Image is Israeli interceptors trying and failing to intercept missiles over their cities.
Israel just carried out a widespread bombing of Iran, which has killed a number of senior officials inside Iran (though it seems the leadership is more-or-less intact) as well as a number of civilians. Important facilities have been targeted, but the amount of damage is unknown so far (note that many important Iranian facilities are deep underground, making them both hard to damage but also hard to determine if they are damaged from just satellite imagery, so reports of damage will be he-said-she-said).
It appears the attack took Iran by surprise, given that a residential block was targeted that contained some senior officials - if one saw an attack coming, one would imagine they'd be in bunkers. Nonetheless, like the rest of the Resistance Axis, I suspect that Iran has adapted their military structures to be resistant to decapitation strikes by ensuring that replacement figures are ready to take the place of killed officials.
Iran has delivered a massive missile barrage in response to Israeli aggression, even though Israel is continuing to bomb Iran. Iran is now aware of the location of many important Israeli sites, including secret nuclear sites, due to their recent intelligence haul, giving them a distinct edge.
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Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel's 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.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
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.
State media in The Netherlands is reporting extensively on casualties in Israel and about Iranian casualties they just write: Iranian state media is not reporting the amount of casualties in Iran
And then they write how Israel is only targeting military facilities.
Is there a place where I can see actual updates on Iranian casualties?
BBC is reporting exactly the same line about casualties
Palestinian poet Tamim Al Barghouti on the current situation:
Netanyahu was betting on a military coup in Iran, relying on those who facilitated the killing of all the martyrs there some time ago: Raisi, Abdollahian, and others... This explains the violence of the strike. He hoped he wouldn't have to bear its consequences. Of course, the coup failed... Netanyahu got involved, asked for help from the United States, but they refused. Now he wants to back down. Let's be clear: no one should allow the situation to return to what it was before the Israeli aggression against Iran... If the war stops before the fall of the regime in Israel, then that Israeli regime will seek to topple the Iranian regime by other means after the ceasefire. The model of the ceasefire in Lebanon is clear, and before it the successive truces in Gaza... Therefore, the only path for Iran, and with it the entire Levant, is complete victory over it... The equation is zero-sum and there is no room for compromise, neither now nor later... Oh God! I hope this opinion is heard this time and is useful... because all the advice before it was appropriate, and if it had been heeded, people dear to us would still be with us now...
Imagine having unlimited access to the most sophisticated intelligence network in history and still ending up like this.
⚡️⭕️ Pakeh settlement resident to Hebrew Channel 11:
I received my new house yesterday and it was destroyed today in the Iranian missile attack
Iran doing more anti-colonialism in 2 days than Bernie Sanders in his life
Any updates on how the fanzone in Yemen fared after the assassination attempt???
Israel air superiority does not bode well for Iran
I mean, Iranian missile superiority doesn't bode well for Israel either. idk what the ratio in value and explosive power between a F-35 and an Iranian missile is but y'know, we're seeing some real actual tangible damage in Israel now, buildings collapsing and shit. even Hezbollah's rockets were symbolic compared to these, and those took down a shitload of surveillance facilities on their border and forced hundreds of thousands of settlers to flee.
not a lot of good boding folks, more and more people are saying this
Frankly I'm calling bullshit on the claim of Israeli air superiority, yeah if you keep sending a 100 jets every 12 hours you'll eventually achieve a form of "superiority" somewhere in Iran for a couple hours
But that's not gonna last long, Iran is a 1000km from Israel and F-35s are finicky and high maintenance boondoggles, I gureentee it more craft have already been taken out of commission due to severe maintenance issues then Iran has shot down
Attrition favors Iran in this fight
True. I'm wondering how many targets Israel can take out during this period
lots of unwell boding today
Critical support to Elon Musk?
I wouldn't trust it. I imagine Starlink cooperating with US intelligence, or them having full access to it anyway.
mossad internet services still up and going then
This is not good. If the Iranian government want to limit internet access, then they're probably doing it for a very good reason. Why does this rat think that he has the right to "help" bypass that.
They better use it to play League of Legends
Doesnt one need a special antenna to get starlink internet?
That apartheid lover would definitely snitch
A former CIA officer posted his analysis of the situation:
"The Potemkin Village propaganda generated by Israel and spread by Western media is coming apart at the seams. While many in the West still believe that Israel has struck a fatal blow on Iran and that Iran is just days away from a collapse, the Iranian missile force is alive and well and bombing the shit out of Israel. I suspect that Iran is employing Houthi tactics with their ballistic missiles that are fired from mobile launchers — i.e., instead of relying on fixed sites, Iran is deploying its missiles around the country on mobile launchers, which are virtually impossible to detect and destroy in a timely manner. As I write this, Iran reportedly has launched an eighth-wave of missiles. Iran is going to engage Israel in a tit-for-tat battle until Israel ceases its attacks on Iran."
