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.
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.
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"A few hundred Hezbollah members is just statistically likely" is based on what, exactly? You started with "hezbollah fighters", so I assumed we were talking about Hezbollah as a military organization, not the political party - the military wing has bases and underground facilities, their troops aren't just hanging around in downtown Beirut waiting to get bombed, especially with the organization mobilized to actually fight Israel. If you're in resistance telegrams, do you have any sources on Hezbollah casualties?
Members of the civilian party bureaucracy, sure, but that's not what you opened with.
When did I say that it's fine for Lebanese civilians to die? You started this with an argument about Hezbollah fighters being killed, I countered that Israeli strikes had primarily hit civilians, and thus the impact on Hezbollah's fighting capability is likely minimal.
Your argument seems to be based on the idea that if Iranian missiles had kept flying, the bombardment of Beirut wouldn't have happened. This is, plainly, false - Iran can do very little to prevent that. All the Iranian bombardment of Israeli and US bases didn't stop Iran itself from getting bombed, and Beirut is way closer to Israel.
Alright, fair enough. But people, mainly civilians, on social media are not necessarily reflective of Hezbollah itself. How many actual Hezbollah militants post on those platforms?
The wedge between Iran and Lebabon-outside-of-Hezbollah exists anyway, given that the Lebanese government seeks to disarm Hezbollah, it's the Iran-Hezbollah relationship which is important.
I would assume they're probably be much angrier at Israel for slaughtering their friends and relatives than Iran over a vague notion of betrayal.
I genuinely don't understand the argument you're making here, these carrier groups were moving to the Middle East anyway, THE CEASEFIRE HAS NO BEARING ON THIS! There's no "additional time to arrive", the targets that the Iranians would have been able to strike in the meantime would have had no impact on the arrival timeline of those ships! And the Ford has not even remotely undergone the repairs it actually needs - them sending it back in is a sign of desperation, the crew's morale is unlikely to be any better now that they're entering their 11th month of deployment.
To do fucking what with? Launch another doomed special forces operation?
Well, we don't "all know it's not true" - you're arguing it's not true, and I'm arguing the opposite, which is apparently "bullshitting", because your arguments are true and any counter-arguments are false. Again, the down time is several days (although we'll see for how long the ceasefire actually lasts now that talks have collapsed) - build ups to military operations take months.
You completely ignored the actual point I was making! Iran has assets in the country which have been rendered inaccessible by bombardment of the missile cities - they're not bringing anything in from the outside, they're digging out the stuff they already have. You also completely ignored the point about infrastructure being rebuilt, which is obviously important - the US, conversely, isn't rebuilding anything in this span of time, the Gulf bases are still fucked, interceptor stockpiles are still fucked, radars are still fucked so even if interceptor stockpiles could be rebuilt their effectiveness is going to be massively reduced, precision-guided munition stockpiles are still fucked.
I've specifically explained to you why I disagree with that. Do you think it was all going swell in Iran, they were just launching their missiles with no issue? They were still getting bombed hard, even if CENTCOM's claims of destruction were exaggerated. A pause is undoubtedly beneficial for Iran.
And, throughout all this, the Strait of Hormuz has remained closed! Iran is still causing damage to Western economies without sustaining any bombing damage itself.
Russia is literally in the middle of an Easter truce this very fucking moment! (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0wkkwev2vo) They've gone through like a dozen sets of negotiations by now!
This could sum up responses their arguments this entire time TBH. Iran's ceasefire proposal included Lebanon in the terms or else the strait would remain closed. The strait therefore, has remained closed. Random reactionary potshots at Israel wouldn't have saved the people of Lebanon.
All it would've done is show to the rest of the world that Iran is just as irrational and dangerous a party as the US, undoing all the diplomatic work they have been working on during this conflict. It is an awful idea militarily to just react to whatever your opponent does. Iran learnt this in the 12 day war, reaction makes you predictable and easy to counter.
Iran has to think long term if they want to win, if Iran loses this war and becomes a failed state due to short sighted and reactionary decision making that feels good in the moment, but has long lasting consequences, it is hard for me to imagine how they could help Lebanon in that circumstance.
I would've blocked them a while ago if the people replying to them didn't offer interesting and insightful rebuttals of their doomerism.
This is completely, objectively false and incorrect. The ceasefire proposal included Lebanon or Iran refused to proceed with talks. Then Iran proceeded with talks and broke their explicitly stated public redline. The US does this on purpose as a shit test to humiliate its opponents. The "close the straits" thing is a post-hoc explanation. Does it bother you that you lie? Does it bother you that Iran lied about not negotiating with the US, directly or indirectly, up until they announced the ceasefire talks with the US? These lies don't bother you at all? You will just continue to lie?
The missile and drone waves of Operation True Promise 4 were not random, reactionary nor potshots. We saw quite clearly last year that when Iran attacked Israel, it had to completely stop it's bombing campaigns in Gaza. Using jets and military personnel for defense does mean they cannot be used for offense. Suppressing Israel's bombing campaigns with constant missile waves does work and is effective, and ceasing it does have an impact on the resistance forces in combat with Israel.
