more like thucydideez nuts, gottem

A reminder that as the US continues to threaten countries around the world, fedposting is to be very much avoided (even with qualifiers like "in Minecraft") and comments containing it will be removed.

Image is of a satellite image from MizarVision, a Chinese firm that has recently shown pride in being sanctioned for showing uncensored images of the Middle East. The West is not allowing up-to-date satellite imagery of the region to hide destruction.


As always, my weekly summary/preamble is in spoilers below.

preambleMilitary news remained relatively subdued last week, with the main front continuing to be the Lebanon border. With dozens of vehicles destroyed and many more Zionist casualties, they are now desperately searching for a solution to the FPV drone threat, with certain analysts characterizing the whole situation as the entity stumbling foot-first into a bear trap (hence the megathread title). Unfortunately for them, two better and more resourceful militaries have spent the last year or two also searching for a solution and have generally failed - with anti-drone strategies consisting mainly of 1) build your own cheap drones designed to physically intercept their cheap drones and 2) separate your forces up rather than conducting large frontal assaults WW2-style and accept that you're gonna have to fight for many months to gain substantial ground. This also explains why they're so eager to kickstart a civil war in Lebanon, although as I've stated before, I don't personally know whether that would be a silver bullet given how the Lebanese army has been deliberately not allowed to become a threatening force due to Zionist fears, and indeed, I don't know how many Lebanese citizens and soldiers would fight against the only force in their country fighting against an army trying to annex their territory and which murders hundreds of people at a time in aerial bombings on their cities.

Aside from the ever-worsening global economic catastrophe, the main event has been the US visiting China. Trump clearly intended to time the summit such that it took place after subjugating Iran and perhaps also Cuba. However, with the former goal not even remotely achieved, and the latter goal delayed - hopefully indefinitely, though the US still seems pretty intent on it - it all amounted to a big nothingburger. Marxist economist Michael Roberts has written up a great piece on the current state of the US-China economic conflict, stating among things that, despite the last decade of US sanctions and economic warfare, the Chinese economy has done extremely well, building up their own domestic industries to replace commodities lost from sanctions. China has, up to this point, refused to withdraw its aid from Iran, and seems to be looking to start moving its tankers through the Strait via Iran's new tolling mechanism.

China obviously continues to maintain its position on Taiwan, and Trump has continued the US tradition of respecting this in words and disrespecting it in actions, but it's becoming clear to everybody but the most delusional diehards that the US will not be fighting China in and around the Pacific for at least a couple decades, and likely never will. There is little choice. The Ramadan War has definitively proven that the US has been severely militarily and logistically weakened over the decades despite skyrocketing military budgets, and much of their equipment, strategies, and tactics are woefully outdated for the modern battlefield. The prospect of the US fighting a war against China and not immediately losing has gone from "almost implausible" to "hilariously absurd". Unable to meaningfully impede China, the US will have to content itself to increasingly ineffective sanctions campaigns and bullying/overthrowing nations that do not currently have much of a capacity to resist. In that vein, one hopes that Iran and friends will share their expertise in drone technology and underground fortification around the world. The age of the tunnel is upon us.


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

If you have evidence of Zionist crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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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[–] 50 points 4 months ago (25 children)

Important #Iran developments in the past 24 hours:

🔹Pakistan Army Chief Asim Munir is on his way to Tehran.

🔹The Pakistani prime minister will travel to China, probably conveying some Iran-related messages.

🔹Qatar has reportedly sent a negotiating team to Tehran, in coordination with the U.S., to help secure a deal.

🔹Tehran has been easing passage through the Strait of Hormuz. Reportedly, 35 ships passed yesterday; the figures were 31 and 28 on the previous two days.

🔹Ghalibaf has appointed Esmaeil Baghaei, the Foreign Ministry spokesperson, as the spokesman for the Iranian negotiating team.

https://nitter.net/HamidRezaAz/status/2057815058458026111

fumbled their leverage award? soviet-hmm

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  • [–] 30 points 4 months ago* (1 child)

    the position always was "the strait is open you just have to coordinate with us". with the launch of the persian gulf strait authority and more formal channels of communication it seems that coordination has just become easier. yes in some sense you can say allowing some ships through is making time less favorable to the iranians by lessening the pressure of other countries on the US, but 1. how much has this pressure factored into US decision making and how much this still relatively small amount of traffic decreases that pressure? the honest to both of these questions is not that much. 2. closing the strait to everyone without any "valid" reason is an untenable position, considering both enemies and allies. not every country is like the US, after the war iran has to deal with the consequences and they can't just burn every bridge. europeans are already making some fuss about sending ships after the war to ensure free maritime trade.

    as much as people want to see the US eat shit, millions more will enter food insecurity and famine if the strait doesn't open at least in some capacity and the US elites literally do not care. iran like the US faces its own escalation trap, they either have to up the ante and keep fighting which risks forming a global coalition and even genocide from US-israeli forces not to mention the extra millions of deaths in the gulf, lebanon and the rest of the global south. or they can de-escalate and reach a half assed deal that the US-israeli side will certainly not follow, and hope you can prepare better for the next round of war which will certainly happen as long as israeli are still in their blood hungry mood. there's really no good options on the table.

