this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2025
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Bulletins and News Discussion from June 16th to June 22nd, 2025 - Iran, Harden Your Heart
(hexbear.net)
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
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.
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Interesting set of commentaries. They are incredibly harsh towards Iran, but from a realpolitiks perspective:
https://nitter.net/PandemicTruther/status/1935021769762451584
https://nitter.net/PandemicTruther/status/1934358798904541316
https://nitter.net/PandemicTruther/status/1933980879996752224
My comments assuming the massive long threads are true:
The reformers have sold Iran down the river. They have done a whole lot harm, partially due to betrayal and partially due to general dumbassery on account of being useless libs. A lot of them need to be swinging from cranes, starting with this shithead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Javad_Zarif Seriously, go read the article. It has charming sentences like "Even though the United States did not make a promised reciprocal goodwill gesture at the time, Zarif remained committed to improving ties."
As soon as the West accuses a country of having WMDs, that country is now on a timetable. It has to get WMDs and turn the West's otherwise baseless accucation into a self-fulfilling prophecy or it will be destroyed. I think Iran tried to pivot the accusation into a form of strategic ambiguity, but like everyone here has said, they should've acquired nukes by any means necessary.
China will never militarily support Iran. That's Pakistan's job. China is the carrot while Pakistan is the stick. 80% of Pakistan's weapons come from China after all, so any military action due by Pakistan should be understood (and is being understood) as a military action done by China. If China truly doesn't want Pakistan to militarily intervene in Iran, a single phone call is all they need to get Pakistan to stand down. Any potential military action done by Pakistan against the Zionist entity would have been vetted and cosigned by China. I would not put it past China to officially condemn Pakistan should Pakistan intervene. But it's all kayfabe.
As an aside, I really hope they're not some anti-vaxxer crank lol
other than the name seems spot on. I've long been despairing about Pez and I bet it's his people leaking like sieves. Lock em up, they should be put in a padded cell for the next few months as the hardliner adults handle the war they stumbled into. Why are the only rational faction in Iranian politics the absolute hardline theocrats? It's so weird how there's not any more rational and loyal socially progressive factions, even if they are conservatives by our standards, given how educated and developed Iran is?
I do think after this is all said and done Iran needs to look inwards and do some major reforms, they need to advance socially and make whole some contradictions that have been chewing their social fabric apart. We love Iranian hardliner's foreign policy stances, but they have a lot of enemies for being absolute shit heels to their own people too. Obviously right now is not the time though, now is the time for unity and war. Sometimes war is illuminating and progresses a society, like China in WW2 or the American Civil War leading to slavery being abolished and the slaves freed even though neither side even wanted that at the start.
They need to become more hardline on imperialism but after they must become more liberal? Not sure about this one
Doesn't take becoming liberal to realize the same thing that the GDR did: repressing sexual minorities and women when the imperialists give them much more freedom creates brain drain, causes the kind of dissent that imperialists will exploit, and even creates possible assets for the enemy if they can gather blackmail. So just give them freedom, that's not liberalism.