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 says he wants regime change. But how? He can't send in troops, bombs alone probably aren't enough, and a color revolution seems unlikely.
It's clear they really want this. Destroying Iran is critical for the US. They've been mobilizing for months. They've been whittling away Iran's regional allies for years.
What is the plan here?
There is no plan, they've miscalculated because of the overconfidence the fall of Syria lent them, they took out the weakest link (which took 15 years of sustained warfare to break) and now they've convinced themselves the strongest link is identical to the weakest, utter derangement
I'm sorry but nobody is gonna convince me the Gaza-like scenes out of Tel Aviv and Haifa is what Bibi and Trump had in mind when they started this boondoggle, the dumb fucks literally thought a few bombs and assassinations were all that's needed to trigger a popular uprising that topples the Iranian government THE FUCKIN REFORMISTS ARE IN POWER LMAO the regime change took place in 1997
Smartest thing Iran can do is to keep hammering Israel for as all long as missile stockpiles allow
"don't spend years fighting Iran, simply change the regime"
I'm Zerg rushing the Ayatollah!
10-20 years of a no fly zone, insurgency, air strikes, and sanctions.
Syria all over again.
What happens when Iran builds nukes? Is it really possible to stop them at this point?
They nuke them first. The US has been itching to use them for decades and will finally have the perfect excuse. You can't really build a nuke while under active attack by a nuclear power (two nuclear powers, one a vassal of the other) who need to destroy you for their plans of maintaining global hegemony. At that point they have nothing to lose from hitting you with a nuke to stop you using yours. You need several nukes BEFORE they launch the war and a way to deliver them to ward them off.
Once the war has started a threat likely won't scare them off and really your only choice is revenge, is firing it at them and killing a bunch of their people because they're already going to be nuking you so you get to die happy you took a million of them with you or whatever.
One thing I'll note is that the US and the zionist entity are likely to target and attempt to take out Iranian missile production and launch sites as well as mobile launchers as the next phase. The zionists are of course annoyed by all the missiles landing in the entity and more than that it is stretching resources thin for the empire firing off all those missiles.
Cynic in me says the US is letting Iran hit the zionists with their advanced missiles in order to study them in order to perfect anti-missile systems for their own future use. They simply need that data and are happy to see some settlers die for it. But once they have that data and once Iran starts hitting them in earnest assuming they have a stockpile and real capability to actively produce enough to meet their needs (a big if, I am a little doubtful but we'll see) they'll move to take out those capabilities meaning it will be harder even if Iran gets a nuke to successfully launch and deliver it. Nuking the entity would drive zionists up a wall with rage but after they nuke Iran back and destroy it totally the settlers will return to the zionist entity and I'm afraid it likely will survive.
This is the problem with not having control of your airspace at all. You can do as Yemen does and produce a small amount and harass them with them but not enough to win a war or inflict enough pain to collapse the entity or drive the US to sue for peace. A destabilized middle east/west Asia suits the US alright as we produce plenty of oil and have Canada as well, it'll fuck Europe and China HARD and drive up costs for your average person but given how much consumption is already driven by the top 10% they may think it really doesn't matter to siphon more wealth to the top and impoverish the proles even harder.
The best thing about not having materialism is that you can just want things. They don’t have to be realistic or achievable or even internally consistent. Somewhere at the Pentagon there’s a vision board with “Iran regime change” on it, along with “China economy collapses” and “Russia quits and gives back Crimea.”
idk, Trump might be an idiot but he's briefed by the top analysts of the Pentagon and the CIA. It's hard to believe we have insights they lack.
*Although some of what he hears is apparently bullshit. The Grayzone claims Israel is feeding Trump cooked intelligence through CIA director John Ratcliffe.
AFAIK the cope line at the moment is that US action in Iran will have popular support because people hate the "theocratic regime." They learned absolutely nothing from any of the previous wars, they're 100% still thinking they'll be greeted as liberators and that will make up for their shortcomings on the ground.
