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.
Is this whole thing unprecedented in the history of nuclear energy? I mean, is nuke production the complete reason behind this campaign against Iran? Was there ever so much aggression towards a country developing nuclear plants?
In LATAM, for example, there are three countries with nuclear energy: Brazil, Argentina and Mexico. Have they faced so much pushback during their initial phases? I know Lula had a big "anti-nuke" image during the building of Brazil's plants, so maybe that was why
no the IAEA said iran wasn't working on a bomb and fucking tulsi gabbard said their intel was also that they weren't working on a bomb.
they've whipped tulsi into line and now she's repeating the 'iran could have a nuke within 2 weeks' dogma
It's very obvious the nuke shit is fake as hell, and the real goal is regime change/breaking the country like Lebanon. Iran is the last country on the list of 7 nations that were to be overthrown. It was just to get America's toes wet to check the temperature, we'll see America cannonball in soon
Good luck making a regime change in Iran happen now. The government was just handed one massive pr victory and their conventional military is strong enough that it won't be overrun by ISISrael militias any time soon.
Israel and America are willing to turn Tehran into Gaza to "destroy Hamas" sorry I mean "the regime". For them regime change means millions dead through bombing campaigns. Shock and awe means wiping out civilian infrastructure that supports life.
I don't think so. Iran still has anti-air capabilities, can get resupplied by China, and now the US officially claimed to have destroyed the nuclear capabilities so there will be no 'nuke' to justify a 'preemptive' nuke. The reason isntreal could do to Gaza what it did was because they had complete control of borders, air food and water. They are neither in artillery range nor conventional bomb range.
The isntreal army itself has shown itself to be worse than shit. They can't even use their most advanced strategies like driving unaccompanied tanks into cities here, and if their pilots are anything like those ground soldiers, they won't ever enter east Iran.
Or I'm just high on copium rn. Idk.
Read Michael Hudson here: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/06/michael-hudson-why-america-is-at-war-with-iran.html
The whole point is destabilization. America is using Israel to destabilize the Middle East just like how it has been using Ukraine to keep Russia busy. It is to prevent the Global Majority from seeking an alternative framework to the US dominated neoliberal order - or whatever brand of fascism it is trying to transition into right now.
Iran has its own industrial base but it is not like Russia with its remnant socialist industrial base, and certainly has suffered a lot under sanctions. It will need a lot of foreign aid, and even then, the whole country is going to suffer with a war going on. If it’s a long war, then we’re looking at years of lost economic development.
For the US, it doesn’t care. It wants chaos, trade flow disruption, killing the economy of the exporting countries so that they come to beg for a deal, which will open up their domestic economy to influx of foreign finance capital. If the US have its way, expect to see record IMF or foreign capital bailouts over the next few years.
This is why an alternative economic and financial framework is needed. We’ve had the chance 3 years ago when the Ukraine war started, but because the so-called BRICS did not have the political will to come together and do it, the whole window of opportunity for de-dollarization has been utterly wasted.
The only card left to play that I can see is for China to give up its net exporter status to absorb the surplus exports from the rest of the world, but the Chinese leaders are very unwilling to do it. They want to convince the US to go back to the status quo which they both enjoyed for the past couple decades.
Conclusion: nothing matters unless the notoriously do-nothing Chinese leaders do something
I don't think they would get all the way to gaza levels, where 95% of buildings are damaged or destroyed. That requires demolition teams and bulldozers and occupation. I think it could get to Beirut or Damascus levels, both of which Israelis threatened to "turn into Gaza" and then used the Dahiya doctrine to smash the cities apart. They aren't Gaza, but the damage is incalculable. The historic buildings and centuries of culture and decades of development all gone. This is what the Americans also did during "Shock and Awe" in Baghdad, killing hundreds of thousands of people and destroying all power/water/utilities/etc. They will also likely target mosques, police stations, schools and hospitals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahiya_doctrine
Israeli infantry and tank forces are pathetic, that you are correct about. I don't think we'll see them anywhere near Iran for quite some time. It will be airstrikes and drones and missiles and carbombs and the like.
