Now in our second week of the conflict, we have seen continuing damage to both Israel and Iran, as well as direct US intervention which nonetheless seems to have caused limited damage to Fordow and little damage to Iran’s nuclear program. Regime change seems more elusive than ever, as even Iranians previously critical of the government now rally around it as they are attacked by two rabid imperialists at once. And Iran’s government is tentatively considering a withdrawal, or at minimum a reconsideration, of their membership to the IAEA and the NPT. And, of course, the Strait of Hormuz is still a tool in their arsenal.
A day or so on from the strike on Fordow, we have so far seen basically no change in strategy from the Iranian military as they continue to strike Israel with small barrages of missiles. Military analysts argue furiously - is this a deliberate strategy of steady attrition on Israel, or indicative of immense material constraints on Iran? Are the hits by Israel on real targets, or are they decoys? Does Iran wish to develop a nuke, or are they still hesitating? Will Iran and Yemen strike at US warships and bases in response to the attack, or will they merely continue striking only Israel?
And perhaps most importantly - will this conflict end diplomatically due to a lack of appetite for an extended war (to wit: not a peace but a 20 year armistice) or with Israel forced into major concessions including an end to their genocide? Or even with a total military/societal collapse of either side?
Last week’s thread is here. The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
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.
Exactly. All comes down to Iran having no control of its airspace. Once they lost that they lost the ability to launch missiles as they please as the zionists will obviously spot and bomb them to stop it. The US bombing allegedly used a number of radar-seeking missiles and opened up paths for deeper penetration into Iran by the zionist air force.
Biggest mistake they made was not getting a nuke. Second biggest mistake was not getting proper anti-air capabilities. Third biggest mistake was trusting the west in any way.
Iran has the problem of being run by a mixture of fundamentalists and liberal reformers. The liberals are hopelessly west-brained and always will be. The west keeps stabbing them in the back. The fundamentalists are out-gunned and pressured domestically by the liberal reformers because they offer the population what they want in terms of domestic policies which include the idea of easing their strict islamic rules on things like hair coverings.
They messed this up on so many levels and in so many ways. Their regional alliances are in shambles. They themselves have been shown to be a paper tiger (announcing strikes to the US before-hand so no one gets hurt, not able to maintain missile strikes because no control of air space, US waltzing in and bombing them) and will reap the penalties as the zionist entity and the US will return again and again to peck at them until they fall. They are certainly moving ahead with destabilization plans like Syria and Libya and when those start off in earnest the zionists will start attacking again.
This is humiliation, this is capitulation to the entity and allowing it to continue carrying out its genocide, not even extracting a ceasefire for Gaza out of this. But I suspect many more humiliations are yet to come.
31 of these missiles according to the USA.
They had as good as they could realistically get at the time, multiple S-300 PMU-2 batteries from Russia, delivered a decade late as Russia was afraid of sanctions. But Israel destroyed them last October. Which is the problem. Russia and China have “chickened out” on delivering advanced military technology to Iran out of fear of US sanctions. And when they do deliver, it’s a day late and a dollar short, Iran gets S-300 PMU-2 when they needed S-400 and S-300V4, etc.
They should have stolen better tech then or had some sort of a plan. You can’t let the enemy control your skies. You have nothing then. All those missiles are useless because they can suppress your launch abilities. Perhaps not entirely their fault but I just don’t think their leadership is competent.
Russia and China both should have stopped cowering from US sanctions after Ukraine started. It’s obvious they use selective pressure to prevent these big countries from assisting the smaller anti-imperialist nations and because neither wants to take a personal hit they just stick with the slow ratcheting up of US sanctions on their militaries. For one Russia should have after 1 year of Ukraine and harsh sanctions sold Iran the rights and know-how to build s400 equivalent systems in retaliation for western sanctions. If they had it would have taught the west a lesson about fucking with them and sanctioning them but instead what the west learned is you can sanction them all the way and they’ll still be nervous to do anything.