I mean, with the exception of the fact that the Soviets were grinding out a victory in Afghanistan by holding as the cities and bombing the Mujahideen in the countryside into submission. Gorbachev didn't have the stomach for it because he stupidly wanted to become Sweden
They've been doing this with a flurry of bullshit "public opinion" articles, like "80% of Americans oppose Iran developing nukes". ... the point being that America should intervene because that's what the majority is purported to want.
It's the same game they played with poll after poll about alleged support for israel. To this day, this huge recurring poll from Harvard uses this exact question: "In the israel-Hamas conflict, do you support more israel or more Hamas?". Of course, with a question like that, most respondents are going to say israel, and then every news outlet can reassure the reader that >85% of Americans support israel over Hamas while they use passive voice to discuss israel's holocaust in Gaza.
I think these kinds of "public opinion" polls are a hugely effective tool for dis/informing people in power and the masses about what is the normative opinion. What better way to tell the uninformed masses and their rulers about how they should think than feeding them the popular opinion - one carefully designed by compromised researchers with leading questions?
Like honestly, I get irrationally mad and disgusted when I see them now.
The same CIA that thought the Iraq war would be easy
The 5D chess masters glad that Ukraine is in the rear view mirror
They accomplished regime change in Syria with barely any direct American or Israeli involvement outside of airstrikes. All they need is a faction to let them in the door and be their ground forces and they can split it open. We haven't seen any major factions pop up within Iran to oppose the government, only lone disgruntled collaborators.
Syria had been fighting a "civil war" for over 10 years though and the government was severely degraded. That is not the case for Iran. They're skipping all the work they put in to Syria and going straight to regime change.
That civil war was instigated and funded by America and Israel. ISIS was created by the CIA in Iraq.
Following this framework, it is a huge mistake to seek a similar result but do hot warfare right from the start. It's a billion times more costly to contend with Iran directly just to do the same thing they would otherwise do with covert tactics.
IMO if they were approaching this more rationally, they would forget regime change, they'd just set the target at creating an insurgency that can be sustained covertly for a few years by creating chaos inside Iran. Mostly just supporting Zionist terror bombing until the point of collapsing parts of Iran. Then nurture that insurgency the way they did in Syria, bring in ISIS, minorities will rush to defend themselves, then pick factions to support based on what will destabilize the state the most. I think there's a chance Trump loses interest in Iran within some time and this approach is what they end up taking.
edit: just to be clear, this is still me being as pessimistic as possible. I don't know that the Zionists are capable of producing that result via bombing. They very well could fail to actually achieve that. But that seems like a more likely route for an eventual regime change than following the Iraq formula.
You say costly they hear profitable.
I don't think any of the Ukrainian war narrative is holding up now, all the talk about US lack of wartime industrial capacity is meaningless when Ukraine was never given barely anything except cold war museum garbage.
And in any case Iran is not Russia they don't have the USSR reserves nor industry that can build hundreds of modern tanks and aircraft. I don't see how another Iraq or Afghanistan in terms of "cost" in USD matters at all and if anything getting the US into a real direct war is the best excuse they can give to the nation for actually building all that military industry imo.
Do you happen to have any good sources that describe how that came about?
If reports are true, Iranian society has rallied under imperial aggression. I don't want to underestimate the CIA, but it seems like an uphill battle.
They have shown to be rather hit or miss with what they are doing. Their plans have a chance of either working or failing spectacularly.
A large chunk of the country containing the most important agricultural and energy rich regions being occupied by US compradors is way beyond "airstrikes" and it is what hampered the Syrian state's ability to adequetly feed and provide modern electricity and heating services to its population year round. Also besides the memes, the Assad "regime" was significantly more corrupt, violent, incompetent and hollowed out compared to the Iranian state. Due to the circumstances and civil war sure, but at the end of the day the way that shaped public opinion and willingeness and capacity to defend it matter