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submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net to c/news@hexbear.net

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 a map of Middle Eastern oil/gas production sites, which Iran has promised to strike in retaliation if their own energy infrastructure comes under attack.


My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.

preambleFor the weekend of August 1-2, Trump had once again promised major strikes on Iran, which would have included crossing the critical red line of striking their energy infrastructure. In response, Iran once again essentially promised to end the possibility of modern civilization as we know it throughout much of the Gulf States and, to a certain extent, the Zionist entity, with the economic impacts radiating outwards around the world from there. The frustrating part about these threats from Trump is that while he's reneged on them before, the consequences of them actually occurring are so dire that it's difficult to ignore them; rolling a dice with even a 5% chance for complete catastrophe will always be nerve-wracking.

Anyway, as we all know, these strikes did not occur, with the excuse this time being much the same as the previous times: our regional allies begged us not to (potentially true) and Iran called us and said they were willing to negotiate/surrender (untrue). The point of these threat displays is at least twofold: first, to see if Iran is genuinely going to flinch, or, at least, if internal elements that may or may not exist will be spooked into action against the IRGC; and second, to manipulate oil prices downwards by creating constant cycles of "relief" out of an otherwise relatively constant downward trend as Hormuz stays closed and oil reserves continue to ebb. I do say "relatively", of course, given that Ansarallah now appears to be delivering a boot up the ass of Saudi Arabia by taking offline quite a lot of its refinery infrastructure.

It is into this situation that Ukraine seems to want in. For those out of the loop, the situation over in Ukraine has largely the same overall attritional dynamics as previous years, but with a few added wrinkles. Ukraine started striking Russian infrastructure a while ago, and while their effectiveness is hotly debated and I don't want to dismiss them as totally ineffectual, it's clear that the psychological effects - such as they are - are greater than the material effects. Russia's retaliation strikes have been considerably more impactful, including strikes on Ukrainian Black Sea ports and vessels, and a campaign explicitly against gas stations across Ukraine, as well as some rather impressive and disruptive explosions at Ukrainian military fairs and production sites. Zelensky has admitted publicly that they are now basically out of Patriot missiles and that Russian missiles are now landing entirely unopposed (beforehand, they were just landing largely unopposed, given the lackluster performance of Western air defences in general). He seems to have considered a possible way out: linking together the Ukraine and Iran Wars to a united front against Russia and Iran, which would then grant Ukraine more munitions to keep fighting on.

Now, for all the fear I've seen of this occurring (and, don't get me wrong, the US and Russia being in non-proxy, direct conflict is a genuinely frightening prospect for continued life on Earth) how linking together two wars which the West is quite decisively losing into a single war would help at all is beyond me. At this moment, at least, US military planners appear to agree with me. Ukraine hit a Caspian Sea vessel going to Iran a while ago, but then seems to have quickly apologised after being given a stern talking to by the US. This shows just how willing the US is to grant Ukraine more aid, as their own interceptor stockpile is running very low due to Iranian strikes. One would almost feel sympathy for Zelensky if is wasn't for... well, everything that's happened. The path of Ngô Đình Diệm is a tough one to walk.


Last week's thread is here.
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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.


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[-] Tervell@hexbear.net 81 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

https://x.com/ripplebrain/status/2084630980577382427 (privated account so you may not be able to open it)

Reuters reports that the US Army has used "virtually all" of not just its Precision Strike Missiles, but also its ATACMS. It's not surprising that the PrSMs are gone, they were only available in the double digits when this war started, and other news sources reported they had exhausted the entire magazine months ago. The exhaustion of ATACMs is more notable. But this is not surprising, and Reuters directly confirms one of my central theses of how the US has been conducting strikes since the resumption of active hostilities last month. Areas in Iran's southwest, near the border with Kuwait, have been hit with high frequency and much larger strike packages than anywhere else in the country. CENTCOM's "14 consecutive days of strikes" narrative was undergirded by HIMARS strikes from Kuwait, to the point that ATACMS and GMLRS probably comprised the outright majority of munitions expended. This reduces risk to personnel, because HIMARS are highly mobile and can shoot and scoot out of the way of Iranian retaliatory strikes. And it allows CENTCOM to claim it's keeping up the pressure on Iran. The issues with this should be obvious. Only a tiny fraction of Iran's territory is within ATACMS range, and the area the US Army can hit with GMLRS is even smaller. It's impossible to seriously attrit the Iranian military this way. And now there are few, if any, ATACMS left in the entire American stockpile. CSIS estimated there were less than 800 ATACMS left in the US stockpile in April.

