Image is of destruction and damage inside Israel, sourced from this article.
Iran and Israel have struck each other many times over the last few days. There has been a general focus on military facilities and headquarters by both sides, though Israel has also struck oil facilities, civilian structures and hospitals, and in return for this, Iran has struck major scientific centers and the Haifa oil facilities.
Israel appears to have three main aims. First, to collapse the Iranian state, either through shock and breakdown by killing enough senior officials, or via some sort of internal military coup. Second, to try and destroy Iranian nuclear sites and underground missile cities, or at least to paralyze them long enough to achieve the first and third goals. And third, to bring the US into a direct conflict with Iran. This is because the US better equipped to fight them than Israel is (though victory would still not be guaranteed depending on what Iran chooses to do).
Iranian nuclear facilities are hidden deep underground (800 meters), far beyond the depth range of even the most powerful bunker busters (~70 meters or so), and built such that the visible ground entrances are horizontally far away in an unknown direction from the actual underground chambers. Only an extremely competent full-scale American bombing force all simultaneously using multiple of the most powerful conventional (perhaps even nuclear) bunker busters could even hypothetically hope to breach them (and we have seen how, in practice, American bunker busters have largely failed to impair or deter Ansarallah). There are several analysts on both sides who have concluded that it is entirely impossible to physically prevent Iran from building nukes.
I fully expect the US to join the war. I believe the current ambiguity is a deliberate invention of the US while they work to move their military assets into position, and as soon as they are ready, the US will start bombing Iran. After that, Iran’s leadership must - if they haven’t already - harden their hearts, and strike back with no fear, or risk following the path of Libya, Syria, and Iraq, either into either surrender, occupation, or annihilation. Every day where they do not possess a nuke is a day where lives are being lost and cities are being bombed.
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Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel’s 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.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
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.
Trump could literally just say he’s doing it kill arabs (despite Iranians not being arab for the most part) and then never make another statement on the war and it wouldn’t slow the war down one iota. The machine is totally detached from the populace. American people are completely subservient and cowed. Zionism reigns supreme, totally unmoored. They just did a genocide right in front of everyone and gaslit us and said “no we didn’t”. It doesn’t matter anymore. They don’t give a fuck. They’re slaughtering starving children as they stumble up to the fake aid distribution sites by shelling them with tanks into crowds.
There has to be the illusion that politics is going on on a national level though, to keep the US regime anchored. Things still can’t move too fast to give the illusion of deliberation and tough decisionmaking.
As you said, this whole farce was all planned out, but the US still couldn’t fully join in on day 1. They needed sufficient buildup and propaganda in place first. Something isntreal didn’t need.
The public can be 90% against something in the US and the government can still do it, if you give them a week.
No it was better this way for the US. The good cop-bad cop routine bought them the element of surprise, and continues to pay dividends with salami slicing tactics. If America just immediately went in with Israel then they would have both just blown their load and then gotten into an attrition situation. This way they get the element of surprise several times and keep getting to do a strike and dance away, do a strike and dance away, etc. America is playing this “strategic ambiguous” game where they simultaneously say two contradicting things: If you retaliate against us we’ll fully commit to the war and you won’t like that & we’re just gonna do a limited attack real quick.
Except there was no element of surprise left this time. The sites the US struck were evacuated already.
But as long as the US tries to keep up this “game”, they are not fully committed to carpet bombing cities or doing SEAD.
Yet there is hesitancy in a retaliation and nothing yet done against the US (other than Ansarallah breaking its ceasefire, but that’s Ansarallah not Iran). They are caught in a bind because if they retaliate, they draw in America more directly and they still think to themselves… maybe we can buy time to keep America at bay if we play nice. If they didn’t think this way, why haven’t they hit US assets in retaliation yet? What is staying their hand and warping their decision making?
America is in no rush. They can slowly escalate and boil the frog. They can slowly increase their involvement bit by bit until Iran finally hits them back hard enough for them to give up their ruse. They will never declare war though, they will just slightly increase the pressure forever until Iran fully attacks back and makes it a war
And each day they do so, more missiles drop on Tel aviv. The US isn’t on a timer, but the Zionazis might be.
True, that is the one hope Iran has. Complete and total destruction of “Israel” to such an extent that the majority of its population leaves and the economy collapses. To do this they must strengthen their attacks, and I think every time the US escalates against them - if they won’t hit back they should at least hit Israel just as hard in exchange.
However, America will be able to float Israel for a long time. They’ve floated Ukraine for almost 3 years now, paying all their public salaries and pensions. “Investing” money in domestic war production of drones. Israel is a lot smaller and would be a lot cheaper to float.