Sirens across Israel. Incoming missiles. People asked to shelter.

Interesting set of commentaries. They are incredibly harsh towards Iran, but from a realpolitiks perspective:
https://nitter.net/PandemicTruther/status/1935021769762451584
https://nitter.net/PandemicTruther/status/1934358798904541316
https://nitter.net/PandemicTruther/status/1933980879996752224

My comments assuming the massive long threads are true:

1. The reformers have sold Iran down the river. They have done a whole lot harm, partially due to betrayal and partially due to general dumbassery on account of being useless libs. A lot of them need to be swinging from cranes, starting with this shithead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Javad_Zarif Seriously, go read the article. It has charming sentences like "Even though the United States did not make a promised reciprocal goodwill gesture at the time, Zarif remained committed to improving ties."

2. As soon as the West accuses a country of having WMDs, that country is now on a timetable. It has to get WMDs and turn the West's otherwise baseless accucation into a self-fulfilling prophecy or it will be destroyed. I think Iran tried to pivot the accusation into a form of strategic ambiguity, but like everyone here has said, they should've acquired nukes by any means necessary.

3. China will never militarily support Iran. That's Pakistan's job. China is the carrot while Pakistan is the stick. 80% of Pakistan's weapons come from China after all, so any military action due by Pakistan should be understood (and is being understood) as a military action done by China. If China truly doesn't want Pakistan to militarily intervene in Iran, a single phone call is all they need to get Pakistan to stand down. Any potential military action done by Pakistan against the Zionist entity would have been vetted and cosigned by China. I would not put it past China to officially condemn Pakistan should Pakistan intervene. But it's all kayfabe.

As an aside, I really hope they're not some anti-vaxxer crank lol

Missile attack is still ongoing from Iran.

Missile attack now over.

https://nitter.poast.org/ME_Observer_/status/1935135344225038453#m

CNN reports that Trump is leaning toward using U.S. military force to strike Iranian nuclear sites.

Two U.S. officials told CNN that Trump rejects a diplomatic solution to de-escalate the conflict.

Looks like a single missile was fired, detected very late and impacted directly. First warning to impact was 2-3 minutes. Guess Israel was expecting a build up for a larger scale attack, and missed the launch of a singular missile, likely from a launcher dispersed somewhere. New tactic maybe, singular launches to try avoid detection?

Impact crater and damage to an apartment building. Looks like most of the damage to the building was done by the cars catching on fire from the missile hitting them, and the missile didn't hit the building directly.

Bluesky comments. I'll add them when I find them.

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In 2020, when I told people that I was building a pro-democracy media outlet, people thought I was kidding. When I told them that the fight for democracy was the fight of our time, they thought I was being overly dramatic. Well... here we are.

Premium or free, subscribe now. [link]

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Somebody should draw up articles of impeachment over this immediately. I don’t think it’ll happen because we’re too worried about a rally-round-the-flag effect that won’t happen and it’d be a coalition splitter for that reason. But it should.

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It’s even more demoralizing when the history you’re repeating is history you were around for the first time.

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looooooooololooololoooooooooooooooolllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll

[Congressman Chris Deluzio]

Congress did not authorize this war.

https://bsky.app/profile/deluzio.house.gov/post/3ls5w4ncwtc27

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It’s a good thing Congress isn’t alive to see this.

There's a chance that if the nuclear sites are OK, that Iran will just continue bombing Israel as they've been doing, as if nothing happened.

Oh god oh fuck. While I’m grilling?

A woman tried to call her mom in Iran. A robotic voice answered the phone

It's a very strange and disturbing situation. I think it's a very oddly written article because it jumps around so much. In the snippets - I moved sentences around.

A three day old aged like milk insight from Josh Marshall - the publisher of Talking Points Memo.

I'm having to explain to foreigners that in the folkways of our culture "two weeks" means we're not doing this. #infrastructureweek #Geertz #nothappening

https://bsky.app/profile/joshtpm.bsky.social/post/3lryk2mrfv22m

If somebody pointed out his prediction was all wrong - he'd surely say a joke is a joke. I don't buy that. I'd bet every cent I had that if Trump hasn't done anything for two weeks - Marshall would be saying "See - told you so."

Those B-2 bombers, BTW, came from Whiteman AFB in Missouri. No joke.

The bombers flying over the Pacific to Guam were misdirection.

first Fatah -1 usage by Iran - going unbothert through 12? interceptors in the footage.

International Atomic Energy Agency:

• The IAEA has information that two centrifuge production facilities in Iran, the TESA Karaj workshop and the Tehran Research Center, were hit. Both sites were previously under IAEA monitoring and verification as part of the JCPOA.