The thing about the Dahiya warcrime doctrine is, that it wont work nearly as smoothly on a country like Iran as it does with militias. Iran has the resources to help families targeted by isntreal back on its feet economically, while said families would just be massively pissed off. It "works" against militias in poor countries because isntreal threatens them with long-term economic devastation while said militias can hardly strike back.
As long as the US can't manufacture enough consent to carpet bomb cities and industrial sites, pissrael is shit out of luck with their terror strategies. And the US has already shown they are hesitating at least somewhat. If they get involved, it will be against the Iranian military targets like balistic missile launchers first, not cities.
Iran needs more anti-air urgently, but they are at least mostly prepared for this sort of war. isntreal isn't.
I disagree heavily with every sentence in this paragraph.
Consent manufacturing no longer matters, this war is massively unpopular and they never even bothered with coming up with a justification. It's naked aggression.
Where did they show this? You falling for Trump kayfabe like the Iranians did multiple times in a row? They attacked exactly when Sy Hersh leaked that they would. The "two weeks" thing was fake and misdirection. The operation was scheduled the whole time and went off exactly when scheduled. Israel's initial attack last Friday was with Trump's full knowledge and blessing. They are all fully committed to the most extreme zionist option. If you look at what they do and not what they say, it's always the most bloodthirsty and aggressive option and they throw up a smokescreen of "negotiations" or "chickening out" to throw people off.
They will do SEAD/DEAD to clear out anti-air systems and clear the pathway for Israeli jets to do stand-in strikes on the city, the terror bombings. America will also hit dual-use infrastructure such as bridges, rail stations, power plants, etc.
Destroying the missile stockpiles and launchers will probably be the excuse the media uses for America to re-engage in the conflict. It will spread from there to SEAD/DEAD to clear out anti-air, railways, then to bridges, etc.
I think consent manufacturing matters at least somewhat in the sense that it limits the pace of American aggression. The public opinion in the US doesn't matter in the slightest, but they still have to advance a narrative here.
The US can plan around consent manufacturing, but it can not outright ignore it.
If public opinion doesn't matter who is the narrative for?
The narrative is all that matters in the spectacle that is US politics. As long as both parties go along with their slightly varied warmongering take, and keep the discussion going on their terms, the public opinion on single issues doesn't matter. They need to seem "reasonable" only in relation to each other.
Trump could literally just say he's doing it kill arabs (despite Iranians not being arab for the most part) and then never make another statement on the war and it wouldn't slow the war down one iota. The machine is totally detached from the populace. American people are completely subservient and cowed. Zionism reigns supreme, totally unmoored. They just did a genocide right in front of everyone and gaslit us and said "no we didn't". It doesn't matter anymore. They don't give a fuck. They're slaughtering starving children as they stumble up to the fake aid distribution sites by shelling them with tanks into crowds.
There has to be the illusion that politics is going on on a national level though, to keep the US regime anchored. Things still can't move too fast to give the illusion of deliberation and tough decisionmaking.
As you said, this whole farce was all planned out, but the US still couldn't fully join in on day 1. They needed sufficient buildup and propaganda in place first. Something isntreal didn't need.
The public can be 90% against something in the US and the government can still do it, if you give them a week.
No it was better this way for the US. The good cop-bad cop routine bought them the element of surprise, and continues to pay dividends with salami slicing tactics. If America just immediately went in with Israel then they would have both just blown their load and then gotten into an attrition situation. This way they get the element of surprise several times and keep getting to do a strike and dance away, do a strike and dance away, etc. America is playing this "strategic ambiguous" game where they simultaneously say two contradicting things: If you retaliate against us we'll fully commit to the war and you won't like that & we're just gonna do a limited attack real quick.
Except there was no element of surprise left this time. The sites the US struck were evacuated already.