Not engaging in perfidious fake talks and just continuing to fight the defensive war Israel and US started would prove Iran irrational? How? If anything their stopping to do talks after multiple rounds of perfidy and killed negotiators is the irrational part, especially when Iran wins if they just continue doing what they're doing. The world was already on Iran's side here.
I do think it's funny how the anti-doomer idealogues find themselves in twisted pretzel positions.
"Iran's missile attacks are devastating! They are wiping out US bases in the region!"
Iran announces a ceasefire:
"Iran's missile attacks are random and reactionary and weak and have no strategic impact. It's just smart geopolitics to stop!"
Once the ceasefire ends:
"Iran's attacks are devastating the enemy!"
Experts of the post-hoc, the anti-doomer squad is here to make up some plausible rationalization for whatever the topic of the day is. Marxist analysis? What's that? We're cheerleaders of the official narrative here.
I know we're disengaged as of another subthread, but I'm posting this for any other users reading the discourse later:
This is a highly dishonest framing, or at least one deeply ignorant of the military realities. Firstly - Iran wiped out US bases on the Gulf, which is a whole other thing from Israel. There's plain geographic limitations to how effective strikes at distance can be - we're materialists on this website, right? We can't just pretend that hitting a base 100 miles away and one 1000 miles away are the same fucking thing?
The fact that Iranian strikes can be effective in some ways does not make them effective in all ways. Iran can be capable of pushing the US out of the Gulf and Iraq, and simultaneously not be capable of destroying the Israeli Air Force's capacity to strike Lebanon. Iran can be capable of striking targets in Israel, but due to the time required for its missiles to reach them, not be capable of destroying Israeli aircraft at airfields before they take off.
You mentioned above that
Which I'm not sure is particularly sound. Israel has literally been bombing Gaza for nearly the whole duration of the current war (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/9/israel-bombed-gaza-on-36-of-the-past-40-days-while-the-war-raged-in-iran), which has likely seen way more Israeli targets effectively hit than last year. So clearly, no, Iran's attacks are not effectively preventing Israel from continuing to carry out bombardment on targets in the Levant - it probably worked out in 2025 because the US wasn't involved (outside of air defense) until right towards the end, so Israel had only its own assets to rely on, and scrambled everything against Iran. The situation is fundamentally different now.
Thank you for this. I ended up just blocking them so hopefully I don't miss too many discussions in these threads, but the fact that they position themselves as "pro-doomer" and think that is a positive place to be in is very upsetting, not worth reading anything they say, even if I miss comments replying to them. Also telling that their defence of their position isn't to prove me wrong with evidence, which I would welcome, I'm wrong about a lot of things, but then to just call me a liar and then in their next breath make claims that I never actually said and deliberately misrepresent my position. Just pure idealist and downright liberal bullshit.
I said it in the last newsmega and I'll say it again here: doomerism is bad not because people are "sensitive" or whatever and need mindless positivity, but because it actively hampers your analytical skills and ability to process the information properly. ILF otherwise has very solid analysis but the doomerism has been actively hampering that, but apparently having the entire community tell him that he is dooming too much isn't a wake-up call, but a sign that everyone else is wrong, not him.
I was a bit too confrontational in what I said earlier though, I'm going to do some self-crit and avoid getting so worked up over doomerism, not helping anyone myself by behaving so snide.
Tbf, it kind of starts wearing on you after a while, just seeing the same argument over and over again. There's a reason buddhist monks go up into secluded monasteries to study for years, patience is something that has to be cultivated with concerted effort.
It helps me out that it takes me like an hour to write a long comment and so by the time I'm done I've gone through so many edits and rephrasings of my points that passions have mostly dulled. I still maybe overdid the swears a bit
Yeah, I should stand to do that more often, I'll often pop in for a few minutes and make a quick comment or two, but I should be more thorough and thoughtful with what I say and what I am trying to say, especially in the newsmega where tensions are pretty high. If I have a problem with people dooming, I should more seriously address it rather than just making rude comments like that will somehow make them more likely to change their perspective, not less.
no comment on the lies they are stating in the opening paragraph? you have continuously avoided that subject. You still have not properly addressed that Iran made Lebanon a red line, US/Israel broke it, and Iran continued with the talks and did not enforce their red line. Why didn't they walk away?
Nor has anyone here addressed the Iranian leadership lying to the public throughout the war, saying explicitly that they were not negotiating (while Trump was telling the truth that indirect talks were indeed happening). This is actual gaslighting that you and everyone else here just ignores this or lies about it.
I only tackled the military comments specifically since you asked to disengage in another comment, so I was keeping it to just the main thing I saw as plainly not factual.
I haven't talked about the red line at all, there's nothing to address! You're arguing with two different people here, I've mainly focused on military concerns, not the diplomatic angle. I agree that it would be bad to make it a red line and then not follow up on that, but well, you brought up Russia as a positive counter-example before, and they've had like a thousand red lines trampled over. It's disappointing, but hardly justifiable reason for such a crash-out - they shouldn't have issued the red line, sure. They still kept the Strait closed, even though they went for the negotiations, so it's wasn't a complete wash.
