CBS News - Only 3 tankers - 2 linked to Iran - seen transiting Strait of Hormuz as tension soars. Only three fuel tankers — two of which are under U.S. sanctions over ties to Iran's illicit fuel shipments — appeared to be making their way through the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday as the U.S. and Iran exchanged strikes and after Tehran threatened to completely close the key waterway.
The liquified petroleum gas tanker Solix and crude oil tanker Berg 1 are both under U.S. sanctions. Public data reported by the MarineTraffic.com website showed both vessels in the Strait of Hormuz Tuesday morning. A third vessel, which is not sanctioned but has exhibited suspicious behavior consistent with ship-to-ship fuel transfers since the start of the conflict, was also broadcasting its location in the strait.
The Benin-flagged Berg 1 and the third vessel, an oil-chemical tanker operating under the Marshall Islands flag, were both heading out of the Persian Gulf loaded with cargo along the northern route that Iran has demanded all commercial vessels use, while the Equatorial Guinea-flagged Solix was tracked heading west into the Persian Gulf after leaving a port in China.
While only those three tankers were visible, it is possible that other ships could be trying to use a southern route through the narrow strait, close to Oman's coast, with their location transponders switched off. Iran has attacked three vessels this week trying to use that route.
On Monday, the head of the United Nations' International Maritime Organization said approximately 600 seafarers remained trapped in the Persian Gulf and surrounding waters as U.S.-Iran hostilities renewed.
this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2026
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With the funeral of the late Khamenei drawing crowds of millions of Iranians, and many dozen visits from foreign delegations and high-up figures from around the world, the war itself has hit a temporary lull. It appears that the battle over whether the Omani route is legitimate is continuing, with transits sometimes relatively elevated (but still nowhere close to pre-war levels) due to American air support, and sometimes stopped by an Iranian strike. What's currently happening in the negotiations is extremely unclear to me because of a massive deluge of conflicting information and intentional disinformation.
However, with Vance confirming on live TV that they are treating the MoU as an opportunity to refill oil stocks (not physically possible to any significant degree given current transits and the SPR's current level) and that they'll see where they'll go from there, the US maintaining that Iran cannot be allowed to have a toll/service fee system, and of course the ethnic cleansing in Lebanon, I currently can't see how this ends without a return to war. The alternative, of course, is that either the US's or Iran's position is much precarious than they're letting on, and they are bluffing but will capitulate under serious fire. I've been keeping my mind as open to the latter possibility as I have the former, and of course, it's not as if Iran's economic situation is all sunshine and rainbows and so that could potentially be the deciding factor, but to me, militarily, Iran has never looked stronger. The missile cities truly stood the test, and its air defense network is still plenty powerful enough to deter American planes and drones from getting too close to its airspace.
Elsewhere, we are nearing the completion of the latest wave of comprador installation in Latin America, with Colombia and Peru returning to a hard right political stance after a brief stint with more left wing politics. Venezuela is also being forced into submission regardless of which party is technically in charge under threat of overwhelming force by the US, after the US successfully bypassed Venezuela's major and only defence, a well-armed and party-loyal population in the hundreds of thousands, by simply saying "If you take arms against us on the ground, we will do you what we did to Gaza." Whether the Venezuelan people will continue to accept this humiliation or rise up is still up to debate, but if there is no response by the government at all, it does seem to spell a pause, though not necessarily the end, of Chavismo as it is currently conceived, and new developments will be needed to take Venezuela forwards. And, finally, Cuba has been forced to take the Dengist route (reform and opening up) for the possibility of survival after nearly a century of a more tightly controlled socialist economy, as the siege this time around proved even more impactful than even the very difficult times after the fall of the USSR. The next logical steps for the US will be to crush Brazilian and Mexican leftist politics, so we may see the ignominious return of the Bolsonaro faction, and perhaps even the man himself.
As I currently see it, with electoral tampering and fraud now both very commonplace and essentially unpunishable by leftist forces, there's three main paths forward for the continent: 1) a return to the anti-imperialist guerrilla warfare that characterized much of the 20th century due to the once-again-confirmed failure of electoral politics; 2) just accepting submission to regional US hegemony as the US withdraws and relocates its forces and agents from Eurasia under fire, and hoping that maybe they can win an election here or there and that Somebody Abroad Does Something (the mythical "international community", etc); or 3) the allure of the growing Chinese hegemony proves too powerful for even the American compradors to resist and they sign developmentalist business deals with them that undercut the IMF and World's Bank plan to maintain imperialist underdevelopment.
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:
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.
Iran's illicit fuel shipments
illicit means west dont like
what a fucking joke
600 seafarers remain trapped in the Persian Gulf
As in docked near or in Oman, UAE, Kuwait, or KSA? Just book a flight out lmao??? They had months of salami slicing to go home by any other means - The UN has more than enough budget for unnecessarily performative bullshit to charter the flights themselves.
Not to punch down but if you're a mariner who died trying to sail your fat tubs of crude through the "we're gonna bomb u" side of the strait.... you're pretty fuckin closes to the Israeli/Dubai influencer side of the "deserving it" spectrum
A lot of these sailors cannot get off of the ships as they lack the proper visas etc to set foot on the territory of the country they're docked in. So they're just tied to the ship itself
If the US or anyone opposed to Iran actually cared about these workers they would have them evacuated by air or some other means if they requested it, but the west wants them trapped or killed to justify the US military's actions.
Al Manar (Hezbollah outlet 🥰)
🔵 Live News | Iran bombed the Muwaffaq Salti base in Jordan, where US forces are stationed.
~13m ago
The Guardian - Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency has reported “several explosions” in the southern Bushehr province, home to Iran’s nuclear power plant complex on the Gulf coast.