But as long as the US tries to keep up this "game", they are not fully committed to carpet bombing cities or doing SEAD.
Yet there is hesitancy in a retaliation and nothing yet done against the US (other than Ansarallah breaking its ceasefire, but that's Ansarallah not Iran). They are caught in a bind because if they retaliate, they draw in America more directly and they still think to themselves... maybe we can buy time to keep America at bay if we play nice. If they didn't think this way, why haven't they hit US assets in retaliation yet? What is staying their hand and warping their decision making?
America is in no rush. They can slowly escalate and boil the frog. They can slowly increase their involvement bit by bit until Iran finally hits them back hard enough for them to give up their ruse. They will never declare war though, they will just slightly increase the pressure forever until Iran fully attacks back and makes it a war
And each day they do so, more missiles drop on Tel aviv. The US isn't on a timer, but the Zionazis might be.
True, that is the one hope Iran has. Complete and total destruction of "Israel" to such an extent that the majority of its population leaves and the economy collapses. To do this they must strengthen their attacks, and I think every time the US escalates against them - if they won't hit back they should at least hit Israel just as hard in exchange.
However, America will be able to float Israel for a long time. They've floated Ukraine for almost 3 years now, paying all their public salaries and pensions. "Investing" money in domestic war production of drones. Israel is a lot smaller and would be a lot cheaper to float.
In addition, if America goes all-in they easily have the assets and capability to suppress and destroy most of the anti-air and get air superiority or even supremacy. Iran has little to no air-force to speak of and there's tactics to hunt down and kill anti-air systems. Plus unfortunately a lot of the long range systems capable of hitting jets were destroyed by mossad operatives on Friday via sabotage and RPG and drone strikes. S300s and the Iranian domestic equivalent are in extremely short supply.
Ukraine was able to stave off Russia for years from getting air supremacy over most of Ukraine, but that's only because A) The Russian airforce is not quite as advanced or large as America's and B) Ukraine was getting pumped full of patriot systems and other western air defense systems. Will China supply an equivalent amount of anti-air systems to Iran?
There was rumors of up to 5 F35s shot down last weekend, with a pilot supposedly captured. I'm yet to see any proof of these claims actually materialize.
Yeah. The worst thing the US could do to Iran is something like the "No fly zone" bs they pulled in Libya and hunt down the AA, but that wont be nearly as effective without a simultaneous ground invasion.
As long as Iran plays a little hide and seek with their AA, even just shoots down one isntreal plane once in a while, that might just be enough deterrence. We've yet to see a war being fought where no ground troops/insurgents are deployed, which makes this hard to predict.
If AA is moving or hiding it cannot do it's job. It cannot use its radar and it cannot fire its missiles. It is suppressed during that time until it can set up somewhere and connect back to the radar network. The network loses that radar during that time as well and loses coverage in an area.
This is a layman's description of SEAD, when combined with Electronic Warfare jamming. Keep the enemy AA hiding, moving, afraid to turn on its radar and isolated from the rest of the network. If Iran is at the point where they have to do this in their capital city, then America/Israel would have achieved air superiority and the ability to do tons of bombing runs at their pleasure.
The possible presence of functional AA makes bombing campaigns a lot harder though, as you have to keep SEAD up constantly. It's very different from countries that don't have AA whatsoever. Mostly, it is a lot more costly.
Yes it will be costly. Lots of jet fuel and bombs too. Good thing America doesn't have a trillion dollar unlimited budget... oh wait
In the end it all still comes down to money though. There is only so much the US can still suck out of its population without touching the bottom line of their rich, they lack sufficient industrial capacity to balance out losses, and we have no clear grasp on their stockpiles.
As long as USD is the global reserve currency, no there really is no functional limit to the spending the US can do. They have the infinite money hack. Mass printing will never devalue the dollar and cause inflation because it's so in demand worldwide that it all just gets snapped up. The debt can go to ten quadrillion it don't matter, people will buy it.
