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.

Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

Israel-Palestine Conflict

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.

    • PorkrollPosadist [he/him, they/them]English
      14•3 hours ago

      They make a good point about the Fordow nuclear facility, regarding how absolutely telegraphed this attack has been made. We’ve all been reading about it in the media. News anchors have been talking about it for days, with fucking props and graphics and maps and shit. Iran is going to have the place completely surrounded with the very best countermeasures at their disposal. They’ve had an entire week to prepare these defenses. The attack is likely impossible at this moment of full alert. If it was ever going to work, Friday the 13th was their best chance. At this point, the planned operation is either hopeless wish-casting by the media, or a diversion.

      • MarmiteLover123 [comrade/them, any]English
        10•2 hours ago

        Attack was also telegraphed on Natanz for weeks if not months, many (including myself) thought that it would be the number one target if Israel go at it alone on the offensive side. Yet it still happened and was successful in some aspects, more than many thought possible.

        International Atomic Energy Agency:

        • Iran: Based on continued analysis of high resolution satellite imagery collected after Friday’s attacks, the IAEA has identified additional elements that indicate direct impacts on the underground enrichment halls at Natanz.
        • No change to report at Esfahan and Fordow.

        Source

        The question with regards to Iran’s air defence network, is how networked/integrated it actually is in the absence of the S-300 system, whose command posts can control other Soviet era/Russian systems. During the great prophet exercise, Iran accidentally revealed, in a public video, that the air defence systems at the Natanz nuclear facility were not networked or integrated with each other at all, their radars did not share data with each other and operated independently. So that’s a potential big issue. Article on that here from May 19, highly recommend reading

        Interestingly, the S-300 radars struck by the Israelis in retaliation for the April missile attack which are also part of the layered air defense system for Natanz are not depicted in this command center.

        This absence, along with the separation between the three different radar displays in the command center, suggest that if there is some networking of air defense radars in Iran, it is somewhat limited. The lack of fusion in the data may reflect the age and varied origin of the hardware involved, it may also reflect the more fragmented nature of Iranian air defenses.

        If the air defence network is as fragmented as we suspect, I’m not confident that it can do anything to stop a US assault, no matter how telegraphed beforehand, with F-22s, EA-18Gs, F-35s , and of course the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber. They’ll fly too high for AA gunfire to hit, and aside from the electronic warfare and suppression of enemy air defences aircraft in the EA-18G, it’s a complete stealth strike package. Israel also don’t have EA-18Gs and F-22s, which is part of why they can’t fly all over Iran right now, just in the west and Tehran.

        • PorkrollPosadist [he/him, they/them]English
          5•1 hour ago

          Thanks for your analysis. I suppose “impossible” is not a precise way of phrasing it. What makes it seem impossible to me is the trade-off between risk and reward, rather than the theoretical feasibility. Assuming they can arrive within range of the target unmolested by AA guns (if not completely undetected), there is still the question of if the GBU-57 is capable of penetrating deep enough. I am also curious how effective these “precision guidance” kits are on a 30,000 pound weapon when it is being deployed from the altitudes needed to remain out of range from AA fire (not too high, I suppose) and detection (higher, I imagine). I suppose it is possible, and I am sure they applied billions of dollars worth of research and development to the problem, but it is certainly a difficult engineering challenge. You drop the bomb out of a plane and it is on a ballistic trajectory, and you can only alter that trajectory so much, especially when it is that massive.

          There is a lot of uncertainty and risks involved to achieve an objective which has no military value at all beyond propaganda. There is no nuclear weapon being disarmed here, just the protection of Israel’s ego and “affirmation” of US WMD claims, while exposing the US directly to military retaliation as well as ensuring the retaliatory missile strikes against Israel continue. I feel like the US would be better served by keeping the capabilities of these weapons purely theoretical, rather than potentially demonstrating their limitations on a target which provides no tactical benefit. If the attack fails, not only do they get nothing out of it, but the “Iran model” of simply building sensitive infrastructure deep underground basically becomes more deeply established as a viable strategy.

    • D61 [any]English
      21•4 hours ago

      So long as they don’t look down… they’ll be fine. biden-megamind