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.
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:
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.
Long March 10B launch livestream. This is just for the launch, we won’t get a livestream of the first stage recovery attempt unless a very brave fisherman feels like it. I will be posting updates as soon as they are available.
And some recent IRGC ballistic missile launch footage:
https://s5.cdnstatic.space/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/0npaQxgmQ9A3IyTS.mp4
Today’s strikes:
The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps says it has struck a US command and control center in West Asia and the al-Azraq airbase in Jordan with 10 ballistic missiles, in a second wave of retaliation for American strikes on Iranian territory.
The IRGC Aerospace Force carried out the attacks at 14:20 local time on Thursday. The strikes came hours after Iran’s initial retaliatory operations against US targets in Bahrain and Kuwait on Wednesday and Thursday.
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2026/07/09/771916/IRGC-strikes-USCommand-Center--West-Asia
Edit to add:
The Iranian Armed Forces have launched cruise missile strikes against several US warships off the coast of Bahrain, the Islamic Republic’s state television reported.
🚨 BREAKING: After FIVE hours of debate, Paraguay’s Senate passed a majority vote motion condemning senator Celeste Amarilla’s racist remarks about Kylian Mbappé and rejecting all forms of racism & discrimination.
The Senate also said that Amarilla’s comments do NOT represent the position of the Paraguay National Chamber
Five hours to decide that racists tweets are bad
There were some relatively small strikes in Iran today and the US specifically denied responsibility. US attacks usually start by now. Kind of surprising that nothing is happening yet. Are we looking at another bullshit Trump ceasefire just so he can make money on stocks?
Centcom is working on its standup material. ’
CBS News - The U.S. military reiterated Thursday that Iran does not control the Strait of Hormuz. In a social media post, U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East, said that since early May, U.S. forces have helped more than 800 commercial vessels and 380 million barrels of crude oil transit the strait.
The declaration comes after the U.S. said Iran struck three commercial tankers in the strait earlier this week, reigniting fighting between the two sides amid what has been a shaky ceasefire. The maritime journal Lloyd’s List found Thursday that strait traffic has “fallen sharply” since the two sides began exchanging strikes Tuesday.
https://x.com/ripplebrain/status/2075290503461953720 (privated account so you may not be able to open it, and xcancel doesn’t really do any good in this case)
Trump’s Patriot plan “will do little to fix Ukraine’s urgent air defense problems” because “it will take many months for Ukraine to get a production facility built,” and that facility will quickly become a major Russian target
A production facility is an interesting way to put it. In the US, there are over a dozen different production facilities for Patriot interceptors alone (each producing only a subset of components or handling final assembly), with hundreds of suppliers involved in the production chain. The major components of a PAC-3 MSE interceptor are: radar seeker, guidance electronics, attitude control section, solid rocket motor, lethality enhancer (fragmentation ring), airframe, control surfaces, launch canister, and missile uplink. Someone’s going to have to make each of these things. If it’s going to be Ukraine, and if they want to bypass the glacial rate of interceptor production elsewhere, they’ll need production lines for all of them, and those don’t exist right now. They would never dream of building one giant facility to handle all of this because it would immediately be destroyed.
It’s hard to convey how difficult it would be to spin up full production of Patriot interceptors, so here are some concrete examples. It took seven years for Poland to construct a production facility responsible for making only attitude control motors for the PAC-3 MSE. It took three years just to expand the final assembly facility in Camden even though that facility already existed and was actively in use. Boeing’s seeker production line expansion in Huntsville is also projected to complete its expansion after three years. Japan’s PAC-3 facility only took two, but it produces 20 interceptors a year and relies heavily on imported components from the US.
This idea is so unrealistic that even skeptics like Responsible Statecraft are failing to understand or express its absurdity
https://xcancel.com/Jeff21461/status/2075261986909085835
🇺🇦🇵🇱 According to Defense24, Poland has donated five PAC-3 MSE missiles to Ukraine at the request of NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and the Supreme Allied Commander Europe
Southern Iran getting bombed again.
Aljazeera is saying the USA claims it is not them:
A US defence official has confirmed to Al Jazeera that the military has not carried out strikes in Iran in the past few hours. This is consistent with other media reports here in the United States. The US official did not tell us what the US military speculates could be the cause of those explosions in Iran. It will only confirm the US is not involved.
gosh I wonder who else in the region has the ability to carry out strikes on Iran.
The France vs Morroco match will start in about 20 mins nerds
Here is a stream https://envivo.tvazteca.com/
In minute 59 my dictator scores the first goal
Min 65 Dembélé goal
Everytime France scores they play a song from daft punk lol
With Colombia’s elimination, only two South American countries are left to root for.
spoiler
Tasnim is throwing me an error right now but I’ll update this when I can
https://xcancel.com/MenchOsint/status/2075265589975674992
Train traffic has resumed on the Mashhad railway line. – Tasnim
The second line will also be rebuilt within a few hours, according the the statement released by the railway administration.
(Machine translated) Izvestia: Tanks at the Arena: The new T-72B3A tanks with active protection systems will be used in the SVO zone.
In the area of the special military operation, Russian troops will begin using T-72B3A tanks with updated Arena-M active protection systems (APS) , Izvestia has learned. According to the developers, the system is capable of protecting armored vehicles not only from shells and anti-tank missiles, but also from loitering munitions and FPV drones. Experts believe this will significantly improve the survivability of combat vehicles and the safety of their crews.
Military units operating in the Northern Military District have received T-72B3A tanks equipped with Arena-M active protection systems. The armored vehicles and crews are currently being actively trained for combat use. Izvestia has learned that these heavily protected tanks will support our assault groups attacking enemy fortified areas .
Arena-M has also been successfully tested against Javelin top-attack missiles which were captured from the battlefield.
video
NATO Summit: Trump Orders Cutoff of U.S. Trade With Spain - Telesur English
Article
‘Spain is a terrible partner in NATO. They don’t participate, they don’t pay,’ the U.S. leader stated. On Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump announced an immediate halt to all trade, including visits with Spain, criticizing Madrid’s lack of participation in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
“Spain is a wasted cause. We don’t want to do any trade business with Spain anymore,” he said at the NATO summit in Ankara.
The U.S. president then publicly directed his administration to sever trade ties. Turning to U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Trump said: “Spain is a terrible partner in NATO. They don’t participate, they don’t pay. I don’t want anything to do with Spain. Cut off all trade with Spain, including visits.”
Madrid recently declined to meet NATO’s new 5 percent gross domestic product (GDP) defense spending target and has refused to allow the United States to utilize its airspace or territory for operations during the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.
On Wednesday, Antonio Bonet, president of the Spanish Exporters and Investors Club, reacted to the U.S. president’s threats by calling for “calm and institutional dialogue.”
Bonet reminded everyone that Spain is part of the European single market, so any measure “would affect the entire bloc” and, at the same time, any response should be adopted jointly from Brussels.
“Only trade diplomacy can prevent a deterioration of the U.S.-Spain relations,” he said, adding that such a move would have “unforeseeable consequences” for both economies.
Specifically, the Spanish products most affected by a trade rupture would be olive oil, wine, Iberian ham, black olives, machinery, and capital goods. On the other side, the supply of U.S. liquefied natural gas would be at risk.
