Image is of a destroyed American AWACS plane in Saudi Arabia, of which there is a very limited supply and each of which is enormously expensive both monetarily and in terms of components. Iran hit this with a precision drone strike that likely cost ~$20,000.
I don't have much to add from the last megathread description. This isn't to say that nothing has happened or has changed since then - decades are still happening in weeks - but the general flow of the war is remaining the same. Trump sometimes threatens to open the Strait with troops and flatten Iran to rubble, and other times threatens that he's gonna back off and let other countries handle it if they really want little trifles like "fuel" and "energy" so much. Iran continues to strike across the Middle East. The West continues to bomb civilian infrastructure due to their relative inability to affect the missile cities. In all: things are generally getting worse for America and the Zionists.
April is the month where the last ships that left Hormuz before it was closed will arrive around the world, so the last month of economic turmoil has been a mere prelude to what's going to occur in the near-future. The silver lining is that Iran appears to be formalizing the new state of affairs in Hormuz, creating a rial-based toll to allow passage between a pair of Iranian-controlled islands where they can be monitored, meaning that, as long as the US doesn't do something exceptionally stupid, the global energy crisis may "only" last a couple years instead of simply being the new reality from now on. Some countries have already agreed to this arrangement, and others will inevitably follow despite their consternation as their economies increasingly suffer.
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.
the US and Israel literally does not possess enough industrial military production to restart the war in a year in terms of standoff munitions, virtually all the interceptors are gone, the expensive radars are gone, most bases in the Middle East are either abandoned or run by skeleton crews, there's likely a lot of stress on the aircraft used that will need to be repaired, and dozens of other factors that I'm currently forgetting, and mineral restrictions from China will make production of new military materiel difficult
if they break the ceasefire or otherwise restart the war soon, then they'll be attacking with the few hundred JASSMs they have left out of the 2000-3000 (total on the planet) they started the war with, whatever Tomahawks can be brought to theater, and then aircraft which will need to overfly Iran and get shot down. Iran has relatively little to fear from a ceasefire at this point in terms of Western perfidy because there's not really a ton of "regrouping" the US can do. We aren't talking about "oh, they'll bring in a couple thousand new missiles and interceptors and restock the bases and bring in an aircraft carrier and--", no, the US and Israel militaries as a whole are either virtually exhausted or coming remarkably close to exhaustion (weeks, not months) on a large proportion of the munitions they have used to keep this war going. If anything, I think Iran would have more to gain from a temporary break which leads back to fighting, though obviously if the terms of that ceasefire followed the US's 15 points instead of Iran's 10, then that would be a very bad indicator indeed.
So it's entirely possible (some are even saying "likely" or "certain") that the ceasefire is broken by the US or Israel, but unlike every other time they propose a ceasefire, I don't think the West has all that much to gain from a temporary cessation of hostilities that leads back to conflict. They can't produce anything of note, they can't move aircraft any closer to increase sortie rates, there's not much of anything they can move in-theater that isn't already there because of the missile+interceptor exhaustion. Realistically, the only major action they could achieve that would be an improvement to the pre-ceasefire status quo would be to bring in an aircraft carrier (big whoop), and bring in more troops, and it's very obvious to everybody at this point that boots on the ground in Iran would be a disaster.
Iran has finally, after two and a half long years, fought the attrition war they needed to fight. It's a shame it took that long and that many civilian deaths across the entire region to get to this point, but perhaps the Iranian reformist faction had to be soundly, repeatedly defeated for the internal stability to exist for an attrition war like this to be possible at all. Who can truly say.
I agree with the general sentiment that it's possible that the US may be planning to attack Iran again in like 5-10 years, but to be honest it's very plausible that by that point, American decline will have progressed to the point where they just can't do it even if they wanted to. and Iran will have been strengthened internally by the flood of economic benefits that a lack of sanctions and the Hormuz toll will bring, they'll have learned even more military lessons, they'll hopefully have even better air defenses, and perhaps even nukes
in the immediate term there are two dangers: the first is a continuation of Western attempts to cause internal chaos during reconstruction (basically guaranteed no matter what but the end of sanctions and the mutual experience of having survived a war and defeated the US and Israel will hopefully cause the populace to hold together). the second is that Trump looks at how badly Iran went and is like "Fuck, my legacy is gonna be that I'm the president who lost the Middle East. I need to win a war and FAST, I need a W heading into the midterms and beyond, and I need to rally the US together while the oil shortages are occurring" and immediately turns his ire on Cuba. There's not really any other meaningful bogeyman out there to bomb and/or invade at this point. They could try Venezuela again but it seems unlikely; they would probably be looking at the DPRK if they didn't have nukes; Russia's obviously doing their own thing with the Ukraine War anyway, and I feel confident now saying that China is never going to be conventionally assaulted by the US - ever - given what a gigantic problem Iran posed in terms of forward bases being bombarded and the aircraft carriers proving rather unhelpful overall.
I thought like this before, but now I think it's more from Iran COIN liquidating saboteurs during True Promise 3 and the color revolution that happened right before True Promise 4. During True Promise 3, those Mossad saboteurs were launching drones within Iran. They had to be liquidated first before there can be societal unity. The remaining Mossad agents and the dregs of Iranian society who were bribed by those agents to burn down mosques were subsequently taken care of during the color revolution. While True Promise 3 had saboteurs everywhere, there was not one reported instance of sabotage during True Promise 4.
Another thing to notice is that while Khamenei didn't do anything to stop his martyrdom from happening during True Promise 4, he actually took the usual precautions like hiding in a bunker during True Promise 3. He hid in his safehouse for so long people thought the IOF got him until it turned out his people purposely isolated themselves from comms and had to reached in person. Perhaps Khamenei stopped caring about taking usual precautions and felt he could contribute to the Islamic Revolution one last time with his martyrdom because he believed Iranian society was sufficiently united after the traitors and dregs were culled.
I mean this in the most gracious and respectful way possible that the late Khamenei "choosing" to die at the start of the war by not fleeing to a bunker might well have been the best thing he could have done, though of course the deaths of his family members and granddaughter was a horrific side effect. Given how Iran's government carried out the 12 Day's War, it's entirely possible that a similar thing would have occurred this time around and we really would be talking about how we're just gonna be doing all this again in 8 months. It's like how the Hamas leader Yassin went out: instead of dying of old age in the near-future, he was granted the honor of dying a martyr and symbol for the future, and he set up Iran's military organization and succession such that his death would not have meaningful military consequences. That Mojtaba Khamenei survived (and is about as far from a reformist as you can get; certainly more of a hardliner than his father) is truly the icing on the cake.
I have my differences with the general idea of martyring yourself for a cause when it's otherwise avoidable, and I'm certainly somebody who would have done everything I could to have forced Larijani and many others into a bunker instead of staying in Tehran houses and apartment blocks, but Khamenei's death was about the best demonstration of the strength of the concept in the context of the Shia religion.
If your death forwards the cause of revolution it is not a waste, read Revolutionary Suicide by Huey Newton.