---
Edit
Al Jazeera - Explosions heard in Iran’s Bushehr area. Several explosions have been heard in Iran’s Bushehr province, the semi-official Mehr news agency reports. Bushehr is where Iran’s nuclear power plant is located. Iran’s only functioning nuclear plant, the Bushehr facility came under repeated attacks by Israel and US war on Iran, raising fears of a possible nuclear incident.
Bushehr
I get the impression their attacks are limited to the coast
Axios is reporting that the US is preparing to attack Iran for multiple weeks. The Axios reporter Barak Ravid served as a member of IOF unit 8200, Israel's equivalent of the US NSA. Barak Ravid speaks directly to White House officials and has sometimes been the first to report information provided by US government and Israeli government. He's a parrot of the White House.
https://nitter.net/DropSiteNews/status/2075061293879370032#m
https://nitter.net/BarakRavid/status/2075043800582377940#m
https://nitter.net/BarakRavid/status/2075073445100994771#m (he tweeted this in hebrew but not in english, it's written in the article in english.)
https://www.axios.com/2026/07/09/trump-iran-strait-hormuz-battle
https://archive.is/YefbX (axios)
A U.S. official said the current escalation could last a day or two, a week or a month, depending on whether Iran continues its attacks on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
"We're going to slap them a bit so they understand we're not f*cking around," the U.S. official said.
U.S. officials say the White House believes it has more room to escalate because hundreds of oil tankers have managed to leave the Gulf through the strait in recent weeks.
That has eased concerns inside the administration that a renewed clash would immediately trigger a major oil price spike, the officials said.
A U.S. official claimed the current escalation stems from frustration among more radical elements inside Iran's fractured leadership who believe the MOU has not delivered real benefits for Tehran.
Iran saw its leverage in Hormuz slipping as hundreds of ships transited through the southern route close to the Omani coast, the official said.
No Iranian frozen funds have been released because Iran has not yet taken nuclear steps required by the agreement.
The framework agreement the U.S. brokered between Israel and Lebanon made the Lebanon portion of the MOU unnecessary, the official said.
"Part of the Iranian leadership was not happy about all of those things," the U.S. official said.
"They started shooting and we decided it's time to slap them back hard. It's a process. We have patience. If we don't feel we're getting the deal we want, we are not going to do it."
hundreds of ships
Is this actually enough to offset the drawdown on oil reserves?
It really was a break so he could have his lame ass party and people could drive to the fireworks without cursing his name. Now we are back to the same old shit.
U.S. officials say the White House believes it has more room to escalate because hundreds of oil tankers have managed to leave the Gulf through the strait in recent weeks.
Many people called this the day they've signed the MOU. I'm sure Iran also prepared.
And everyone knows when playing poker you always show the enemy your hand and let him pluck cards out of it.
"We're going to slap them a bit so they understand we're not f*cking around," the U.S. official said.
not quite ready to commit to unconditional surrender this time, huh?
Domestic Violence metaphors in the r@pist-led administration? Shocker!
At this rate the Burger Reich might very well lose an aircraft carrier 
Fars: Moments ago, residents of Aqqala heard the sound of several explosions in the vicinity of the city. Some local sources report that several enemy projectiles struck the Aq Tekeh-Khan bridge—located along the railway line in the western part of Aqqala (Northeast Iran).
i think the bridge is part of the Tehran-Mashhad railway route, which has suspended service already. Mashhad is the last destination of the funeral, this was basically both a warning on the ability of the US to do genocide and a propaganda tactic to stop more people from going to the funeral. petty war crimes is a hallmark of this administration.
EDIT: it is also a part of the railway line to russia that was used to circumvent the blockade, so expect the blockade to be back again.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian commented on the World Cup:
"The U.S. government's conduct as World Cup host follows its familiar foreign policy: bending rules, humiliating rivals, creating obstacles, and cheating. This is their MAGA playbook. Iran rejects such games. We stand firmly for our rights."
Pezeshkian: "there is a dang cheeto in the white house"
Mr President has declared it so: Football is news. The Mega will not launch containment.
extra funny if you account for Pezeshkian being a huge lib who is a part of the albatross around the neck of the state
I thought @AlHouthi4President@lemmy.ml had a better football metaphor:
The game is rigged. The Iranians are sabotaged every step of the way. They do not win, but they also do not lose. Martyr Nasrallah did say this war for the Liberation of Palestine would not be won or lost in an instant but would amount to "an accumulation of points."
Need to know of this applies to the Melenchon post about GTA6 and gaming.
Thesis, antithesis, synthesis
Another wave of US attacks on Iran has started. Time for Iran to respond in a very serious way.
The US playing Lucy with the football in regards to peace offers and it eternally working has got to be the one thing holding up the empire at this point.
If literally anyone called their bluff it would be the end.
they've had trump in the range of their missiles, they won't.
Only USIS still believe that decapitation strikes work
To be honest, our government is so hollowed out, it actually would throw a lot of things into very deep chaos. Trump is a singular entity in US politics, and him dying would lead to *all *the knives coming out.
we'd probably get a civil war if someone killed a republican president and vp fast enough that a dem speaker of the house became president
of course knowing democrats they'd probably have that person step down as speaker rather than govern
They would apoint a Republican as VP then resign
Libs would fawn over them as the American Cincinnatus.
they work for porkies just fine, if you don't think there is somewhere a corkboard of "our assets inside iran hierarchy and not our assets" with crosses around and marks of priority target, i have an adversarial al qaida to sell to you.
*it is important for another reason though, it's called not being a fan of spousal infidelity.
The NATO Summit in Ankara in a nutshell:
Wollt Ihr den totalen Krieg? 
Thought this was a Deltarune battle for a second and looked away cause I haven't played ch5 yet
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