I have a longer statement below in spoiler tags, but for those who just want to get into the megathread itself, the very short version of my take is: things are going about as well as they realistically could go for Iran as of me writing this on March 2nd; the US and Zionists have clearly misplayed their hand; there's so much propaganda it's hard to get a good perspective of the overall conflict; I think if Iran is still fighting on at approximately the same pace as the end of this week then things are looking VERY bad for the West; I am unsure what the ultimate result of this conflict will be now that the new crop of Iranian leadership are in charge after Khamenei's assassination but am hopeful that anti-American sentiment has been yet further cemented and those in Iran who seek repproachment with the West will be further discredited in favor of those who wish to look East.
My Idle Ramblings
As we are now past the initial 48 hours of the war, what can be said with confidence is that the Iran of today is in a considerably more organized position than they were during the Twelve Days War, as the initial delay on meaningfully responding to enemy attacks was brought from something like 10 hours to about 1 hour. Unfortunately, given the not-insignificant number of Iranian top figures killed, Iran still has considerable opsec problems; whatever the hell Sinwar was doing to stay alive for over a year in the most bombed territory on the planet obviously hasn't reached Iran yet. However, to Iran's credit, the recovery was fast and effective, Khamenei had already drawn up detailed plans for the succession chain in the event of his death, and the new figures were clearly in position to take control of the situation within the hour. The name of the game appears to be greater decentralization of the military, making Zionist narratives about "decapitation" essentially meaningless - the hydra has a thousand heads.
This time around, there are fewer direct critiques to level at Russia and China. In an abstract sense, they could certainly "do more" (Xi, donate one million Chinese drones and let Iran and Yemen blot out the sun!), but to be geopolitically serious, it appears that the Twelve Days War delivered a swift kick up the ass of both Iran and China to start working more closely together, and so Iran now has access to Chinese intelligence and satellite tools, has been receiving certain military equipment like much better radars, and, one hopes, will provide greater economic assistance during and after this war's conclusion.
The overall impacts of the US's and Zionists' strikes on Iran, and vice versa, have been very hard to assess due to the customary tsunami of misinformation and comical exaggerations. Clearly, the most sensational claims - that Western aircraft feel safe enough to fly directly over Iranian territory (let alone that they have air superiority, let alone that they have air supremacy); that Iran's leadership have been killed in meaningful numbers; that Iran is on the verge of collapse or giving in; that Western losses are insignificant; that things are going well or better than expected; etc, are obviously for the general population and peanut gallery, and the situation looks very different from within the halls of power. Nonetheless, stitching every individual missile/drone strike together from both sides into a cohesive picture from which we can draw conclusions has always been a major challenge of present-day warfare, and is certainly challenging here. What can be generally gathered is that Iran does not seem to fear striking Occupied Palestine or American bases directly and with pretty significant firepower, but either is deliberately not focussing on the fleet or does not have the capability to focus on it, leaving American warships intact. And from the highest perspective, it's unclear whether Iran is only beginning a long term war of attrition, or whether they hope to not overly anger the US and Zionists so that an offramp later is possible, or indeed, that the West is succeeding in attriting Iran's offensive capabilities faster than Iran can attrit the West's (or a mixture of all three).
The assassination of Khamenei and other figures is a symbolic victory for the West, as he was one of the last remaining pre-October 7th Resistance leaders alive or in power. Reports are that he stayed at his compound despite being advised in the days before the attack that he should leave, knowing that he would likely very soon die, as he did not want to flee to Russia or hide in bunkers. It's currently unclear to me how impactful his death will be in the end. On the one hand, it is obvious to every serious analyst that his death will not negatively impact Iran's military operations, nor will it lead to regime change in the short or medium term - Iran's government is not a strongman regime (few governments truly are), and the current government is both very durable and has very widespread legitimacy. His replacements and subordinates are already in charge, and from what I can tell, effectively were in charge long before his death.
On the other hand, succession is a bit of a risky process for nations today, in the short and long term. If whoever is left as his replacement at the end of this war - I cannot safely assume it will be Khamenei's immediate replacement in the current environment of Western strikes - ultimately leans even a little more reformist and towards reproachment with the West than Khamenei did, then this whole war may be worth it to the West regardless of the materiel losses. Alternatively, if this war causes a permanent shift away from repproachment and genuine, sustained, and hard-to-repair damage to America's foothold in the Middle East as well as the attrition of most of the US's interceptor missiles, we may indeed be looking at a region soon to be free of Zionist designs. It is much too early for me to distinguish which path we are on.
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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.
It is truly mind-boggling how much the Epstein axis has bungled this thus far. Like, we always knew the United States was facing imperial overreach and its military was a paper tiger totally incapable of doing anything other than targeted death towards children and political leadership, but god damn to see it so evident and sudden is still insane. Feels like a fever dream, following this conflict. I never want to underestimate the empire's ability to reconstitute itself, but this has to be some kind of Suez Crisis moment; the 2027 conflict with China is the ravings of a mad lunatic after this performance. It's like Trump and co are marching towards the most obvious trap for American imperial power, totally destroying any trust amongst the Gulf states and getting bogged down in a ridiculous ground war with no clear objectives, no off ramps, and no logistic chain to accomplish anything of note. Truly insane times.
