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.
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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:
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.
I don't understand what is happening right now. Everything that led the US to back off the last time still applies. Dwindling standoff and AD stockpiles. Economic pressures of strait closure (now x 2), invincible missile bases and debasification, etc.
They just tried doing the same thing they were doing before, and it of course didn't work. If you aren't going to seriously escalate, what was even the point of starting up again, let alone moving tons of new equipment to the region?
I guess maybe escalation is still the plan and this pause is a just a ploy, but if not, it seems all this achieved was to put the US in an even worse bargaining position than before. All 100% predictable. What gives?
In addition to what everyone else said, another important factor is the alternative. What else are they supposed to do? Give Iran this control over global oil permenantly? Everything about US Middle East policy since 79 has been specifically to avoid that. And not only that, but to lose dozens of important military bases at the geographic center of the world? To leave Israel exposed? None of these are acceptable to the imperial strategists because they start to bring the whole thing down. Oil is the ur-commodity. If China electrifies half the planet while Iran controls oil to the rest, the fame is up for the US. Sanctions won't work anymore because of Hormiz revenue and improving balance of trade and production for the anti-imperialist world.
So what else do they do? What's the alternative strategy to get the empire propped back up?
Iran is not accepting a peace deal this time, thus, the US is unable to end the conflict without losing.
The best part is: the more it continues to fight, the more the US loses.
I think it just boils down to that. The US refuses to "lose" so it will, instead, lose.
I put a lot of weight in the theory that Trump is a compulsive gambler. Can't walk away from the table until he wins it all back
Of course the warmongers and ghouls don't help either
Uncut Gems presidency.
It feels kinda lib to say it but the Trump administration genuinely is just incompetent. It's pretty expected for Republicans to favor the wealthy at the expense of everyone else, but a lot of the stuff they're doing, like DOGE and the tariff wars, don't really benefit anyone. I don't think there really is a plan right now beyond the US military trying to salvage whatever they can.
I do agree that there are a significant amount of failsons in positions of power in the Trump regime, but the DOGE stuff is standard conservative action. They're gutting government services, which makes them fail, which makes it easy for Republicans to say "See? the government doesn't work!" And then they privatize those services, usually by giving them to businesses their families run
I agree with everything you said but they also did it in a way that was so staggeringly incompetent that it tanked both the popularity and effectiveness of the project. Bill Clinton cut just as deep but didn't get the same backlash
Fascism is the long and short of it.
To change tactics mean you were wrong. When you are the best most amazing boy you cannot admit you are wrong. That means weakness. So the only answer is to double, triple, quadruple down and pray to some power that the other side gives out or some other condition happens to make it look like you are right all along or something comes along that you can use to get yourself off the hook.
There were rumors last week that nobody told the devil how low munitions were, perhaps someone told him recently.
I think what determines the future is how the Trump inner circle strategizes to make personal profits from market manipulation.
There is no military logic to interpret. All past and current and future events, for this war, can be explained by a few people enriching themselves and what restrictions they have. These people have little understanding how many things work. And sometimes they bump into obstacles.
The regular imperial traditions like military logic and nationalism are missing.
"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
For many people in the imperial core the United States having an invincible army is an unfalsifisble orthodoxy despite always losing on the ground. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan being losing quagmires were all aberrations for one excuse or another.
We can't escape this cycle because there is no alternative to American military supremacy. Hegseth is a true believer in dumb warrior ethos crusader shit. Trump only understands American military power because he sees cool explosions on TV. In the foreign and exotic occident, there is a culture of "saving face" and some users here have posted articles about how Hegseth isn't being told the truth because he keeps firing people and creating a culture of fear.
Probably a bunch of competing interests + luck of who wins the maneuvering of being the last person in the room with Trump.
Concentration of force, before they were hitting everything in Iran, with maximalist aims. in this new phase they focused on the southern coast, the aim was to degrade Iran's ability to close shipping lines. That second goal should have required less ammunition they still couldn't do that.