zionism, with a real culture and history and connection to the land who have been the victimized by Israeli settler-colonialism. Like all settler colonies, the beliefs and history of the native people could not coexist alongside that of the settlers. Their native beliefs and culture and lifestyle have been systematically twisted and thus erased by a fascist project with no actual interest in protecting the storied history of Jews native to Palestine, or anywhere for that matter. The Zionist entity’s only goal, as a fascist settler-colonial project, was to create a new, “superior” Jewish identity to those of old; one that strategically dismantles, co-opts, tosses away, or corrupts the REAL incredible stories, history, and unique cultures of Jewish diaspora as a truly globe-spanning people. The fascist Zionist project crushes all of that down and spins it into the same, tired, all encompassing lie that every fascist state tells its people.
We all know the mythology that built Israel up: their supposedly heroic and invincible armies against the Arab coalitions, their “turning the desert green” myth, their “all Jews are diaspora from this land” myth, its “best cuisine in the world and totally not co-opted actual cultural dishes” myth, its “only democracy in the Middle East” myth, its being an integral part of “an ancient western belief” in Judeo-Christian values, and so on and so on. The millisecond that bubble of superiority is popped, Israel loses everything because it never actually had anything. When there is no sense of superiority to believe in, there genuinely is no Israel.
Good thing to note is that THAAD and SM-3, the American answer to ballistic missile threats, are currently very slow to manufacture. True Promise I used up an entire year’s worth of SM-3s.
The US does have a stockpile of interceptors but I doubt they would want to use them all on Israel’s defense when the benefits of supporting the entity are spiralling at a time where there is paranoia over anti-American threats in East Asia and Europe.
Like any military power dragged into war, factories will open up new positions and the interceptors will roll off the line faster as the fighting go on, but there may be moment before then where Israel will have to make extreme decisions over which targets are worth protecting.
Iran will face a similar issue with its own air defences which are under immense attrition right now, and production facilities are much more at risk than the overseas suppliers that Israel can leverage.
Iran is definitely facing the same issue, but I think Iran (and Israel) have identified Iran’s win condition: Make the already overextended Zionist state unsustainable through exodus. Iranians have nowhere to go and will fight for Iran. Israelis are attempting to flee in such large quantities that Israel banned nationals from leaving on flights.
Although, as we’ve seen with the west trying to provide munitions to Ukraine, this can be slow to happen or not happen at all if the capitalists think the conflict is gonna be over before investing in more productive capacity is worth it
Well, there’s a very big disparity in size too though. An Israeli bomb might be 3x bigger than an Iranian missile, but if Israel only has a small number of critical infrastructure locations then Iran doesn’t need nearly as much firepower to make Israel uninhabitable compared to what Israel needs to do to Iran