My summary of the situation as I understand it is in spoiler tags below.
summary
After many long weeks, Iran and the US have agreed that they're going to begin negotiations on certain topics in a process lasting at least 60 days. Due to America's perfidy during previous negotiations, trust has broken down so far that Iran demanded $12 billion of their frozen funds and several other promises, such as the end to the naval blockade, to even return to the table, which seems perfectly reasonable to me. Iran also demanded that negotiations take place in two stages, and that nuclear issues will only be discussed in the second stage, which will be several weeks from now if everything goes as planned.
The terms of the MoU have themselves been a big source of confusion and suspicion, for me and many other pro-Iranian spectators. Getting the wording exactly correct is important, because the US really is like the devil - leave room for any possible interpretation in the contract that favors them more, and they'll insist that this was the only interpretation up for discussion. Additionally, the US might be historically bad at winning wars, but they're very, very good at winning peaces: they set up the post-WW2 order to best suit them by playing the European powers off each other; the DPRK might have survived the Korean War politically intact but existed for nearly the next hundred years as a sanctioned pariah; Vietnam was soon forced to economically engage with the country that had dropped triple of all the bomb tonnage of WW2 on them; and so on. It is no exaggeration when I say that the negotiation phase will be the most dangerous part of this war and it could lead to the most death and destruction without a single missile impacting Iran.
However, there's one little genocidal colony in the region that could stop this whole process from even beginning, as the US appears to have promised Iran that the Zionists will stop the war against Lebanon (and perhaps Gaza too? I'm a little unclear) and even withdraw entirely from southern Lebanon, including all bases set up since this broader conflict began. Apparently, the US promised this in return for Iran not striking the Zionists in return for their most recent strike on Beirut on June 14th. Now, the issue with this whole situation is that the US greenlit the Zionist strike on Beirut, and they knew that Iran would respond to it because they did in response to an earlier strike. If the US made such major concessions to Iran in return for this response strike not occurring, then why authorize the Beirut strike at all? Why make their position worse? Right now, I can think of two reasons. First is that they attempted to create one final embarrassment for Iran, under the assumption that Iran was so desperate for a deal that they wouldn't risk responding. Second is that this is all one big ruse or misdirection; the US does not intend to follow through with the MoU and subsequent negotiations anyway, and so the terms they're "agreeing" to don't really matter.
With the MoU signing apparently set for June 19th, we'll know for sure soon.
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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.
Been thinking about this a lot lately too and this is kinda my own digestion/guess based on what I've seen. It's probably not perfect but it's been in my head and this is a great excuse you gave me to post it for the sake of processing thoughts, maybe it helps others too idk:
spoiler
From the US side: Buy time and hopefully cause divisions inside Iran, hopefully fix the economy or create some other window. Keep killing hezbollah, start a false flag idk. Trump wanted a deal because his brain is melting and that sounds nice to him. Truthfully, I think the US side is really divided and wasn't focused to begin with and they're relying on tactics from an ending age. Trying to figure out their motives relies on understanding fantastical reasoning on the part of their leadership.One thing seems true in their mind though: agreements to them are for the other side to abide by while the US can openly trash them whenever raw power provides a more advantageous solution.
That and Israel[sic] is a country that is DEEPLY invested in a psyop-style of governance. They clearly hold the narrativization of world events as the lynchpin collum of how they conduct state affairs internal and external. They're extremely sensitive to that narrative failing and, frankly, they should be because any person sober to their reality is not only revolted by them but also now aware of their historical transience. It's a pretend country with no real history but it constantly positions itself as this historic and rightful bastion of western values in the Levant that is, most important of all, devinely manifest and impossible to stop.
All that to say: I don't doubt that the zionists throwing a fit are upset. They have to be or their narrative dies. To what extent they believe what they're saying about betrayal by negotiating vs they're just upset that the US couldn't do a better job conquering (the actual betrayal in their minds) probably various by case. Either way, I don't think the trump administration is capable of understand the nuance of the zios situation or really cares about it. The zionist state is reaching it's natural, contradictory conclusion because of how it was built and the price of amending its faults is rising.
From Iranian side: If the US/Zios follow through it's a big W to them. If they don't, it helps create leverage with other countries and Iran can just keep up a hot war and damage the US a lot more anyways. Anything tangible they get (money mostly here) is a bonus. PLUS it's good moral internally because there's no room for any Iranian to say the government didn't try to do the right thing. If this war picks up it's all on the US.
Also that's nothing to say too much about the /internal/ Iranian situation. It's a natural thing to do (and not problematic or anything to be clear) but a lot of the discourse I see on the mega treats Iran like a unit and it's decisions as the result of a single entity (as is done with most countries because that's just how this kind of conversation goes, I do it too, it's a natural thing not necessarily evil or careless). We know though that there's a division of pro-negotiators and hardliners on this issue. Obviously, the hardliners are right on this one, but if I were a hardliner I'd let the negotiators try their little trick, keep the military on standby, and be ready to tear down the negotiation faction politically once this all ends the way it probably will. Go back to fighting with a renewed commitment, get a big political win over my opponents on the issue, resupply the troops, and use the breached negotiation as leverage over other countries in various ways. Not like the US has a good industrial base to refit and rearm faster than Iran anyways.
Will it help /a lot/ with other countries as leverage? I have noooooo idea. But we do know the US couldn't get Europe into the fighting, and the western allied Arab states can't be protected anymore. There's weakness there. There could be things we don't know about. That feels like a situation that is building up tension brick by brick.
And if I was selling oil right now I maybe might just maybe have to at least stay /friendly/ with the regional power that can shut down my shipping by controlling virtually all the naval traffic leaving the Arabian peninsula. If my partner, the US, shows me they're more loyal to the Zionist Entity, loyal to the point of irrationality, seemingly loyal to the point where they would probably abandon their deals with me in order to preserve the entity in a pinch, I'd distrust them even more. And distrustful people make poor partners.
So I guess, overall, the US side is disorganized and trying whatever they can to manage the situation. Meanwhile, Iran could have multiple reasons to want to sign the deal while knowing full well it won't stand but that depends on a lot of conversations and motives and other reasons I don't have any information on.
The situation at least /makes sense/ to me. The particulars and the 'how does this end, is this good for one or the other' I think is complicated but ultimately comes out better for Iran in the most likely way this is all headed.