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.
Link
Unlimited
on UAE
HahahahahahahahahahahahahHahahahahahahahahahahahah
Get ready to sink for your overlords, sheikhs
panic sell gulf property
Iran, take it away!
In my heart the spirit of Dubai is dead (or whatever the Iranians wanted me to do cause I can’t remember).
If the little gulf chihuahuas want to bark and lash out then I say let them reap what they sow.
Australia is the king of cucks
Yeah I’m sorry too many people here assumed for some bizarre reason that the undemocratic oppressive, corrupt vassal states would as a result of the US not succeeding in defending them from Iran just defect to the Chinese orbit or side with Iran or something?
But why? Their interests are with the US, the petrodollar, the US hegemony propping them up and making them ridiculously rich while they get to use slaves and oppress their people and engage in all kinds of depravities.
From their point of view they’re neutral, they didn’t send their armies to attack Iran so these attacks on them are unjustified as is stopping their oil.
They also know making an enemy of the US is far more dangerous regardless of short term problems as a result of continuing to side with them.
Fact is the Gaza genocide happened and nothing happened to the west or the zionist entity, the west is crushing free speech and dissent on this openly. Fact is Syria fell because the west wanted it to. To them Iran’s power is waning and this is its dying struggle and lashing out. Even if it emerges victorious it’s doubtful it’s influence on the region will be significant in coming years. The UN sanctions are still on and short of Russia and China leaving the UN to form an alternative body (both would never because it would have zero US and western-European buy-in, China in particular because they don’t want India to have an equal seat to them and who can blame them) that’s a hard fact.
But let’s say Iran emerges victorious, it would be a disaster if the US left the region as they want some major power to counterbalance Iran and protect them.
My money is on the fact the US will never willingly leave the middle east. It’ll agree to remove sanctions perhaps, it might in backroom deal get the Saudis to pay up some percentage of the damages reparations Iran is asking for and get them to slow walk delivering it. And the Gulf Leadership knows this. They know of the Grand Chessboard. They know of the imperatives for the American empire to control the oil, to control the middle east and to protect the zionist entity and to guard the petrodollar.
I mean when the whole Ukraine thing went down tons of people here were crowing about how the US had abandoned Europe so clearly that Europe would definitely not double down on aggression against Russia. That cutting off their gas and their economies burning would surely beat some sense into them. Yet against all the odds according to many posters here they tripled down on being anti-Russia, on fighting them, on decoupling, on slitting their own throat.
The position of these gulf vassals is no better and probably worse.
I agree that a clean break from US hegemony will not arrive so conveniently. But some points
Most likely they might consider hedging bets with China even if they don’t entirely defect to that side. If the US proves time and time again to create tensions in the region, it creates very real possibilities of the gulf monarchies collapsing or declining. In that case, reigning in the US and also preventing themselves from being too dependent on them could be accomplished by purchasing Chinese military equipment and through economic partnerships with China.
However that is only a reason or incentive for the gulf monarchies to go down that route. Not a guarantee of any sorts.
Maybe from their public statements. But do the leaders in private really think that they were attacked unprovoked? They know exactly how much they collaborated with the US and knowingly turned their countries into US operating points.