• At the Tehran site, one building was hit where advanced centrifuge rotors were manufactured and tested. At Karaj, two buildings were destroyed where different centrifuge components were manufactured.

Source

Apparently Iran just fired a new missile, or one that looks new. Just a single missile, they're testing something. Obviously was intercepted, but it was just one launch and it left some seriously pretty designs in the sky. Take a look: https://t.me/me_observer_TG/554402?single

See this NYT update for a glimpse into the genocidal glee of the average “civilian” Israeli. You’ll have to put up with the regurgitation of state propaganda. NYT tries so hard to make the most privileged and sheltered people on earth into victims it would be funny if it wasn’t part of their genocidal propaganda campaign

The greatest “suffering” these genocidal fucks have ever experienced is being deprived of their fucking lattes for a few days, and the NYT is already doing wall-to-wall coverage about the poor widdle genocidal land thieves, waaaaaaahhhhh

https://archive.ph/dZ55n

An Israeli woman who returned from abroad on Wednesday grinned for the television cameras as she knelt and kissed the floor of the airport terminal. Sidewalk cafes in Jerusalem were filled with people excused from work because of the war, sipping lattes in the sunshine.

Even Benjamin Netanyahu, the beleaguered prime minister who was fighting for his political survival just a week ago, was getting a break. Some of his fiercest critics were giving him full credit for daring to take on Iran, Israel’s most feared enemy. The danger from Iran’s retaliatory ballistic missile strikes aside, morale among Jewish Israelis, at least, appeared to be soaring on the sixth day of the war.

Israeli warplanes continued to operate at will in Iranian airspace, pummeling targets, and many Israelis were getting their hopes up that the United States would join the bombing campaign against Iran’s nuclear program, long viewed by Israelis as a threat to their future.

The war with Iran is far from over and the outcome is unclear. But with Israel’s initial successes, the sense of unity and national pride represented a sharp turnaround for a country that was deeply traumatized by the deadly, Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that set off the war in Gaza.

Mr. Netanyahu, a conservative and a political phoenix, has risen again, seemingly imbued with a renewed confidence and a sense of his historical significance.

“We are getting rid of the evil Iranian empire that threatens our existence,” he said in a television interview on Israel’s right-wing Channel 14 on Tuesday night. “Within five days we’ve turned the tables,” he said, having opened what he called “an aerial expressway to Iran.”

“This is an enormous moment, a moment of pride for the nation of Israel,” he added.

Matan Kahana, a centrist lawmaker in the opposition and a former fighter pilot, said, “There is unity from wall to wall in Israel over the campaign to remove the Iranian nuclear threat.”

“Now people are asking ‘Why didn’t we do it earlier?’” he said, adding that Israelis see this as “a war of no choice” and that so far, Iran is enduring the worst of it.

The newfound unity has not erased older political and social rifts that have plagued Israel, including over exemptions from military service for ultra-Orthodox religious seminary students, the security lapses that enabled the October 2023 attack, and the fate of hostages still held in Gaza.

But some of Mr. Netanyahu’s veteran detractors are reassessing him.

“The decision to go to war was entirely Netanyahu’s,” wrote Nahum Barnea, a leading political columnist, in the popular Yediot Ahronot newspaper this week. He noted that Mr. Netanyahu had become known as risk-averse over the years.

“We shouldn’t downplay the importance of the decision,” Mr. Barnea added, comparing it to the kind of decision that Israel’s revered founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, might have made.

“Maybe we misread him; maybe he’s changed,” Mr. Barnea wrote of Mr. Netanyahu.

To be sure, many Israelis are sleep deprived. Air raid sirens have sent millions of people rushing for protected spaces and bomb shelters in the middle of the night day after day. At least two dozen people have been killed so far by Iranian missiles that evaded Israel’s air defenses.

Some people are spending the night in approved underground parking lots and train stations.

Many citizens are anxious. Sales of tranquilizers are up by a third, Israel’s Channel 12 television reported.

And before ordering their coffee, customers can be heard asking shop staff members where the nearest fortified shelter is. Israelis generally get a 10-minute warning for incoming missile fire.

Still, Israeli television pundits brag that whereas residents of Tehran are fleeing their city, tens of thousands of Israelis who were stranded abroad after Israel abruptly closed its airspace on Friday have been clamoring for seats on the special flights arranged to bring them home.

The intensity of the Iranian missile strikes has waned in recent days and the Israeli authorities slightly relaxed restrictions on Wednesday evening, permitting small gatherings and allowing people to go back to work — so long as their workplace provides easy access to a bomb shelter.

