Image is of a Khorramshahr-4 medium range ballistic missile, which has a range of about 2000km.
As I said in the last megathread, trying to figure out what exactly is happening is becoming ever more difficult. The gist of things is that Iran has, very justifiably, refused to negotiate (assassinating their leader and striking their country with hundreds of missiles in the middle of negotiations causes some reluctance to return to the table, I suppose). Censorship across the Middle East has further ramped up, with reportedly extreme punishments for posting footage of Iranian strikes online. From what I can gather, Iran’s number of strikes have stabilized at a comfortable daily rate, with strikes into both the Gulf monarchies and Occupied Palestine continuing apace. Official charts of these strikes over time seem very disconnected from reality on the ground, but again, it’s hard to really get at the specifics.
The messaging on how long the war is expected to last is rather muddled on both sides. The Trump administration fluctuates more than daily - and even sometimes in the same speech - on whether the war is already won or whether it’s going to last months longer. The US seems to be coming up a new possible scheme every few hours: a ground invasion with the Kurds? A ground invasion without the Kurds? An amphibious assault? A series of commando operations to steal Iranian uranium? A massive parachuting operation into Tehran? Fuck it, let’s just send the Navy into the Strait of Hormuz? There doesn’t seem to be a coherent plan for continuing hostilities beyond firing more and more of a limited stockpile of cruise missiles into mostly non-military targets, hitting easily replaceable drone and missile launchers with a limited stockpile of drones, and burning a limited stockpile of interceptors at an astounding rate (and, in the process, disarming every other Western-aligned country of their interceptors).
Meanwhile, from Iran, I’ve seen rumors and reports from classic anonymous “senior IRGC officials” (no doubt some invented by Zionists to sow confusion), that I don’t know how to substantiate, ranging anywhere from “If the US pulls back their forces now, we will restart negotiations,” to “It doesn’t matter what the US or the Zionists do or say, we aren’t stopping until every last trace of Zionism in the Middle East has been extinguished,” to a few positions in between those poles. Despite the damage to infrastructure in Iran, it doesn’t seem like there has been any political or social fracturing. Not to speak too soon - perhaps the West will start earnestly trying to overfly Iranian territory to drop their very plentiful bombs soon - but every indication is that there will be no regime change nor societal collapse in Iran in the short and medium term.
The US is desperately trying - and mostly failing - to keep a lid on the economic firestorm they have ignited. There has been much ado about oil prices and oil futures and indexes and what all the myriad Lines going up and down signify and things like that, which is befitting such a financialized empire which is so disconnected from the actual physical flows of materials and much more attuned to vibes and speeches. The only thing I’m personally paying much attention to on the economic front is the drones and missiles slamming into fossil fuel infrastructure, the Hormuz blockade, and the resulting global shockwave of shortages, stoppages, closures, bankruptcies, and force majeures spreading out from the epicenter that is Iran.
Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
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:
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.
re @MarmiteLover123@hexbear.net https://hexbear.net/comment/6989735 (just-locked thread)
Several hours ago I saw that Trump claimed they had struck a bunch of “inactive” mine laying vessels, which sounded like he is saying they destroyed some random boats. Is there a special kind of boat to lay mines? Now I watch the videos: it looks like random boats. Very small to be doing much, and I don’t know how big a mine is but surely not too many could be carried on any of those?
Is mining the Straight a good tactical decision? To my simple mind it seems to e somewhat cutting off the nose to spite the face. Once mined, nobody can use it, not them and not their allies. Can you ever get rid of ocean mines? Although Iran has stated it has no imminent plans to negotiate, surely it will eventually wish to dial this down? Unless they plan to invade/occupy israel/US…?? What are the possiblities 1 or 5 years from now if mines get tossed in the water?
Strait is NOT mined. It’s propaganda from the US. IRGC says they’re using missiles and drones to close the strait.
I was asking about the mines on the previous thread, and @Staines@hexbear.net had a very interesting breakdown, the mines are pretty sophisticated and weird:
The second boat in that video seemed to have some sort of cook off, so it may have possibly had a couple of mines, although it could have been some other sort of ammo though.
Most looked like patrol/fast boats aside from the first one and the docked sub. Not sure any of these would really be used by the IRGC to project naval power, although the Iranian Navy in general wouldn’t be projecting power far from the Iranian coast anyway.
There are dedicated ships to lay mines, these are called Minelayers. These come in with a wide range of sizes and displacements, for the most part they’re very small. Bigger ships like destroyers and cruisers can carry and lay mines if designed that way. Submarines can also be modified to carry mines, that was very common during WW2 and I’m not sure it’s still a feature in today’s subs. And you can get rid of mines, first (and this is very comical) by detonating them with your ship hehe. Second, and the most common, is by using Minesweepers, which is another type of vessel that specializes in defusing or safely detonating naval mines in large areas or Minehunters if you want to destroy individual mines.
If these kinds of vessels looks like random boats it’s because they kinda are! At a first glance they look like tugs and even fishing vessels, not a lot of them are glamorous and most lack big weapon systems like cannons and missile launchers (some can carry CIWS for protection and maybe a small battery of a single 76mm-ish cannon, but that’s about it).
So for example if the US would want to enter the Gulf through a mined Hormuz with full force they would have to send in the Minesweepers first (Helicopters, as far as I’m concerned, can also be used to detect and destroy mines too) BEFORE the main fleet moves in. That puts the Minesweeper fleet at risk of being attacked by small Anti Ship Missile Batteries, small vessels like missile-armed speedboats and midget submarines, but if you send your warships ahead of your minesweepers you could lose a few major units to them. This was the Allied dilemma during the Gallipoli Campaign of WW1, who goes to die first?
I’d imagine they could do a lot of that with drones now. Given that the straight is narrow, I’m sure they could find a way to launch and control these drones from land. That doesn’t really solve the problem of getting ships through the strait. But the US probably doesn’t need to endanger a whole fleet to attempt to destroy Iranian mines.
Even in the Falklands War the British didn’t have enough time for proper minesweeping so they just ordered one of the escorts to go back and forth a few times to see if they explode before the troop ships arrived.
Interesting
I feel like this news is so new that I wouldn’t be surprised to hear by morning that Iran isn’t mining the strait. Trump could just be talking. Is there something to know that I missed?
I thought it sourced to IRGC but I can’t find it now. So either I misread or it has been removed. I was reading AJ earlier but now they say:
spoiler
I’ve been there. When aren’t the straights a headache?