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  • [–] 18 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)
    1. how much has this pressure factored into US decision making and how much this still relatively small amount of traffic decreases that pressure? the honest to both of these questions is not that much.

    That's because there's lag time on this strategy and the full brunt of the damage hasn't reached the US economy yet. This blockade needs to be sustained for long periods of time before the US government has to buckle (the strategic and commercial reserves have to be depleted first), but they will have to buckle eventually. Start letting through ships and it's no longer a sure thing, the US can mitigate any damage now.

    If 'friendly' countries are getting oil and gas, they will become middlemen in the global commodity market and that will mitigate any global crisis. Now the rich nations who can afford to bid on the commodities market will be fine while the poorest nations will be punished, instead of a global even distribution of punishment and total system failure.

    The strategy of using the strait as leverage always hinged on forcing those who rely on it (China, Arab Gulf States, Europe, SE Asia, Japan, etc) to put pressure on the US/Israel to change behavior, and I do mean extreme pressure, because it would be existential for them. If you mitigate the damage to those people then they just pay a fee and it's no longer existential, they no longer have to pressure US/Israel to do anything. This entire strategy revolves around pressuring these nations, so releasing a pressure valve is maybe a dangerous thing to do and allows Israel and USA more diplomatic freedom and ability to maneuver and buy time.

    The toll/fee on the strait is a great long-term strategy for collecting reparations, and its existence after peace deals would be proof of Iranian victory. However, during the war it directly cuts against their primary strategy. Their Hormuz strategy is essentially a game of chicken towards the edge of a cliff, the one who balks first loses and if neither balk there will be total system failure and global economic collapse. Them opening the strait for "friendly" nations removes the existential risk, which destroys the strategy of playing chicken entirely and makes it instead two people playing chicken off the edge of a 5-foot ledge instead. It could even be seen as the first signs of balking, emboldening US/Israel to continue even further instead of relenting.

    This extended never-ending "ceasefire" while Lebanon continues being destroyed is already weakening Iran's position a ton, compared to the leverage they would have if a hot war was still going. This is just more steps in the normalizing direction of return to status quo instead of escalating to a revolutionary end (the destruction of Israel).

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  • [–] 20 points 4 months ago* (3 children)

    The most important of Iran's demands is to toll the ships, if the ships are tolled, and they pass, it makes Iran's victory a material fact. The reason no one was paying was because the us put another blockade, so if they are paying, the ones who gave up their leverage were the fascists. Added to this china dropped some of it's Iran sanctions a few days ago. This status quo is exactly what we want. It is a total victory.

    The issue is the fascists probably did this as a "good will" gesture to pressure Iran into taking a bad deal in other aspects, but the bad deal wasn't taken.

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    The most important thing to them is removal of sanctions (for porky-adjacent reasons, but also symbolically), what good does billions in tolls do for you if you can’t buy drugs or refinement columns or whatever it is they are missing?

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  • [–] 14 points 4 months ago (14 children)

    As far as I can tell, this seems to be good old Axios & Al Arabia fake news.

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago (13 children)

    the passage of the ships is not fake though is it? i didn't find convincing denials at least

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  • [–] 39 points 4 months ago

    I mean if the only ships they're letting through are paying their toll and are allied ships then this isn't them losing their leverage it's them using it. This was their stated objective. Doing what you say you're going to do isn't losing

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  • [–] 26 points 4 months ago (11 children)

    Iran seems to be collecting the toll, so it is not like they lost Hormuz. Maybe they want to slowly clear all the outbound ships?

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (10 children)

    thus wasting their leverage, yep, before wordcup/quarter millenia celebrations

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  • [–] 20 points 4 months ago (9 children)

    What would be 'not wasting their leverage'?

    They can stop literally anything they want. They can make money off of any ship they want. What is lost?

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago (8 children)

    pain to the world economy. shipping to them is still restricted, in such a regime usa will happily watch this for 3 months of peak fuel consumption and start again

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  • [–] 31 points 4 months ago* (3 children)

    Iran is making massive profits from tolls and oil sales to allied groups, their enemies are still restricted, they have restructured the balance of power in the area. Their leverage is control of the straight and ability to strike US and Israeli allied assets in the area, they are stockpiling missiles and drones in the inevitability that the US or Israel will not be able to tolerate this re-ordering forever. They are requiring payment in non-US dollars so they are weakening the dollar hegemony as well.

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  • [–] 10 points 4 months ago* (2 children)

    I want them to end the global oil trade entirely tho

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  • [–] 18 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    News flash, Iran remains firmly part of the world. 🌍

    Some of you guys are so blood thirsty it's uncomfortable. The people who will suffer if the strait remains closed are not the same people who ought to be subjected to retribution.

    p.s. whoever is downvoting this comments in here is a coward, speak up or get out

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