Mere hours before Trump's 8pm Tuesday deadline yesterday, Pakistan's government contacted Iran with a US-written proposal for a two-week ceasefire, explicitly stated to also include Lebanon, during which they would negotiate a permanent end to the war on the basis of Iran's 10 Points. Among other things, these points include 1) maintaining strict control (joint with Oman) over Hormuz, complete with a toll; 2) the end of sanctions on Iran; 3) keeping their enriched uranium; 4) a withdrawal of US forces from the Middle East [stated by the Supreme Leadership Council but not in the 10 Points, so who knows], and 5) some plausible guarantee that Iran would never be attacked again. I've heard rumors that China may have prodded Iran to accept these terms.
In theory, these are relatively confident and maximalist demands. In practice, Iran has already achieved military and economic control over Hormuz and the withdrawal of many US troops and bases from the region, so at least a few of Iran's demands are, to a greater or lesser extent, already achieved, and with little hope for an increasingly exhausted US to undo these achievements short of nukes.
A couple hours after the ceasefire, the Zionist entity began a wave of airstrikes in Lebanon, killing hundreds of civilians, as well as flying drones into Iranian airspace. This was a strange move to make even if you assume - very sensibly - that the US is completely agreement non-capable: why not agree to the ceasefire and simply pretend to negotiate for two weeks while regrouping/repairing what assets you can and then start hitting Iran again?
One theory is that the Zionists are testing to what degree Iran is actually willing to have solidarity with Lebanon and Hezbollah. While the Resistance has been relatively united since October 7th, the formation of separate peaces instead of negotiating terms as a united front has been a major exploitable weakness. Alternatively, it's been proposed that the US didn't even consider using the ceasefire to regroup and deceive Iran, and that Trump merely wanted a way to chicken out of his threat on Iran's electrical grid - the fact that US officials have since stated that Iran's 10 Points were not the same ones they agreed to is a point supporting this, I suppose. If the conflict resumes and Trump does not deliver another 48 hour deadline (and/or makes it something silly like a month from now) then this could be the explanation.
From Iran, I am getting the sense that a lot is happening behind the scenes. Statements from top officials like Araghchi have stated quite plainly that there will be no ceasefire and no negotiations unless the Zionists stop attacking Lebanon, but as of ~24 hours after the ceasefire began, there has been no significant military response from Iran yet. There have apparently been phone calls between Araghchi and numerous regional officials, but it is unknown to what end. All the while, the global economic situation continues to deteriorate. Over the next week or two, the last tankers that left Hormuz before it closed will arrive at their destinations. If the missile exchanges begin once more, then the West, much like most of the rest of the world, will be experiencing all sorts of fuel, energy, food, and product shortages while trying to justify why they broke the ceasefire to kill more Lebanese civilians.
Last week's thread is here.
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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.
Every single negotiation with the US where Israel is involved ends up with your negotiators getting killed.
How do you think this war ends otherwise? With Iranian troops in Washington, raising the Iranian flag over the White House? There has to be some kind of negotiated end to the conflict at some point.
I think all the online ultras are planning a coordinated overthrow of all the western governments, just waiting for the right moment to strike...
Unfortunately they are not so coordinated.
if we're dreaming...
the alternative is eternal war
USA can't sustain this for even two years. maybe not even six months. but I see what you are saying in your reply to marxisthayaca
They don't need to bomb them daily to make life hell in Iran. They just need to regularly kill people, not daily but weekly or even monthly. I'm just getting tired of all the armchair generals who imagine they have all the same facts as the IRGC and they're just smarter than the Iranians or something. It's driving me insane.
I feel you, and sorry if I inadvertently contributed to it. I'm feeling pretty unmoored myself and it's hard to manage lately
Thank you! I feel like I need to stress in every comment that this isn't some fucking game or something, this is an actual war with people's lives at stake. Their goals are to keep Iran and the Iranian people as safe as possible going into the future, not to just "beat the US at WarChess." These armchair generals are more concerned with "winning" at any cost than Pyrrhus was.
Please comrade, find another term for your outrage, indignation, fury or whathaveyou besides "insane".
how do you explain the Iranians repeatedly making strategic failures leading up to this event that this thread repeatedly predicted and warned against? The Iranian government is not rational in its own self preservation, it is heavily corrupted by reformists with personal incentives that override the collective incentive. It has religious distortions that make it make unwise decisions, such as never getting a nuke due to a religious conviction.
In hindsight, can you really claim that Iran promising to never get a nuclear weapon was the correct move? I think it's clear that it was not and they should have followed the path of DPRK but instead they got baited along with liberalization and normalization carrots for decades.
If what you were saying is true, that we are just armchair generals and the IRGC has more complete information and is just smarter and better than us and we need to just shut up and watch then what are we even doing here? Just subscribe to Iranian state media and turn off your brain. Why comment or try to analyze anything? Our role is cheerleaders right? But it isn't true because they repeatedly made strategic errors that people here were correct about ultimately, which doesn't make any sense under your "Iranian Leadership know better than you shut up" framework. Iranian state media has also exaggerated or lied multiple times during this conflict and previous ones, which means we have to go through and try to parse out the truth - another reason not to just shut up and trust Iran's leadership.
I'm sick of people using a bastardized stand-point theory and moralizing to make the argument that 'the leadership is always right' and our role is cheerleading and repeating whatever they say instead of analysis and understanding from a communist and anti-imperialist perspective. This is just a tiny little forum with like 100 users, stop trying to "control" the narrative as if the "narrative" here has any impact on reality. We should be striving to hone our analysis and better understand the world, not ensure strict adherence to narratives.
Lol America will go into the stone age without an energy supply, petrochemicals, fertilizers, helium for chips, liquid natural gas, and regents for pharmaceuticals.
america is at the very least close to self-sufficient in all of those, and mostly don't use the strait for their imports except urea
prices would still go into the stratosphere though, and amerikkkans can't stand being out of treats
America is a net importer of crude oil, about 3 to 3.3 mbpd
USA imports heavy sour and exports light sweet, ~~and doesn't have enough refining capacity for light sweet to meet needs~~
EDIT: I'm not clear enough on the details of the refining mismatch so I'm striking this through until I research enough to understand it better
it's true about the heavy vs light part, but that's only because its refineries are set to work with oil that is on the heavy side (just like ur mum lmao), and right now it still makes more financial sense to do this trade than to convert the whole industry. what i'm trying to say is that it wouldn't be apocalyptic for the US, just expensive and time consuming. which is still really bad ofc
The US needs to have a 'great leap forward', except instead of backyard steel, it's backyard piss harvesting.
Do your part!
Permian basin fracked crude is export-only.
The overwhelming majority of US refineries are set up to process heavy sour inputs such as Western Canadian Select or Arab Heavy, while West Texas Intermediate is a light sweet source.
Retooling the refineries to process WTI instead of heavy sour would be expensive and only worth it if heavy sour (which is generally sold at a cheaper rate due to requiring more processing to extract the sulfur) was unavailable in the needed quantities.
So will plenty of other places, and Iran will have suffered further bombing. It's very easy to demand Iran commit themselves and never negotiate from behind a keyboard or phone screen.