Image is of a Quds Day march in Bandar Abbas, Iran.
It now seems likely that, very soon, the US and the Zionists will attempt to bomb Iran. Compared to the buildup to the Iraq War, the stated goals of such a move are being kept a little more generalized - some say the point is to overthrow the government for "humanitarian" purposes (others are more honest and want to partition Iran into a dozen powerless statelets). Some people instead say the point is to get rid of the ballistic missile program, which is synonymous with outright surrender, as no matter the deal, bombers would be en route within 10 minutes of the last batch being handed over.
Still others say that the goal is to destroy the Iranian nuclear program, which, as the thread title implies, is now in a bizarre propaganda superposition: it is apparently simultaneously true to the Trump administration that the US obliterated the nuclear facilities and set back Iran's nuclear program years, if not decades, but also that Iran is mere days away from finishing a nuke and a new round of bombing is urgently required. This obviously casts newfound doubts on how effective US weapons even are at penetrating Iran's underground facilities (though it doesn't necessarily mean they didn't breach them, as Iran was almost certainly moving nuclear material out of Fordow and other sites in the days before the Twelve Day War). The sheer quantity of US anti-air defense equipment they're shifting into position also casts doubts on whether Iran's air defense was mostly destroyed during that conflict, as those who assert that the Zionists had total air supremacy over Iran seem to be implying.
I'm not a military guy, and so I have no novel insights on how such a war is likely to go, nor do I feel confident predicting either side's victory. I'm looking at most of the same sources that you're all looking at. Some confidently boast of the total destruction of Iran's air defense within hours, allowing US planes to fly directly over Iranian cities and drop bombs en masse; others cast doubts on whether this will ever occur, and say that the US's limited supply of Tomahawk missiles is the only major firepower they will be able to safely unleash. Some say this war will last mere days before state collapse; others say months, maybe even years. I have no idea.
I do at least feel somewhat bolstered by the fact that Russia and China finally appear to be pouring in meaningful information and matériel to help Iran this time around, though of course, one can still debate whether it's enough. I feel like we are at the culmination of decades of war planning by both the US and Iran, and the result could have deep ramifications indeed.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on the Zionists' 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.
Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.
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.
Or did Iran convince everybody that their aim was worse than it really is during the 12 day war? The stuff that looked like lucky hits were actually all called shots, the stuff that landed in fields was on purpose? That would be pretty funny
We know they were showing enormous restraint
Mistaking restraint for weakness, it's not just for the pedocrats. Sorry Iranian missile forces, I was not familiar with your game
When I got a chance to talk to some soldiers that were deployed in the military installation in Eastern Syria back in 2020 when Trump murdered Soleimani, I acquired the very distinct impression then that Iran was definitely showing restraint with the attack to save face got both sides but had demonstrated how much intelligence they had on u.s military installations to the point they could time a pin point missile strike on the base outdoors gymn equipment in between daily usage sessions.
The 12-Day War was basically the ideal air defense scenario - Israel is a thin strip of land along the coast, so not only could a whole bunch of air defense systems (both Israeli and American) be concentrated there, naval air defense assets could also be brought in, and use their missiles, normally meant for defending the ships themselves, to instead protect ground targets. That's why the war involved expending not just THAAD interceptors, but also SM-6 missiles (which, until recently, were only ship-launched, although even that new ground launch capability isn't actually meant for air defense, but for striking other ground targets, so a more capable HIMARS basically) (Israel’s 12-Day War Revealed Alarming Gap in America’s Missile Stockpile)
Now, the targets are much more dispersed (this map is probably outdated by now, but it's just to give a general idea), and a lot of them are also much closer to Iran, so targeting is easier.
Back in June, the US had two THAAD systems deployed in Israel - they have eight in total. I'm not sure how many they've deployed now, but given that there's supposed to be two in East Asia, plus some in the continental US, what's left to deploy would definitely struggle to provide coverage for all these bases across the Middle East. The ship air-defense-bonus trick can't be applied this time, since for most of the bases those ships would need to be right next to Iran in order to intercept targets (and for the bases deep in Iraq, there's no ship deployment that could help them). And the 12-Day War also involved completely unsustainable expenditure of munitions - possibly a quarter of the total THAAD stockpile! And the fucks over at the illustrious military industrial complex aren't even going to ship any new interceptors until next year (No THAADs ’til 2027: Missile defense experts warn of interceptor ‘gap’)
In retrospect, the 12-Day War wasn't necessarily some failure on the part of Iran's missile forces - if you view individual battles in complete isolation, sure, but war is, in fact, not a series of completely isolated battles, but a continuous struggle of resources. Depleting your opponent's munitions in one battle, so that you can better fight them in the next one, is in a way, a success. The misses and interceptions that Iran had to endure back in June could well have opened them up to this current much higher rate of success.
The part that's particularly weird to me is that the axis aren't even doing a good job defending the "Israeli" targets from the ideal case. Why did they pick this fight