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.
https://t.me/GeoPWatch/28882
This just shows how desperate for Gulf oil China continues to be.
Were you guys really expecting the official Chinese stance to be “yess keep the strait closed! Mine the shit out of it! The economy of many of my economic partners (who are paying attention to my response to this) needs to be ruined!”
If China makes statements like this but continues to militarily and economically help Iran then it’s very obvious what’s going on
Have they been helping militarily in an active way? I still remember all the stories about advanced Chinese air defence systems and “anti stealth radars” coming to Iran. I’m guessing they didn’t arrive and were never even planned to be delivered, and the news articles made up stuff that China itself never committed to.
China’s probably sharing intelligence and supplying resources for Iran to build missiles and drones, but that’s quite different from a more active supporting role.
Iran rejected more direct assistance way before any of this happened and even rejected donations from chinese people online. It’s pretty clear both China and Russia are respecting Iran’s wishes and keeping to providing intelligence and other types of aid to help iran keep its missiles going.
Edit: also, we’ve learned to not take “official statements” from western sources at face value. China is just doing libspeak. As the other user said, They arent gonna come out and say “yeah we want you to bomb the ever living fuck out of every imperialist lapdog and keep doing it until they stop twitching.”
I agree with the targeting intelligence. I wouldn’t be surprised if Chinese intelligence was actually the ones who penetrated US military operations and knew which civilian buildings miltiary leaders were getting relocated to. I am also wondering if they helped Iran with their missile guidance tech, given that it seems the strikes this round have been accurate, but that’s pure speculation my part.
Possibly, but I also don’t think it’s difficult for Iran to find willing collaborators inside the Gulf states.
Same. China is putting out satelite imagery of all the bases. And thats public. They’re definitely sharing more sensitive stuff behind closed doors
:xicko:
They could have stayed silent. They could have even said “FIRE EVERYTHING”. If China cared about its own profits, they would have offered to replace military infrastructure of the radical suicidal evangelical forces that want to bring apocalypse but no they did not just abandon internationalism, they are serving western interests even if it hurts their interests.
Let’s not overestimate the impact of the most milquetoast and nothing burger of statements.
One hi-def satellite photo of a US base is worth more than every single mealy-mouth diplospeak that comes out of the PRC.
The diplospeak doesn’t mean much when the PRC is already sharing intel with the IRI. They’ll continue the “peace and harmony” dance like they always do for every single conflict.
There is not a single conflict in the world where they do not say the same thing. The US calls for freedom and democracy while the PRC calls for peace and harmony. Both are equally meaningless statements. Even if Washington DC is a smoking crater wrought by Dongfeng missiles, the PRC foreign ministry will still call for peace and harmony with the US.
I think this is less GulfOilDependencyposting and more AdultintheRoomposting
If it was AdultintheRoomposting they would condemn the United States, not Iran, they wouldn’t center the Gulf states as if they were the primary victims of aggression
I think that’s pretty obviously referring to everybody involved, including the aggressor of the war
This is not the only thing they’ve said about the war
Wang Yi, I love you but please turn off ur phone or give me a call. I cannot support hate. Please stop this. I know this isn’t your heart.
Two things here for everyone to consider, from someone who is also critical of Chinese foreign policy:
Iran is Gulf state. The US/Israeli attack on Iran is as much an attack on a Gulf state as Iranian attacks on other Gulf states. Yes, it’s a wishy washy statement, but it does also cover the aggression against Iran.
Unless China seeks a significant shift in the, almost 35%-40% of their oil comes from counties in the Gulf that are not Iran. They have a delicate diplomatic balancing act between defending Iran and not pissing off the people they buy oil from.
That being said, I think the more matter-of-fact comments from Lavrov to the GCC countries in response to Bahrain’s proposed UNSC resoluton demonstrates that China does in fact have room to be more “forthright” with the GCC, and I think they need to start being more open that willing obedience to and collaboration with the US will come with a price that China is willing to see these countries pay.
Managing such a large shock so quickly isn’t really possible. They kinda don’t have an option except try to get the oil and fertiliser inputs flowing again.
This is proof that China’s mode of production is still not advanced enough, which we kind of all knew beforehand …
Like, this isn’t a “we bombed the stock market and rich people wil eat shit”. This oil shock could kill more than covid if managed improperly.
(Just to reiterate, not the fault of Iran, US/isr*el pushed for an existential war campaign against the region. Such risks were inevitable)
This reminds me of a post someone made on Hexbear years ago which went something among the lines of how since that the Soviet Union was energy-sovereign and detached from the global capitalist system, one of the benefits that came from that was the amount of freedom in the stances they could publically take. Stances that would have costed other countries severally, but due to the aforementioned, the Soviet Union had nothing to lose by taking those stances.
Seeing that China still has a ways to go to becoming energy-sovereign and with its economy still integrated in the world capitalist system, I can imagine it will be a while before China can exhibit the same amount of leeway that the Soviet Union had when it comes to publically taking stances with statements that feel emotionally-satisfying.
Such is the way of historical materialism
China has been aggressively expanding it’s strategic oil reserves. The current estimates I have see is that they might have 120+ days of oil in their strategic reserves.
China will do fine. Worst case scenario you get a lock down and they start pumping coal through everything. However, I’m sure the Chinese government officials are tired of having to pull out their doomsday plans everytime trump or bibi take viagra
The point I was trying to make is that China is generally more well positioned to manage this shock than most other countries that don’t have a robust and unaffected oil & gas industry. 120+ days of strategic reserves for a country the size of China is a lot of oil, even factoring in the much lower per capita use compared to the West.
Not sure what you mean by “per capital” but the rest I agree with.
per capita* I misspelled it.
Worst case scenario I think is actually that they go into bidding war with european countries for Russian supply. Europe will lose. Dozens of small countries will start seeking to fend for themselves as resource competition hits them.
Bidding war is not worst case, that’s the base case and many poor people will die …
We saw how the EU dealt with a crisis duting covid(they started stealing supplies from each other). It’s gonna tear it apart.
This goes to the U.S and Israel also bombing civilian and non-military infrastructure
Wow China condemning Iran’s actions?
Iran really is alone here…
This is just China repeating what they say nearly every time there is a conflict. “End fighting and find a diplomatic solution” I don’t think it caries much more weight than that. They say the same things about Ukraine and still have Russia as a close partner
China gets most of its oil through the Strait, of course they’re going to condemn this.
Business is of the utmost importance.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs needs to purge the mealy-mouthed liberals who work for them
What a load of pro-American garbage