I have come to learn that there is literally nothing on earth as gratifying as seeing the evil imperialist hegemon hoist on its own ideological petard
They've destroyed their relationship with Europe and set in motion the makings of a slow and long attempt to restore european sovereignty. They've made latam scared and set in motion movements there. They're currently destroying their relationships in the middle east. Next step is obviously to destroy their relationships in Asia.
JDPON Don delivers the goods. I imagine when Japan (where like 80% of all its oil passes through the straight of Hormuz) and the Koreans run out of oil those relationships are gonna get strained.
That's a start I guess, but I really think Trump can do something much more directly and offensively stupid
Would be surprised if we make it out of Trump's presidency without a proxy war in East Asia (we'll goad South Korea, Japan and Taiwan into doing something stupid and then fumble it)
There are thousands of Xinjiang separatists in Syria waiting for their moment.
They will, sadly, probably be unleashed upon Iraq again with the rest of the Daesh remnants
There is 0% chance they make it into China. China has insanely good control over its borders. Much more likely that they continue to cause chaos either in the Middle East or Central Asia.
I doubt the border with afghanistan is that secure, what matters is whether the conditions in afghanistan get bad enough to allow it
The China-Afghanistan border is tiny and very easily guarded/surveilled, it's essentially a single mountain pass corridor. I would worry more about Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. That region has not been exactly stable in recent years, there have been conflicts and infiltrations of terrorists in both countries. But again here the geography is very favorable. The mountains are virtually impassable save for a few border crossings. The most geographically open border China has in Central Asia is with Kazakhstan, but i have not heard so far of Kazakhstan being a big hub for jihadist transit.
In any case, China has a lot of experience guarding its borders from infiltrations by CIA trained terrorist separatists in remote, mountainous regions. They dealt with a lot of that in Tibet.
And Xinjiang has a lot of security so without local collaborators it is impossible to hide there. But with the recent economic prosperity boom it will be very hard to find locals willing to take the risk of harboring terrorists.
Not to mention I’m sure literally every imperialised nation with the capability is currently digging tunnels and procuring suicide drones
me turning in my apology form to Maduro for not trusting the plan of making Venezuela fold so easily in order to bait the US into thinking Iran would be a cakewalk
Watch them fail to prosecute Maduro after all this lmao
It's been 3 days, things are yet undecided. so far this has been incredibly costly and painful for Iran.
So maybe I'm coping too hard, but it looks like regime change in several comprador countries is a possibility.
Iran is united and unbroken in the face of the world's foremost superpower, forcing them to flee from their bases in almost a dozen countries, with almost no senior leadership in place and having been under global sanction for the better part of a decade. There has been no wavering, no dissenters in the ranks, no half-measures or hesitations. The messaging from their enemies, meanwhile, is confused and frantic, multiple opposition senators have walked out of military briefings "more concerned than when they got there," and the intensity of attacks has not let up despite three days of indiscriminate bombing by upwards of 600 tactical aircraft. The United States has no idea what it is even attempting to accomplish and is running out of time. There's not really any other way this thing ends unless they wanna start using nukes.
I certainly hope that, but again, Iran is standing alone against the great powers.
Iran has been preparing for this one war for 47 years.
For a very brief period in time, they were taught about how to make missiles from Libya.
They were watching the assymetric warfare in the geographically similar country of Afghanistan.
They watched how the US did SEAD in Iraq.
North Korea taught Vietnam and Iran about building tunnels (directly taught).
Iran taught Hezbollah, Ansar Allah, and the Palestinian resistance.
There's a lot more. But if you were to trat this like a video game - the US is fighting a boss that is the culmination of every fight they have ever had.
The US has made a colossal blunder by abandoning those military bases encircling Iran so fragrantly. Military wise, they basically invested how many billions of dollars to build these military installations only to abandon them at the first sign of trouble. Just completely conceding those military bases to the enemy. All that military investment going up in flames.
But even more important are the political repercussions. Beyond the immediate region of West Asia like how Bahrain is almost at the point of regime change, those political repercussions are being felt in those comprador regimes in East Asia who also host US military bases encircling another US rival. The US will not protect them, and why should they? Those comprador regimes in West Asia and East Asia are just human shields.
To balance out this massive L, the IRI has to completely collapse. Should the IRI collapse, at least the imperialists could say that despite abandoning those bases and their human shield vassals to the enemy, the IRI is no more, thus making those base's existence superfluous anyways. But I don't think the IRI is going to collapse anytime soon. Suffer tremendous human and material cost, yes. But collapse, I don't think so.
From a military perspective, temporary retreat can sometimes be the correct approach. If you constantly worry about how much you invested into establishing positions you allow yourself to be drawn into the trap of defending the indefensible. Look at Ukraine. Their refusal to ever tactically retreat even from cauldrons has been letting Russia achieve insanely efficient kill ratios.
That being said, you are right about the political repercussions. This is not purely military. Whichever way you look at it, this was a huge blunder from the US. They gambled on Iran being a house of cards whose door they could kick in and it would immediately collapse. Very Nazi coded if you know history. Not a coincidence because they think exactly like Nazis.
This is literally exactly what killed the USSR. Somehow the US survived the Gulf war and Iraq/Afghanistan, but those were started at the height of hegemony. It's running on fumes now and they don't even have a single square inch to show for it.
Not really comparable. The Soviet Afghanistan conflict was very different. The causes of the dissolution of the USSR were complex. Afghanistan played a very minor role by comparison to other factors.
Is also say that if this war leads to the dissolution of American in the next few years that it played a minor role in the grand scheme of things. This is absolutely a straw though.