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.
An image of Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, c. February, where Iranian strikes have caused substantial damage and several US soldier deaths and casualties.
My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.
preamble
After an uncertain beginning to this second major period of hostilities, we can now see the overall plan for either side.
For the Americans, their fire has been primarily focussed on southern Iran, where they have been attempting to break Iran's control of Hormuz by a steady campaign of striking both military and civilian sites. Additionally, it looks like the US is attempting to shape the battlefield around Bandas Abbas and Qeshm Island for some kind of incursion, as we have seen bridges and tunnels in the vicinity struck by missiles. The key word there is "attempting", because there are several things wrong with this plan both tactically and strategically.
Tactically, Iran has demonstrated the ability to very quickly get their transportation infrastructure repaired, and the US simply isn't firing volleys in the required amounts - and towards the right targets (they're using several missiles on purely civilian targets, like fishing boats) - to meaningfully degrade Iranian control of even this sector of the coastline. Additionally, an amphibious assault on Qeshm Island in the style of the WW2 Pacific theater is essentially impossible unless Iran, for whatever reason, allowed it. The gauntlet that any ship holding Marines would have to run to get to the island precludes this, let alone also transporting heavy weaponry and materiel for resupply. Using helicopter-borne troops or paratroopers would be much more feasible, but runs into even greater logistical problems if the US wanted to do anything there other than a brief skirmish before withdrawing. Strategically, even if the US waved a magic wand and took Qeshm Island, it's unclear what this would do to fulfill war aims. The most obvious intention would be to trade it back to Iran in return for a major Iranian concession, but what if you take the island, you call up Iran saying "Alright, let's get this deal running! First, I want no Hormuz tolls--" and Iran just... hung up, and kept firing drones and missiles and artillery at your forces on the island until they either all died or were forced to retreat? It's not a tenable position to hold, and Iran's capabilities to affect shipping in Hormuz are obviously not all concentrated on one single island.
So, what is Iran's strategy? It's what one analyst (Amerikanets) has termed "debasification". If the first phase of the war from late February to mid-April was focussed primarily on generally destroying and disrupting the US's military infrastructure in the region, what this second phase has planned is something more like a region-wide missile advance. Starting from the Gulf states and their US bases, the plan is to push back American planes and soldiers to further and further afield bases and thereby make sorties against Iran take much more time, fuel, and use more resupply planes. Iranian strikes are, as of me writing this, concentrated on Jordan, where a recent Iranian strike caused the first admission of soldier deaths in quite some time. The Iranian goal is clearly to push back all US planes to at least the Zionist entity, by which point, unless they are withdrawn further back all the way to Europe, the planes will all be so concentrated on so few bases that it will become a physical impossibility to get them all scrambled before Iranian strikes hit. Compared to the US's strategy, Iran's is immediately bearing fruit, with US strikes already very limited in intensity compared to the first phase of the war months ago. The irony of the US breaking off negotiations - again! - to pursue a new strategy that already looks to be profoundly failing is truly some inspired stuff; the genocidal architects of American imperium in the mid-20th century are rolling in their graves.
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:
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.
on the supposed increasing accuracy of Iranian missiles https://xcancel.com/policytensor/status/2079292015691333865, https://x.com/ripplebrain/status/2079295926909239666 (privated account so you may not be able to open it)
more
https://xcancel.com/kickerofrocks/status/2079303307420700963
https://xcancel.com/JIMMYBOBBYX/status/2079303870899994695
I feel like, beyond the propaganda angle, there is something genuine here, more so about the ratio of the kinds of missiles used - during the 40-day war, the Iranians were simply primarily targeting the Gulf states, and using less fancy munitions since it's just closer by - from what I remember, it was precisely in strikes in Israel that we did in fact see the fancier missile behavior like terminal maneuvering, although I'm not fully certain, there were a lot of strikes to try to remember
. So with more strikes at further-away targets, there's indeed a proportionally more of the fancier missiles being used, but not any new models being brought out necessarily, just more of what had already been used on prior strikes against Israel
Additionally, the censorship around the earlier strikes (pre-"Epic Fury"
) has likely twisted people's perceptions of actual Iranian accuracy - evidence has since emerged that there were likely a whole lot more hits than were initially believed at the time.