It is perfectly possible that talks only started in the last week or so, and all earlier denials were, in fact, true. The last denial I remember was from April 1st, so it's perfectly possible that proper talks only happened afterwards, although there may have been further denials after that which I missed. Given that this was just a temporary ceasefire, with proper negotiations to follow, it's possible to arrange for it pretty quickly, it doesn't exactly require weeks of continuous negotiations.
Very funny to talk about lying in a response to a comment laying out how you're blatantly misrepresent the comments of others.
But, to be more serious - if you genuinely feel that your interactions in the megathread are gaslighting, I would suggest logging off for a bit. The Iranian government isn't "gaslighting" anyone, governments are complex structures with many competing factions and goals, and this is a government which has suffered like half-a-dozen decapitation strikes - it's perfectly possible that there were pro-negotiation and anti-negotiation factions working simultaneously in a very messy situation, issuing contradictory statements, rather than some concerted gaslighting strategy. And, also, like... governments lie - so what? Iran playing a key role in the anti-imperialist struggle doesn't somehow oblige them to be 100% honest all the time. If we only had perfectly saintly governments to support, we wouldn't get very far. This war has already dealt severe damage to the empire, regardless of what happens afterwards.
We're not "ignoring gaslighting", or carrying out some kind of concerted campaign to lie to you, we just disagree on the strategic reality of the war.
It would have been highly mitigated as Israeli assets would be tied up defensively, which is precisely why this kind of massive attack from Israel was only possible during a ceasefire and why they didn't do it before
I'm going to end this conversation, but just so you know this decision decimated the morale of the resistance for literally nothing. Nothing whatsoever. I know many of them personally and this caused so much panic and confusion that channels were getting locked and shut down. Do you really think it wise to publicly abandon Lebanon as a red line and engage in this for literally no chance of success? It's such a colossal self own.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the military assets involved - hitting a nearby country with no functioning air defense can be done with non-stealth planes flying short sorties and dropping many cheap and plentiful bombs. The attack is "massive" in terms of slaughter of innocents, but not necessarily all that massive in terms of Israeli assets deployed - F-15s & F-16s dropping JDAMs is perfectly sufficient to achieve this effect. The first day of attacks was the most extensive, with over a hundred targets in Beirut - well, let's call it around 110, that's a dozen F-15Es (which can carry 9 JDAMs, although there have been experiments to get them up to 15), or around 28 F-16s (which can carry 4), which Israel has over 170 of (although of course some buildings may have been hit multiple times - still, Israel clearly has enough planes)
Ground-based air defense systems obviously play no role here, so whether they're tied up against Iran or not is irrelevant. F-35s which were most likely being used against Iran aren't necessary. Expensive standoff munitions which is what the non-stealth planes are likely mostly launching at Iran (at least until air defenses over a given region are sufficiently suppressed, which, as recent incidents have shown, seems to have not happened as much as the US claimed it did) aren't necessary. Now, planes can fly patrols with anti-air missiles in defense, but that's mainly against drones (https://www.twz.com/air/laser-guided-rockets-now-primary-anti-drone-weapon-for-usaf-jets-in-middle-east), not ballistic missiles, which is a concept still under development and not tested in combat yet (https://en.defence-ua.com/weapon_and_tech/how_an_f_16_shot_down_a_ballistic_missile_and_why_the_concept_was_abandoned-15021.html).
So, Iran ceasing launches of missiles against Israel didn't necessarily free up any assets to then be used for war-crimes against Lebanon. At best, Iranian launches could have damaged Israeli airfields and prevented them from flying, but they have so far been unable to effectively pull that off - that Saudi base where they destroyed the E-3 was a lot closer. Now, Israel ceasing its bombardment of Iran did free up assets - but if we're arguing that the Lebanon bombings wouldn't have happened without that, we'd essentially be asking that Iranians should be sacrificed to soak up Israeli bombs instead, there's still someone getting sacrificed in the end.
They didn't do it before because there's no military value in bombing random buildings in Beirut. They could have done the April 8th bombing at any point during the past month - it would just require one day of cutting down attacks on Iran to redirect some F-15s/16s to bomb Beirut. This is a flailing fascist state angry about the very notion of a ceasefire deciding to murder innocents, not some grand strategic move.
I guess I'll defer to you on this one, but I feel like it's rather important to clarify if by "resistance" one means the actual fighting organizations involved, or just the broader information sphere around the resistance which mainly consists of civilians? (which I guess I'm not going to get an answer of on account of disengaging, but anyways) These have rather different implications - I highly doubt that actual Hezbollah militants' morale is that severely impacted, and online information spheres have the tendency of being full of very fickle doomers, who shouldn't really be paid attention to.
Since you brought up Russia above - the Russian online information sphere is full of people constantly dooming about how it's totally joever and saying Putin's a traitor or whatever, and yet the war in Ukraine continues.