[...]
"Another reality confronting Israel is that the United States does not have unlimited supplies of air defense missiles, and other weapons, to send to Israel. For example, consider the limitations of the THAAD and SM-3 antiballistic missile systems… the US can only manufacture 50-75 THAAD and 60-84 SM-3 interceptors per year! I read another report today — can’t find it now — that the US is sending weapons intended for Ukraine to Israel. I’m sure Zelensky will be thrilled with that news. If this report is true, Ukraine’s days are numbered. Without sustained US military and intelligence support, Ukraine cannot sustain its military operations through the summer."
People will sometimes mock the newsthread calling posters here armchair generals but then you see what the actual generals and personnel involved are saying and it’s not that different.
No such thing as "former" CIA. Interesting to hear this from them
Another reality confronting Israel is that the United States does not have unlimited supplies of air defense missiles, and other weapons, to send to Israel. For example, consider the limitations of the THAAD and SM-3 antiballistic missile systems… the US can only manufacture 50-75 THAAD and 60-84 SM-3 interceptors per year!
Welcome to the news mega, CIA shithead.
🗞️🐅
if America joins the war officially, any predictions what US forces might do?
they'd fill in for Israel on suppressing Iranian air defense and missile sites, and play air defense over israel. they're not going to try landing anything unless they're extremely stupid or desperate
Eat burger. Commit war crime. Die in ambush.
don't forget bait another western power into joining too just to shoot their troops
I don't have a prediction but i think it would be cool if they walked into a meat grinder.
i think the geographically correct term is the Persian gulf
Probably just bomb the hell out of Iran for decades like all their previous wars the last half century
Is the thread holding together for people? I only access it via computer and directly through hexbear and it's fine for me, but I've seen people say it's getting real slow on phone or through lemmy. I can post next week's thread early if not. Or maybe I'll make it more open-ended than "week" if things keep escalating as they are now.
Been working pretty well for me over all and fine for the last few hours. But earlier there were some half-hour chunks of unresponsiveness when things were very slow to load. You'd click the arrow to upvote and 20 seconds of bear head spinning later it finally turns yellow and the counter goes up. Same thing with the loading of replies below the top-level comments. It always ended up working before too long though, and it wasn't consistently slow like that. Now it's working normally. I would bet that waiting for the normal thread change time should be fine. But of course, that does depend on how the next 24 hours shape up too.
Been flawless for me the whole time. One more day remains. At most it'll be a 1500 comment day.
So what the fuck did the Israeli government think was going to happen? Whatever the result this is going to be ruinous to both countries, they're just pounding each other.
You can't just eat city blocks being destroyed and continue. Populations get mad, building is easier at peace, soldiers want to help their families etc.
I mean ww2 showed that bombing campaigns don't win wars but they do beggar nations. Are they banking on a martial plan style bailout? The usa is not in the same position economically but I suppose the damage is relatively limited vs Europe.
I'm not saying China definitely will help Iran out in this way (because they still seem to be pretty squeamish about breaking sanctions regimes) but if it does, I personally think China could help out Iran in rebuilding to a greater extent than the US could with Israel
Like, the US has basically given Israel a blank check, absolutely, but money cannot be magically transmuted into new transformer stations and oil refineries and buildings, you have to get actual guys in to make those things and install them, y'know. And China's demonstrated that they're very good at getting things done in that regard.
Who says China isn't also going to help rebuild in Israel? They are heavily invested in the Haifa port which is critical infrastructure, do you think they will just shrug and say "well I guess its risk that comes with the business"? They'll help both sides the only question is would the US actualy allow more Chinese investments in Israel at this point.
The US may try to seize those investments but looking at how China handled the recent HK/Panama disaster they were surprised but not happy.
If we could even imagine Israel cooling down for a few months then the only thing stopping China from further investments in Israel would be US fearmongering.
There will be a lot of strategizing in the future for Israel to consider if welcoming China to play both sides is better than forcing them to pick a side. In the past during Trump 1 it was the US that prevented more investments, not Zionist principled stances against China. If you remember we saw this dynamic earlier during the Ukraine war too when Israel and Russia had surprisingly "good" relations.
The government seems pretty content to focus inward. Most of their foreign actions I'm familiar with seem to be centered around improving trade and thus wealth.
Avoiding becoming enmeshed in conflict seems to be the current pattern anyway.
I honestly think Israel expected worse and was planning for an opening salvo of over 500 missiles and thousands dead. I mean that's what we all expected to happen if Israel were to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. It didn't materialize, but the Israelis would have had to assume that there was a high chance of it happening, and still chose war anyways. So I don't think leveling city blocks in Tel Aviv will change much. The military and political establishment chose war with Iran no matter the cost.
you're the missile buff.
Seems unhinged
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