(also, about the hypersonic mention above, I'm not sure if we've necessarily seen true hypersonics used, this may be a conflation with a different type of weapon that happens pretty often, I'll link this comment from the other day since I mentioned it there)
Nah Iran went from hitting an Nevatim air base in Israel 30-40 times in a single attack with their most advanced missiles in 2024 (terminal maneuvering present on video, evidence of Fattah 1 use from discarded booster stages) and not being able to hit anything of note there, most missiles hitting the dirt (1 HAS + one large hangar from 40 hits is the equivalent of blind luck), to now pin pricking hangars with a handful of strikes in Jordan. That is a big improvement on accuracy. Foreign assistance, for hitting mobile time sensitive targets, that's a possibility on the intelligence side, Chinese and Russian ISR is much more sophisticated than Iran's. But for improved accuracy, Iran doesn't need any foreign help, plenty smart to manage on their own. The US managed it during the cold war 50 years ago before satellite navigation was even operational with highly accurate maneuvering ballistic missiles, and put nukes on them. It's why the INF treaty existed. While it's literally rocket science, it's still very much possible for Iranian scientists, with battlefield experience.
Iran is one of the dozen countries that has ever successfully launched satellites to orbit with domestically-developed rockets. They haven't done it often and the satellites have been relatively small and experimental so far, but being able to do it at all is an incredible engineering feat. I have no doubt they'll make significant advances in the next few years.
Everyone else hitches a ride on a foreign rocket. Including the UK, literally the only country to ever independently develop orbital rockets and then abandon that capability. They cancelled their Black Arrow orbital rocket program for the purposes of cost-cutting more than 50 years ago.
Yeah I think we're just seeing the results of what everybody here has been calling since the start of the war. As interceptor stocks dwindle Iran has to use less missiles to achieve more hits that can't be handwaved away. Seems pretty obvious to me that's what's happening, and there's not much the Epstein Axis can do to stop it other than cope.
Also a lot of the time there are no alarms for incoming missiles. The US radar network is having problems for some reason!
Hmm, didn't know that piles of sand and rubble count as a "radar network" these days. Well, you learn something new every day!
It is cool to see, after so many years of interceptor missiles being burned in Ukraine and Israel, that the consequences are finally becoming apparent, so much so that they cannot be hidden away by the US military and media
I think there's an element of truth to capabilities improving at a rapid pace. With every pass of surveillance satellites Iranian missile operators are able to refine their targeting without modifying the missiles directly.
And just because advanced behaviors have been demonstrated in missiles from day (more or less) doesn't mean the missiles that came after aren't more advanced.
One limiting factor has been terminal re-entry of sub munitions, where air resistance induced tumbling and disintegration of the warhead in flight. You'd see it manifest as bright streaks that look like a meteor more than an IRBM. The newer models are less susceptible to re-entry failures.
Some of it is engineering, some of it is strategy, and some of it is plain ole propaganda
part of the answer is {北|běi}{斗|dǒu}
I think we saw a hypersonic gliders used twice. Once before true promise 2 it took down a com building. And another instance, was maybe one of the hits they landed on a ship after the ceasefire.
As for the difference between the older and the newer missiles, the main one is the the new ones are solid fuel, so they are easier and faster to launch, also smaller.
Warheads, wich is were the Marvs and the targeting are, are interchangable for missiles of similar size. Of course, the fragmentation warheads and the 2 ton warheads can't fit a kheibar shekan.
I think the Fattah-2 was only used once in early March, on Israel.
I didn't know about that one.
IIRC it was one of those big hits on a bunker.