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.
https://nitter.poast.org/alon_mizrahi/status/1934020808688693553#m
@MarmiteLover123@hexbear.net is this wishful thinking?
It’s definitely calibration and locating/weeding out air defenses. I feel confident in this assertion because we are yet to see a cruise missile barrage, which are far easier to intercept than ballistic missiles. Iran is likely saving them for saturation barrages to overwhelm defenses and take them out.
Not that Israel will be caught by total surprise if it faces a cruise missile barrage, but it could certainly be caught more flat-footed after scrambling to defend against ballistic missiles nonstop for days
The problem with Iran's cruise missile is, will the survivability and effectiveness be any better than the one way attack drones, and how many cruise missiles does Iran have? The drones have not hit a single target yet. Iran has three cruise missile types with the range to hit Israel, Kh-55, Hoveyzeh, and Paveh, and none of these have stealth features, with no reduction in radar cross section or heat signature. Sure they travel a lot faster than one way attack drones and can fly very low to try avoid detection by ground based radars, but the USA and Israel have plenty of AWACS aircraft and fighter jets equipped with advanced AESA radars with look down shoot down capabilities to intercept during their 1000+km journey.
Also the cruise missile and ballistic missile intercept systems are very different, the only overlapping system is David's Sling. The ballistic missile interception systems like Arrow-3, SM-3, THAAD and Arrow-2 can't intercept cruise missiles. Iron Dome can intercept cruise missiles, but not ballistic missiles. Only David's Sling can intercept both ballistic and aerodynamic targets. Fighter jets like the F-35 can assist in ballistic missile interception by using their advanced radars and DAS, but they can't fire anything at a ballistic missile to take it out. So exhausting ballistic missile interceptors will have little effect on cruise missile interception capability.
hitting airfields and working to saturate air defense would at least help reduce the interception chances, but yeah the shaheds are a weapon of attrition.
One potential use would be to tie up the Israeli airforce to limit the number of planes that could be armed and sent out on attack sorties into Iran. I dont know the loadout configurations of F-35s or F-16s well enough to know how many planes would need to be diverted though.
Definitely, but I believe the point here would be a one or two time overwhelming barrage to cause mass confusion/soften some anti-ballistic defenses.
Don't think so, I think Iran is is conserving ammunition to keep these missile attacks on Israel going for as long as possible, Iran only have a few thousand ballistic missiles with the range to hit Israel. They also can't use their missile bases in Western Iran fully as Israel has air superiority there, this limits the size of the volleys of missiles fired.