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.
Well Hexbear crew, looks like our analysis was correct on Israel running low on anti-missile defenses. Israel has between 10-12 days of anti-missile munitions without resupply from the U.S.
Link to separate discussion post & Link to the article
Per Washington Post:
Given this knowledge, we may be seeing something quite interesting strategically from Iran. I would not be surprised if they’ve figured the right amount of missiles to launch and where in order to draw out the best (highest, aka worst for Israeli stockpile) ratio of anti-missile defenses to ballistic missiles launched. Iran knows that its missile production is more efficient in cost (significantly so) and quantity than anti-missile production.
Iran is also aware that the United States is probably unlikely to willingly toss all of its anti-missile munitions over to Israel, when those anti-missile munitions are likely to be far more valuable in the event of a PRC reunification with Taiwan that the U.S. intervenes in.
Well there’s our answer on why the US is deploying right now, if they don’t the Entity risks annihilation at the hands of Iran’s missiles.
100%
Well done by everyone here with analysis of each barrage that we were able to piece this together so much sooner than Israel would ever admit
We did it Hexbear!!
(came off a tad snarkier than I meant it)
It really seems like “the tail wagging the dog” to me. Israel purposefully painted itself into a corner to force the US to intervene. If they don’t, Israel gets destroyed and Iran gets nukes.
The critical thing holding back Iran from making nukes is the US and NATO, not Israel itself, IMO. And it’s more of a failure ideologically/politically of their ruling class that doesn’t identify how the reactionary imperialists really operate.
Assuming the US and Israeli alliance runs as deep as we know it does, would the Americans not be aware of the Israeli ABM stockpiles? A bunch of the factories producing them are in the US after all.
We need to turn up the heat saturate them enough to bring that timeline down to 3-4 days.
That won’t happen unless the U.S. intervenes. I believe Iran is playing a very delicate game of “do as much as you can without actually provoking the U.S. to intervene”
Explains why the US is jumping in when they are.
Yep. If the Zionist entity runs too low in anti-missile munitions, they are beyond cooked. We would see a mass exodus of the civilian population. Israel is currently running emergency REPATRIATION flights to bring settlers home to Israel who are “stuck” overseas while they face by far their biggest existential threat to their existence in recent history
While the situation looks grim in many ways, it’s also the closest I have seen the Entity to collapse.
Can’t say I’m surprised. Those missiles aren’t cheap. Even with all the Israelis strikes, I’d doubt they have that close to enough ammo to stop everything Iran can throw at them.
Sounds like the most opportune moment to cause real harm to Israel before things escalate significantly and hurting them gets much more difficult is today, then, no?
That really depends on Iran’s assessment of their ability to weather more attacks. If they can continue to fire missiles at a steady rate, exhausting those systems, while lasting for a few weeks of bombardment, it is probably better to be patient. If they think the joint US-Israeli strike force that’s incoming is going to cripple their ability to strike Israel, then it’s probably better to go all out right now.
Yeah I mean hopefully the Iranian military isn’t paying the Trump agitation as much mind as we are, but it really seems like Trump wants to cripple them.
The big question is if he’s capable, and I don’t think anybody really knows for sure.
The fact they haven’t gone all out yet leads me to believe not provoking the U.S. is the most important part of their calculus here
Assuming this is true, there is a chance, albeit small and tainted with copium, that Iran is pulling back on their strikes because they don’t want to cause too much devastation for fear of excessive escalation, while also generating the same impact as the 100-missile barrages did.
I guess the only thing I can think about the changes in the dynamics is that having Iran move from sending 100 missile barrages to 20 or 30 so drastically seems to be a voluntary decision. It would not make sense that even if Israel was destroying silos throughout all of these days, that the missiles would have run out so fast. It could have been a more gradual process.
Additionally, the big hit that iran got was on Day 1 on Friday, if they considered their stocks to be very low, it would have not made sense for them to have sent a large portion of it, namely 200 missiles, on day 1, considering that would leave them unarmed immediately after.
I think a large part of Iran’s small barrages right now is waiting to see what the United States does. They’ll need all the missiles they can get if and when the US goes in.
I think Zionist aviation is preventing deployment in western Iran, the most successfull volley came from Ahwaz Wich is were air defences are still operational, otherwise it all depends on securing the sky, which was done for some periods, but this last day was very bad. The good thing is that the imperialists can’t sustain this level of sorties, and aa has been successful when deployed, but there are not enough systems
I do not think your first paragraph is copium at all. That seems like Iran’s exact train of thought.
Whether or not anything is too little to provoke the U.S. is a separate question