Guardian article - emphasis mine

Trump caution on Iran strike linked to doubts over ‘bunker buster’ bomb, officials say

Exclusive: The likelihood of a successful US strike on the Iranian nuclear facility buried deep underground at Fordow is a topic of deep contention, defense officials say

[...]

The effectiveness of GBU-57s has been a topic of deep contention at the Pentagon since the start of Trump’s term, according to two defense officials who were briefed that perhaps only a tactical nuclear weapon could be capable of destroying Fordow because of how deeply it is buried. Trump is not considering using a tactical nuclear weapon on Fordow.

[...]

But the defense officials who received the briefing were told that using conventional bombs, even as part of a wider strike package of several GBU-57s, would not penetrate deep enough underground and that it would only do enough damage to collapse tunnels and bury it under rubble.

Missed this footage from the beginning of the war. In case anyone's wondering what happened to Iran's Bavar-373 high level long range air defence system, their S-300 equivalent.

Direct hit on a Bavar-373 fire control radar by a SPIKE Anti Tank Guided Missile (ATGM), by a Mossad agent in Iran. The TEL for the Sayyad 4 missiles can also be seen on the left of one of the images, not active or ready to fire, missiles stowed away horizontally. Caught completely by surprise here. A map of the location was also included in the last frame at the end, seemingly by mistake.

@MarmiteLover123@hexbear.net apparently China just (not just , like 3 days ago) deployed 2x 815A electronic surveillance ships to the Persian Gulf which are some of their most modern platforms. They claimed its for antipiracy patrols but come on lol. So ,any thoughts on implications. Would it be just to pick up and collect data from f-35s and B2 deployments ? What intelligence/data sharing they could provide to iran, in real time or not, that can make a differenece defensively and offensively given whatever the capabilities iran still has. help with shot downs, ship targeting , early warning idk. Any change in movements and deployments they may force the US to do just by being there and the threat of the above?

A cope sci-fi scenario would be that China could position some j20 in bvr range or some AD battery hidden and actualy shot down a f35 or more so likely the bomber especially since the latter would have a predictable path to the nuclear site. Would the US missions even have awacs support themselves or would they be going in blind like Israel since Iran is a non threat for these platforms? Retrieving some wreckage would be very valuable for China tbh. Like if they shot smth down over iran how could the US even prove it? Iran would claim shotdown and the US would look like moron losers if they claimed china helped. Wont happen but its fun to imagine

The pope off to a cringey start by meeting with Ben Shapiro:
https://xcancel.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1935613595318210617

Daily Best article

Trump Insider Reveals ‘Nobody’ Is Talking to Hegseth as Iran Crisis Spirals

Donald Trump is sidestepping his own defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, while seeking advice on whether to launch a military strike against Iran, according to a report. An unnamed U.S. official told The Washington Post that the president is instead turning to a couple of four-star generals for guidance on whether to join Israel in attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities, with the head of the Pentagon being largely left out.

“Nobody is talking to Hegseth,” the official said. “There is no interface operationally between Hegseth and the White House at all.”...

So, what did Iran do that we will remember for centuries? It must be close to 24 hours since that statement.

Was curious about the video posted by @Awoo of Miri Regev saying that israelis are not permitted to leave the country. I thought that was very odd... it is normal for people to flee such a situation, no? Tehran's roads have been packed with people trying to escape. But these people are under the rule of fascism and now functionally prisoners.

I think a reasonable argument could be made to limit air travel for safety concerns. This outbound travel ban appears to be by any route and applies only to israelis. But there's a twist.

The main plan is to "rescue" (!!!) Israelis ~~living internationally~~Stranded Abroad. There are apparently 150,000 such victims. (The other articles I found all said 200,00.) They will be sending empty planes to Athens, Larnaca, New York, and Bangkok. Fill the planes with "essential personnel critical to Israel’s security"

Defense Ministry: Rescue flights for Israelis abroad to begin within 72 hours (I am not framiliar with this source but it's what the others were citing. I couldn't find a source I am framiliar with posting about this and I hope it's not all FAKE. Please tell me if its fake.)

This is so wacky I doubt it veracity. If true, I have COMMENT. What you think? Real?

I don't know what's going on with air defences in Tehran. They undergo periods of completely not existing, and then suddenly shit loads of activity all at once.

Either they're getting totally shut down by cyber attacks or, like some others hypothesised, there is some sort of intentional shut down occurring in order to lure the enemy into making more dangerous attacks that can be shot down.