Also, wasting money is the point. The MIC makes massive profits, and massive amounts of fixed capital is destroyed in both the west and in Iran - thus increasing the overall rate of profit in the system. This is the point of imperialism.
The issue with the statements you've made in this comment thread is that it implies an eternal system of imperialism (there can be no opposition because the US is too powerful, if they win they make profit, if they lose they make profit, that plus the dollar system means they will always enough money, if that's the case then guerrilla wars won't work, conventional wars won't work, nuclear wars end humanity so those don't work, etc) and if that's the case then Mao is wrong, Stalin is wrong, Lenin is wrong, Marx is wrong, and many other figures are wrong, but those figures created successful models of economics and society that have worked well up to this point so it would be strange if in 2025 we crossed some magical event horizon at which the theories broke down.
It's like solving an equation and at every step you think you're making valid assumptions and then like, your soccer ball weighs 292 tons and travels 3000 mph, and you're like, oh shit, this is the wrong answer, I made a mistake somewhere.
I never said the imperialists will even win here. I never said conventional or guerrilla war were futile. But we should be realistic about what to expect in this war, and anyone saying Tehran isn't going to get the shit carpet bombed out of it is living in a bit of delusion and in for a rude shock. There will be mass death and mass destruction of infrastructure. However, Iran has the ability to inflict that right back onto the entity. If Israel shatters first, then Iran will have achieved victory. If we're talking about a war of attrition here with America having air superiority, I hope you all know what that means. It means Korean War levels of ordinance sent in on guided bombs.
There is no way for Iran to get out of it unfortunately short of pulling a nuke from their ass. They played their cards wrong leading up to this and they are stuck in this war now. If Iran's sovereignty and coherency is to survive this, they will need to fight back via a protracted total war at a certain point and race for the bomb. The strait of hormuz economic nuke is their last major card, but if they wait too long to play it they might lose the ability to do so. Will Iran exercise the political will to take such a bold move when they thus far have never escalated, only went tit-for-tat?
I also said US has functionally unlimited spending (btw not actually unlimited, if China and others stop buying American debt and stop holding their reserves in USD then this magic printer's efficiency rate plummets and inflation becomes a real concern), but that doesn't mean they have unlimited war production. They do have fixed amounts of munitions and pretty abysmal production levels. Still enough to level huge parts of Iran, but not even to actually win the war. Doing something like attriting Israel of interceptors should be a very attainable goal, and it opens up new options.
Note how I also said "as long as USD is the global reserve currency", another weak point to attack the imperialists from. But this is outside of Iran's direct control, China really needs to lead on this or it will not happen in any realistic timeframe. China could also lead a trade war upon the west and directly limit their resources in such a way that would cause bottlenecks in their war logistics chains. Will China do any of this? Or will they continue to do nothing and profit until they are isolated and surrounded?
The point of imperialism is getting access to cheap labor, resources and markets to exploit. The war in Iran does not directly facilitate these aims, it only protects what is already archived. Iran, as a power aligned against the US, was a threat, not an opportunity.
There will be no profitable infrastructure projects from this in the US's future, except maybe in isntreal. No massive PMC security contracts or resource deals. There is little to "win" here if they don't manage a regime change, which it looks like they won't.
This is the US fighting a war they need to fight to keep the conditions you mentioned, not something that will advance their imperial ambitions. This is a war that will cost the US, not benefit it.
Simply the destruction of fixed capital and de-development of the area is a sufficient goal, in and of itself. Iran is plugged into the global system, it will need investments and rebuilding. This raises the rate of profit in the entire system, and sends Iran backwards in its development, delaying its growth and eliminating it as a threat. They don't need to regime change Iran necessarily, although that would be nice, they just need to break the country like they did in Lebanon and Syria (even before Assad's fall).
