this post was submitted on 04 May 2026
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A reminder that as the US continues to threaten countries around the world, fedposting is to be very much avoided (even with qualifiers like "in Minecraft") and comments containing it will be removed.

Image depicts one of Iran's many anti-ship options, which include missiles, drones, mines, midget submarines, and more. The particular missile shown is the Abu Mahdi cruise missile.


Below is my weekly summary/preamble, spoilered so that you can get down into the comments more easily.

preamble

I don't think I've ever seen a ceasefire that, for weeks, is so obviously about to be broken at any given moment and yet nonetheless continues. So-called Operation Freedom may mark a resumption of hostilities, as the US seems to once again be trying an active role in attempting to take control of the Strait of Hormuz. The initial, ridiculous claim was that the US Navy would itself be escorting ships (i.e. just getting your destroyers sunk for no reason), and as expected, this was just said to try and calm markets. Nonetheless, there is reporting that other military measures may be taken against Iran soon if they continue to keep the Strait closed, so we'll see how that all goes.

US gas prices at the pump have hit close to record high numbers, and generally the average citizen is growing mightily displeased with Trump, even those in previously safe demographics. Unfortunately, this discontent is not immediately geopolitically relevant - as both parties are staffed from top to bottom with pro-war Zionists with only a small group of exceptions, and third parties will necessarily never be allowed to take power, there is no way for US public discontent to manifest itself in a change of policy. What is more likely to cause changes in policy will be grumbling from American capitalists, of which there are many factions. The fossil fuel capitalists seem perfectly content for this situation to continue indefinitely, with record profits. I imagine the financial sector is pretty nervous, but aren't currently demanding Trump cease fire - same for the tech industry which has now been engulfed in AI, as the bubble seems to be close to, but not quite, popping. Smaller businesses and agriculture are perhaps the most likely to be crying uncle, but may have limited representation.

Going back to Western Asia, the situation from last week has remained broadly the same. The Zionist tactic in Southern Lebanon appears to essentially be "If we can't occupy this land, then you won't be able to, either," as they are doing their utmost to physically destroy as many towns and villages on the border as possible. Hezbollah's success at keeping Zionist territorial gains fairly minimal, and the growing onslaught of not only anti-tank guided missiles but also FPV drones causing chaos where the Zionists attempt to hold and advance, have, I believe, partially contributed to Iran not pushing the issue of a comprehensive ceasefire in Lebanon so far as to cause them to feel the need to resume fire on the occupied territories.

The US blockade has truly been a mixed affair. While it's obviously quite leaky and many Iranian ships are getting through, Naked Capitalism and others have pointed out that it's not just Iranian ships that are transporting goods, and that there are ~70 Chinese ships with Iranian oil that are much less willing to risk running the blockade. But, once again, the success of the blockade isn't all that relevant. Iran has experienced periods of a couple years straight without meaningful oil exports and survived, and their extensive land borders make a true siege impossible - goods can and are still pouring into the country, and with Pakistan recently allowing Iranian exports through their border, as well as the Caspian Sea in the north and Iran's railway link to China, Iranian exports can still leave just fine. Another interesting indication is that China's government has ordered Chinese businesses to ignore US sanctions against Iranian oil, so we'll see how that develops. And while the issue of maintaining sufficient public cohesion in the wake of economic suffering is a potential long term problem, we haven't yet seen any meaningful scenes of public discontent inside Iran. Internal unity appears to be staying at record levels in the face of total war.

Even being as careful as possible to check my own biases, it's difficult for me to form any other conclusion other than that Iran is winning, and people like Armchair Warlord have even pointed out that American tactical victories have been pretty minimal so far.


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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.
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English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
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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
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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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[–] Tervell@hexbear.net 29 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

European arms stockpiles doing excellently! https://xcancel.com/Jonpy99/status/2051726963035807809

Here's the rough, superficial research I did today about the remaining stocks of armor in the hands of private defense companies just in Europe.

Some more AFVs I either didn't find or were sold by private individuals, but maybe 20 pieces at most overall. IMVs or MRAPs are almost nonexistant, but nonetheless equipment such as HMMWVs weren't counted. Some may also be surprised about odd choices such as Ferrets, OT-64s or BRDM-2s. I just included those as it is known some Ukrainian TDF brigades use (or at least used them in the past) because volunteers bought, overhauled and donated them. Most stocks are almost completely depleted. You can see it when it comes to things such as T-72s or BMPs: there's barely any piece left. Over the last few years Ukraine or NGOs have mostly bought them for the army.

more

And clearly things are still being bought, such as Warthogs which until very recently were available in big quantities. This isn't a complete list, like I said in the beginning. There are many companies which don't disclose their stockpiles. OIP Land Systems has become (in)famous, but it's one such example. We only know what they have left because of journalists that looked into their warehouse. Based on their website, they should still have some Leo 1s and M113/AIFVs, plus 23 Gepards, but we don't know for sure. Many other big defense companies such as Excalibur Army and STV group with Soviet AFVs, Military Vehicle Solutions with CVRTs, possibly Flensburger Fahrzeugbau with German-made armor, etc. also are unknowns, tho we can see on Google Earth that they still have some stuff left. But most of the times, we can see that lately their stockpiles have thinned out a lot, for obvious reasons.

Some of the stuff still stored is also probably already charted for Ukraine in one way or another, such as those 96 Leopard 1s from the Swiss company RUAG bought back by Rheinmetall in 2024 which will probably be as the basis for Skyranger SPAAGs. In the end, most of what remains are diverse types of CVRTs that the UK is still slowly phasing out and uparmored logistics vehicles such as BV-206s. All in all, what I want to point out with this small thread is that the private stock of heavy equipment in Europe have dried out as a way to resupply Ukraine, and the official govt stocks are for the most part looking the same. It's mostly just old Soviet crap that's left, but a lot of it won't be given to Ukraine in the foreseeable future. Which explains apparently unreasonable things such as the restarted BMP-1 production line by SVT Group in the Czech Republic. Old armor is still a huge part of the Ukrainian fleet, and you need to keep it running somehow.

As usual, I didn't bother talking about trucks because meh. But even the companies and places that used to stored military trucks have been emptied out. And that's it for now!

Heh, just in time regarding the depleted govt military stocks: https://xcancel.com/NichoConcu/status/2051727452762755495

Ive been shared some satellite imagery of the Lenta military graveyard in Italy. Although I cannot share the images, I can say that most of what we saw previously and documented being there has likely been sent to Ukraine. What remains mainly is Italian Army prototypes. There is a few B1 Centauro’s still there, but these will likely also be transferred in the near future. The M113’s and derivatives which were stored outside which we saw months back are no longer there. Now there very well may still be some vehicles hidden in the buildings. However for now, we cannot confirm or deny if that is still the case.

https://xcancel.com/JustTheChuck2/status/2051754163915104342

It feels that Europe is mostly drained of armored vehicles. Not sure if any country outside of Europe would be willing to sell anything given how world is turning for worse, and it's mostly free-for-all political climate in many parts of the world.

[–] vovchik_ilich@hexbear.net 18 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Unfortunate to think that, if nuclear weapons didn't exist, the USSR could have just conquered the entirety of Europe in the 1970s...

[–] jack@hexbear.net 16 points 9 hours ago

they were much too gentle to do that

[–] DasRav@hexbear.net 22 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

Gotta pay US arms manufacturers out the nose for the promise of missiles in ten years, unless the US happens to need the production for some war or another! But when does the US ever start a war?!