Image is of destruction and damage inside Israel, sourced from this article.
Iran and Israel have struck each other many times over the last few days. There has been a general focus on military facilities and headquarters by both sides, though Israel has also struck oil facilities, civilian structures and hospitals, and in return for this, Iran has struck major scientific centers and the Haifa oil facilities.
Israel appears to have three main aims. First, to collapse the Iranian state, either through shock and breakdown by killing enough senior officials, or via some sort of internal military coup. Second, to try and destroy Iranian nuclear sites and underground missile cities, or at least to paralyze them long enough to achieve the first and third goals. And third, to bring the US into a direct conflict with Iran. This is because the US better equipped to fight them than Israel is (though victory would still not be guaranteed depending on what Iran chooses to do).
Iranian nuclear facilities are hidden deep underground (800 meters), far beyond the depth range of even the most powerful bunker busters (~70 meters or so), and built such that the visible ground entrances are horizontally far away in an unknown direction from the actual underground chambers. Only an extremely competent full-scale American bombing force all simultaneously using multiple of the most powerful conventional (perhaps even nuclear) bunker busters could even hypothetically hope to breach them (and we have seen how, in practice, American bunker busters have largely failed to impair or deter Ansarallah). There are several analysts on both sides who have concluded that it is entirely impossible to physically prevent Iran from building nukes.
I fully expect the US to join the war. I believe the current ambiguity is a deliberate invention of the US while they work to move their military assets into position, and as soon as they are ready, the US will start bombing Iran. After that, Iran's leadership must - if they haven't already - harden their hearts, and strike back with no fear, or risk following the path of Libya, Syria, and Iraq, either into either surrender, occupation, or annihilation. Every day where they do not possess a nuke is a day where lives are being lost and cities are being bombed.
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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.
So if (when) US gets officially and directly involved in attacking, my first assumption is it will look like the recent Yemen activity; lots of air strikes, stuff launched from boats.
But if the conflict deepens, I am curious to see what people think: would Trump admin do a draft for a ground invasion of Iran?
Ground invasion seems like a very poor idea generally, but since when has reality guided decision-making at the White House lately? This is total pie in the sky speculation, but the war regardless would be unpopular at home, and any move to deploy actual infantry even more so.
They’ve already spent the last few months getting the country used to crackdowns on protests, as well as using fed law enforcement and military assets to terrorize people unaccountably. They also have shown they give mostly zero fucks about courts and will shoot first and ask questions later at all times.
Given Trump’s scheme to use ICE to harass democrat/blue cities, if they did do a draft, why not use it to disproportionately grab liberal/left voters and box em up/sacrifice them to the mill? You could take all of the data they've stolen from agencies and had palatir compile to target it, just like they’ve been practicing with the immigration crackdown. Would be a good way to liquidate some opposition and chill what will otherwise be a potentially hot and spicy summer, etc. you could make draft dodging a method of removing citizenship of your enemies, or use the heightened tensions at the border to interdict people trying to flee. Trump could even couch it all in WW2 glorious war effort bullshit to try and give it some sort of shine.
Anyway, I suspect this is pretty far fetched, but would appreciate your counter points and corrections to help me discard this concept so I can move on to being anxious about one of the thousands of other grim things that loom on the horizon.
If they start drafting it’s your duty as a communist to get arms training and frag as many as you can before or on deployment
o7
The expert on Dropsite this morning said US involvement is being sold to Trump as a limited action to do a single massive strike ('It's just one more bomb') to take out Fordow. Who knows what the Israelis will actually convince him to do beyond that but it seems like this is the first step
Yeah, one factor to also take into account is the fact that Trump was a fan of sending boots on the ground in Yugoslavia. He thought that the air campaign was not enough. That statement was in the 90s thought, so take it as you will.
My wild hunch is only based on how I believe Trump thinks.
Trump does not want boots on the ground. I think he's going to bomb what his administration describes as something like "military and strategic targets". I don't think the US will bomb Tehran. But I think they'll let the Israelis openly commit war crimes by massively bombing cities for a while. Trump might even joke that he likes how Israel is "softening up" Iran. I assume Trump hasn't thought ahead at all. And Iran isn't just going to sit there as its people are slaughtered.
If I'm right to that point - I have no idea what comes next. Hopefully my most doomerish thoughts will not come to pass.
Could be anything at this point. Maybe they'll strike the nuclear facilities and declare victory before anyone can confirm the damage, then immediately back out in the hopes Iran doesnt decide to retaliate against regional allies. Maybe they think Iran will consider it lucky have avoided a prolonged conflict.
Maybe they'll do an Iraq shock-and-awe style campaign and hope the Iranian govt makes a shitty deal before too many planes fall into the gulf of oman.
Maybe they'll loiter over missile bases to stop launches 24 hours a day or something stupid to reduce Iran's offensive capability.
Maybe they'll send in another seal team and occupy the embassy just to prove they could've done it the first time.
Yeah I totally agree, doubt they have any current plans to invade and occupy—but where I start to worry is what happens when Iran pops a carrier that got a little too close or something. The Yemenis seemed to give a pretty rough ride to the various carrier groups that were sent there under Biden and Trump, and I assume that IRGC has planned for decades about what to do if American naval assets get too close during a conflict (millennium challenge and all that).
Basically just: Trump wades into Iran for some long distance bombing that he can brag about, while Israel bombs the shot out of civilians, media and hospitals, but then something unplanned happens and now we’re looking at something longer and nastier. Or like some other semi-challenging power weighs in to help Iran, like Pakistan (doubtful I know) and now you have mini-world war battle lines being drawn.
Exactly. Trump could cause future horrors because not only is he a ghoul - he's an insanely prideful ghoul with thin skin who might quadruple down on the US attacking Iran.
I don't know what this reference means but I keep seeing it. All I can find is this wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_Corporation
It’s this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
Basically a US war gaming exercise against Iran. The US did horribly, to the point that they hobbled the opfor so that the bluefor could win. The marine general who commanded the opfor did a bunch of asymmetrical warfare stuff that the Iranians might do and just clobbered the conventional forces.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
Ohhh, I remember this! Thanks!
IMO they're looking to do some kind of dramatic opening with (God forbid I'm right) tactical nuclear bombing of the enrichment facilities, then continue bombing without moving troops into the ground.
Man, I hope tac nukes are not in the cards. If this really isn’t about Iranian nuke program, but more about Bibi’s continued political health and the US trying to isolate China, etc, then really taking out the facilities wouldn’t matter much. Drop MOABs on Fordow and then resume the bullshit propaganda they’ve been doing the whole time…
Then again, after this, Iran has almost no choice but to get nukes, which then makes killing its program a real objective for Israel and US… we had to blow up the nuke program that doesn’t exist, but once we do it they will have to pursue it, so hence it was a good idea to blow up their program!
I gotta read Catch 22.