Iran is also removed from the global system through sanctions. The only nations profiting from rebuilding will be China and Russia mainly. It's not the entire system, like it was with the other countries. This is an attempt at eliminating a threat militarily, because their attempt at doing so economically already failed.
Chinese markets right now are inextricably and deeply interwoven with western markets
if iran doesn't respond to this attack they might get a regime change that hates america even more than the current government.
iran 2, this time with no libs allowed
Yes but not in the way you seem to be getting at. It's unprecedented for nations to do direct strikes on nuclear reactors and nuclear centrifuges and places where enriched uranium is stored. I think the only other time I can think of is the Ukrainian artillery shelling of Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. Oh yeah they also fired a false flag rocket at Chernobyl containment area to cause an incident if I recall correctly.
Didn't israel bomb the nuclear reactor saddam built and that he never bothered to rebuild?
Let me explain this better:
Latin American Nuclear Powers
Mexico: Mexico has had their own nuclear capabilities since the 70's, but they have signed an agreement to never develop nuclear weapons, and they also promoted anti-nuclear stuff. I guess the PRI didn't mind nuclear weapons, as long as they never did anything against the US, and even if the US ever invaded them, they could just attack the US mainland with non-nuclear weapons.Brazil: Brazil started (there was an attempt during the 1950s under the second Vargas government, but never got started because the CIA mess with it) to develop its nuclear program during the 1970s under the extreme right-wing military dictatorship. They worked with West Germany and China to develop the nuclear power plants, which became known as Angra I (started up near the end of the military regime) and Angra II (started up in 2000). In the late 1970s and 1980s, Brazil and Argentina had a nuclear rivalry, as both sought to have their own nuclear weapons. The United States then became angry and began to force Brazil and Argentina to give up their nuclear weapons program. In the 1990s, the neoliberal Collor government signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty and destroyed most of the prototype nuclear weapons Brazil had created. Under Lula and every other government since, Brazil has had the capability to have nuclear weapons, but never actually attempted to build one. Brazil keeps its nuclear energy and enrichment programs secret from the rest of the world. Lula das Silva refused to allow U.S. inspectors to see how uranium enrichment worked in Brazil. More recently Brazil was building a nuclear submarine with help from France, but then the 2016 coup happened and the CIA pressured the Brazilian goverment to arrest the main guy behind the nuclear sub prgram. Under Lula's new goverment they resumed the nuclear sub program with help from Macron's goverment.
Argentina: Argentina had signed most of the anti-nuclear agreements during the 1960s, but during the military junta of the 1970s it started to develop nuclear weapons with the help of Egypt and Iraq. It's pretty much the same as Brazil, except that the US got very aggressive after the Faklands War and started pressuring Raul Alfonsin (the guy who took power after the fall of the dictatorship) to disband it. As far as I know, it was quietly destroyed during the 1990s under the neoliberal governments.
Latin American Countries that Attempted to be a Nuclear Power
Chile: Under Pinochet there were talks about developing an nuclear program or nuclear weapons, but that never went anywhere besides just talk. Chile during the 1990s joined Brazil and Argentina and agreed to never have nuclear weapons.Venezuela: Under the Right-Wing Dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez (1950s - 1960s), Venezuela developed a nuclear power plant but it broke down and had to be shut down. Russia and Chavez were building a new one in the 2000s but after the Fukushima accident, Chavez ordered it to be shut down.
Cuba: Cuba gained nuclear weapons from USSR, but those were removed. Cuba did try to build their own nuclear power plant during the 1980s, but the fall of USSR halted it. In the middle 1990s Germany, France, Italy and Russia wanted to continue it, but then the US got really pissed and refused to allow that to happen because Bill Clinton thought he could destroy the goverment of Cuba. Cuba basically gave up on nuclear energy by the 2000s and focused on solar energy instead.
Uruguay: They bought a reactor from the USA during the 1960s, they used it for educational stuff and generated a bit of power until it broke down in the 1970s and after that they banned nuclear energy due to the Goiana Incident in Brazil.