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.
I don’t know, it doesn’t seem like hyperbole to me, actually quite the opposite. Assuming a conservative rate of 100 missiles per month, that would be 1200 a year. Just 20 years would be 24,000. And unless they can expire, they’d likely be storing them safely underground. Keep in mind that we also don’t know if they have underground missile factories and how much they can produce and what they can produce, though I strongly doubt they don’t have at least 5 underground factories spread throughout the country. Moreover, this number is likely for just their basic missiles.
Iran has known for many decades that Shitrael wants to destroy it. It would be strategically unwise to not prepare for that and even more unwise to not over-prepare, especially when factoring in the west powers that give their rabid project unlimited support and the fact that they may directly attack Iran too, as we’ve seen so far. Additionally, they would have factored in how many missiles and/or drones it takes to pierce air defenses and actually land a successful hit. Something like 5-10% success rate would not be unreasonable, even 1% wouldn’t. However, that’s assuming air defenses cannot be disabled. But as we’ve seen, they’ve successfully eliminated a lot of them, hence the smaller waves in the past few days and thus the conservation of more missiles.
There are all kinds of scenarios that could play out. Having a massive arsenal of missiles greatly increases the number of possible strategies.
Also, as Iran does not have nukes, that leaves them without an equivalent Samson option. Though, in Iran’s case it would likely be to ensure their enemies are also eliminated should they face the possibility of defeat. This in contrast to the real terrorists, who want to indiscriminately destroy the entire world should their power be threatened, including all living things on this planet.
It is much better to vastly overestimate your enemy rather than underestimate them. The former is sagacity while the latter is hubris.
If they were perfectly rational, yes they would have been mass producing missiles the entire time. I fear though, like their lax attitude towards anti-air systems, they may have been half-assing. Iran has a tendency to half-ass two contradictory paths instead of committing to one. Their reformist posture to the west to get sanctions lifted directly conflicts with their IRGC network of proxies throughout the middle-east designed to fight with Israel (the axis of resistance). They were neither able to fully commit to selling out to become good puppies, or to destroying israel and liberating palestine. They let the axis wither on the vine, all of their allies fall militarily, and did not respond forcefully enough with their missiles. They held back due to reformists who wanted to negotiate, who ended up getting nothing for all their trouble except assassinated.
If only Iran was irrational and indecisive we would’ve seen them contained without a war being necessary. It is only thanks to the indecisive and irrational nature of Israel and America that Iran had a chance to prepare at all, and that the axis of resistance has been able to draw the amount of blood from the entity as it has.
As for whether that means Iran has 22,000 or 2,200 missiles, fuck knows lmao.