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.
checked what kind of stuff the Polish osint guy was saying yesterday...
With Russian help, Syria had well developed anti-air capabilities under Assad. Israel destroyed all of it half a year ago after the coup. Iraq has no anti-air capabilities and they recently complained to the UN about Israeli planes illegally using their airspace but of course no one in the 'international community' is doing anything about that.
A while ago Iran bought an unknown amount of Su-35S fighter planes from Russia and 4 to 6 were delivered in March 2025 but Iranian air force pilots still haven't finished training on them. Israel has showed some footage of damaged Iranian F-14s but apparently they already weren't in a flying state anyway. Iran's planes are generally dated (F-14, F-4, MiG-29).
About destroying Iran's anti air capabilities early on in the war.. Iran's most advanced radar/anti-air warning systems were destroyed by Israeli commandos using FPV drones and Spike NLOS missiles. This and some other attacks on long range radio location stations created holes in Iranian coverage which Israeli F-35s entered and fired off some special anti-radio location missiles to damage other anti-air targets (I'm not clear on this part). Only after all that, they sent in F-15D and F-16I Sufa planes to attack other targets. Aside from that, plane hangars, runways, and anti-air command centers were all damaged (for example runways in Kermanshah and Mashhad).
Iran shot down an expensive Israeli Hermes 900 drone and a few smaller things but there's currently no proof of Israeli planes being shot down.
Iran has a wide assortment of ballistic missiles (like Sejjil or Emad), they've been preparing to defend against a US/Israel attack for a long time. There are between 10 and 20 underground 'missile cities' in Iran with missile launchers inside set up like a conveyor belt. In the first few days of the war Iran was launching 40-50 ballistic missiles and now it's at 10-20, they also recently started using the newer ones like Fattah and Sejjil. Initially the Israeli interception rate was 85-90%, but the rate didn't increase when the missile count went down to 10-20. The interception rate during the last strikes on Be'er-Sheva and Tel Aviv was 65%. Iran is assuming this is going to be a long war so they used their oldest missiles first and those were easier to intercept because they're less technologically advanced. Plus Iranian engineers are constantly making improvements to the tech as the war goes on.
Some photos of the interior of the underground missile bases:
Some Israeli military and dual use locations where we have visual proof that Iranian strikes did damage:
One Chinese Il-76 transport plane landed in Iran, but only once apparently (or one every day? I couldn't tell), equivalent of '4 trucks worth' of goods, not known what but it's not much overall.
A Chinese intelligence gathering ship has entered the Persian Gulf but that's fairly common behavior during wars because during war planes will emit extra signals and it's valuable info to capture, for example to help with signal jamming.
The Fordo facility in Iran is 100m deep and the US's GBU-57 MOP bomb has a reach of between 40m (if rock mass/granite) or 60m (if reinforced concrete). Some experts are arguing the US would have to drop a second bomb into the crater of the first one. It weighs 13-14 tonnes so only a B-52 or a B-2 can carry it. In Yemen the US used B-2s to drop these.
Some US military being re-positioned: 3 US carriers (and with them their accompanying 'carrier groups' I guess..), 40 Boeing KC-10s, 15-20 F-22 Raptors, a few dozen F-35s moved from Europe (for example the Aviano air base in Italy), some F-16s moved from bases in the UK, 4 B-52s moved to Diego Garcia, and some B-2s could be joining them soon. One air base in Saudi Arabia currently has around 150 US planes. A UK carrier also got moved.
The way it's going he expects the US will enter the war soon, as soon as Saturday night this weekend.
They are certainly capable of that. Israeli F-35Is can carry the ROCKS Air Launched Ballistic Missile that has this capability, and the AGM-88E AND and AGM-88G AARGM-ER.
The GBU penetration numbers are too high I think. Wikipedia (amazing source I know) says 18m for reinforced concrete, and supposedly only at a strength MUCH weaker than the concrete available to Iran. Wiki said 2.4m of the highest strength.
https://web.archive.org/web/20250620075543/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-868e3c3d-25ec-43cb-bcc0-8832464b91ca
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2025/06/18/americas-huge-bunker-busting-bomb-is-not-sure-to-work-in-iran