WIP map for a piece I was working on about this exact subject. Not sure it's as relevant now that Reuters has directly confirmed the thesis

more


https://xcancel.com/anonrespector/status/2084633048637722936

It’s weird the US has just casually run its stockpiles of missiles and interceptors down to zero on two pointless conflicts. You think at minimum they would have paced their consumption to not go to zero

They're supposed to ramp up PrSM production since ATACMS is being sunsetted. They might feel comfortable doing this because it's difficult to imagine when or where they'd even use tactical ballistic missiles going forward. They're pulling out of Kuwait, probably forever. Expending as many JASSMs as they have is more insane to me.

I would say that these missile systems are still vital to any future US entanglements involving actual ground deployments - so, ironically for this being a mainly air campaign, it's still managing to defang the ground branch too by eating up a bunch of their highly valuable munitions. With the missiles out, artillery shell production scaling going the way it is (New $500M Artillery Shell Plant Failed To Produce Any 155mm Parts), and readiness issues affecting their vehicles (Weapon System Sustainment: Various Challenges Affect Ground Vehicles' Availability for Missions) the Army's chances to actually win on the ground against a serious opponent aren't doing too good


https://xcancel.com/Mikethejohnson/status/2084651378350387317

My new favorite cope is that the missile shortage is a psyop being put out by Trump and there is a secret classified stockpile of missiles and interceptors. Meanwhile nobody has an explanation about what happened to the US "air superiority" and why they arent leveraging that to drop gravity bombs on Iran.

https://xcancel.com/SideGiver69714/status/2084680540095926345

Reading consevatweets on this topic has informed me:

  1. This is a lie/disinfo
  2. Whoever leaked this must be caught, prosecuted and possibly executed
  3. The US army has a bunch of secret, much more powerful hardware they will use once the war gets "serious"

if Steiner unleashes his secret stash of Panzer 3000 laser-tanks everything will be alright

[-] IranOuttaOil@hexbear.net 40 points 3 days ago

The conservatweets remind me of the Z Russian chuds who think that Putin is weak and holding Russia back.

Meanwhile Russia is winning a war of attrition against Ukraine while attriting and degrading NATO without drawing them in - in a more serious and dangerous way. Doing all of this while maintaining minimal Russian casualties and taking territory.

Come on Putin we're a super power, we must have some superweapons, the only reason our wundewaffe haven't been used and won us the war in 3 days is because you are holding us back!

Putin being a former KGB agent actually has some material understanding of the world.

[-] Infamousblt@hexbear.net 43 points 3 days ago

I always expected this administration to accelerate the "strip the copper out of the walls" approach but it's still so surprising that this is where they are reaching for that metaphorical copper

[-] someone@hexbear.net 16 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

What finally convinced me that the ruling class in the US is completely winging everything is that their own wealth is denominated in the currency that will fail when the last figurative copper is stripped out. I can understand (but certainly not condone) the rulers of American vassal states looting their own countries to local economic failure while paying off the right people on Wall Street and the IMF. They can always escape to the US and live off their hoarded wealth in USD. Where do American oligarchs think they can escape to while maintaining their wealth and the standard of living to which they've become accustomed, if the USD truly collapses?

[-] Damarcusart@hexbear.net 4 points 1 day ago

The USD is the global reserve currency, if it becomes worthless, the entire global economy collapses, so even if the US economy crashes, USD will still be valuable. They aren't worried because they assume that other countries wouldn't actually try to do something about the increasing instability of the USD and that history is over and therefore the USD will remain the Global Reserve Currency for the rest of time.

[-] someone@hexbear.net 28 points 2 days ago

Two-and-a-half ~~wars~~ weeks.

this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2026
138 points (100.0% liked)

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