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.
This is a war that Iran cannot lose.
Iran will not be another Iraq, ruined by decades of sanctions because (1) it’s already adjusted to sanctions and (2) Russia and china are its partners.
Iran won’t be defeated by missiles alone. Even if they lose their nuclear program… so what? That’s the status quo. Iran doesn’t have nukes now. Nothing actually changes.
Iran won’t be invaded by ground forces. Israel can’t do it and likely even America couldn’t do it. Iran is strong and has backing. It would be like Afghanistan except against a modern fighting force. America couldn’t even do Afghanistan 2.0 right now, it cannot invade Iran.
Iran won’t be bombed into submission and face a regime change. It’s clear the mood of the people isn’t there.
Iran has won. It’s a question of how many civilians get killed before the west acknowledges this.
Iran’s nuclear program cannot be destroyed without striking the functioning nuclear reactor at Beshehr Nuclear Plant, which currently houses hundreds of Russian civilian workers. If it is damaged, it could cause a “chernobyl-like event” according to the Russians, and they are refusing to remove their workers from the location.
Will Israel and America actually hit a nuclear plant with hundreds of russian civilians in it? That’s quite the line for them to cross.
creating a new Chernobyl on the coast of the Persian Gulf where the radioactivity cloud could conceivably reach a few gulf monarchies whose oil output supports the world economy would be madness
forget Iran closing off the Strait of Hormuz, if the wind is blowing in the “right” direction, bombing Beshehr might take out a chunk of the world’s oil output for years if not decades
I think we should consider that the ME oil = world economy narrative may be overestimated.
The US is self sufficient already and they’re also supplying the EU. The “world economy” is already in shambles, the EU is in a recession since 2022, yes markets will crash, commodity prices skyrocket, but we should consider that in actual practice the impact on the west may not be as big as people are assuming here.
The calculation may well be the pain is worth it because the US isn’t going to be the one suffering the most. If this is what they believe then all this calculation based on “the US can’t do X because it would destroy the Gulf oil production” is moot.
Also it goes without saying it is China the one to lose out the most if we have another commodities boom. It is China the one primarily looking for cheap oil and cheap food, not the US.
The US is self sufficient but it’s also part of a global capitalist economy. If China is suddenly more interested in buying US oil, the price goes up for everyone. Biden might have loved Israel enough to double gas prices on a whim but I don’t know if Trump does.
The us still loses, because they are not going to tell their producers to stop exporting or put a price cap on them, so oil prices will go up just as much, and industrial civilization is not visible after a certain point.
I do not think institutional investors will let oil e.g Brent go over 100-120 in the worst case. Assume they could be wrong by 2x, hitting 200+ seems like a WW3 scenario and Gulf oil is very short of that yet.
There is absolutely way too money to be made by manipulating the price up and down.
They have spent the last 2 years pushing the China “weak demand” narrative in order to push oil price down. There are billions and who knows how many huge players deeply invested into shorting oil for the long term. Some of them are getting out now but not everyone, in fact nothing ever happens gang exist in the financial market too and the “China weak demand” narrative will stay dominant.
All that market shit is ultimately meaningless, its an input output thing, if you reduce inputs by 30 percent you reduce outputs by 30 percent, perhaps more due to economies of scale. Financial alchemy won’t magically produce more oil.
That is the thing, I agree with you, but the US is self sufficient and the EU already gets LNG from the US now so whose outputs are getting reduced by 30%? Maybe the EU is at some risk but not the US and if we say the global south again, I don’t think anyone actualy cares about it, we`re in the endgame where as far as everyone is concerned the “world economy” is just an euphemism for US and China.
Again back to the point this could just lead to another commodities boom that benefited the OG BRICS back in 2005-2010. Today’s BRICS aren’t concerned about oil hurting industry since we have none. Except from China all of BRICS are primarily commodity exporters not industrialized nations.
The biggest losers in all of this would be the global south seeing food prices skyrocket like in 2022.
But unless the us starts imposing price caps, export bans, you can’t escape the reduction,
Trump is backed by the national extraction class - I assume texas and lousiana capitalist would like for gulf oil to be more in demand?
So… why are they so fixated on Fordo? Just because it’s depth would require American involvement so it’s a convenient subject to fixate on to draw America into the war? If they can never hit Beshehr then they cannot eliminate Iran’s nuclear program. They have lost.
It’s my understanding that since Beshehr is a light water reactor, it can’t be used effectively for the creation of nuclear weapons, and that in addition to that Russia provides enriched fuel, and removes spent fuel.
Weapons either come from enriched Uranium (Fordow) or Plutonium (non-operational Arak).
100%
As 72T said above, say goodbye to the gulf states then and world oil production
US ghouls: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj8tyjmV_Rw
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
That would be the 2nd most extreme act Israel / US could do, and even then at most they get the “win” of maintaining the status quo of a non-nuclear Iran.
You could call that a “win” for Israel since it’s a stated objective but it’s a loss for the empire since it doesn’t result in the US winning domination of the Middle East, and if iran is left standing by the end of this then they’ve beaten the great satan which means they’ve won.
The most extreme act would be a nuclear strike on Tehran but conceivably Pakistan nukes Israel if that happens, and Israel’s response to that will be to nuke European capitals since it’s not going down alone. So I think we can’t scratch this possibility off the list.
I feel like if they do this, Russia enters the war directly. They supply Iran with nuclear weaponry. They stop giving a fuck.