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.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
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.

What are all the countries that surround Iran and Israel are doing rn
Egypt under Sisi is being neutral/somewhat friendly to Israel, while under extreme pressure both economically and socially because of the large swathes of people inside Egypt that want to oppose Israel. Western surveillance technology is likely critical to them keeping the lid on things. I suspect that there are covert operations by smugglers/resistance groups inside Egypt working to keep Hamas supplied via cross-border tunnels but they can do nothing of scale to help Gaza's population.
Jordan is basically an even more cowardly version of Egypt, with a large Palestinian population that has to be keep repressed; maybe some covert operations by smugglers/resistance groups working on keeping West Bank fighters supplied but again, nothing of scale.
Syria under Jolani is very Israel-friendly, offering up all their military equipment to be destroyed. The Syrian coast is a different story but if they're doing anything, they're probably formulating a resistance to Jolani rather than doing anything to oppose Israel. I think the situation is not stable at all but Assad showed how you can keep plates spinning for a decade even under the godawful situation that Syria is in, so I wouldn't count on anything changing for the foreseeable future, and definitely not while Israel exists. It's been pretty darkly funny how the Kurds have just vanished after Assad was toppled. Very "my work here is done" of them. Maybe some of them were serious about wanting Kurdistan but in retrospect it was functionally just another vector destabilizing the region.
Lebanon is basically one nation state with two governments; southern Lebanon sees Hezbollah as basically legitimate while the north is increasingly under the dictates of a comprador government upheld by Western agents exerting social and economic pressure. The comprador government is trying to disarm Hezbollah with the aid of Israel to varying levels of success. Hezbollah is somewhat acquiescing to this disarmament so as to avoid further mass death in Lebanon, but they're also clearly trying to get the comprador government to join with them to take the fight to Israel again, which the compradors obviously do not wish to do. My tentative prediction is that the comprador government will eventually say that Israel can have everything south of the Litani (maybe not as literal annexation but a sort of "a permanent peace-keeping anti-terrorist operation with a joint mandate supervised by the Lebanese government and blah blah blah" thing that turns out to be functionally equivalent to an Israeli annexation), and this will be unacceptable to Hezbollah, and the organization is basically transported back in time 20/30 years to solely being an internal resistance movement to Israeli occupation (both military and via compradors) albeit with extensive underground structures and missile stockpiles with which to fight. The reduction (but probably not total prevention) of weapon smuggling to them via Syria will also prompt this material shift in how aggressive they can be; guns and drones are easier to smuggle than missiles.
I'm not very familiar with what's going on with Iraq but they don't have meaningful sovereignty over their own country at this point. They would sure love it if Israel and the US stopped flying over their territory to strike Iran, but can't do anything. On the flip side, Iran can also smuggle and fire things over Iraq and arm groups there.
Saudi Arabia and the rest of the gulf monarchies are still unable and/or unwilling to exert enough authority to stop the US from using them as barriers against Iranian strikes, and one imagines them as ostriches with their heads in the sand, shitting themselves, with refineries just waiting to receive Iranian or even Yemeni drones.
Yemen's geopolitical situation has remained remarkably stable despite hundreds of US and Israeli bombings, showing how Ansarallah has created durable social, economy, and military structures to resist imperialist aggression. They aren't capable of much, but the right missile in the right place can still do a lot of damage, and they seem to be pretty good at making missiles.
Turkey's government has been busy feasting on the entrails of Syria. There's a degree of enmity with Israel on this point, but it's clear that they're still friendly to eachother despite the kayfabe.
Armenia's government is probably tasking their greatest political scientists to find the worst possible move they could possibly make during the coming crisis and I'm excited to see what developments they'll find. Maybe we'll see them fire missiles at themselves or something.
Azerbaijan is probably hosting some Israeli drone strikes onto Iran but on the whole I don't think they're a significant player in this thing right now.
With the Central Asian countries that most people don't know exists (your Uzbekistans and so on), I have no idea what they're doing but they're probably just hoping they don't have to get involved.
Pakistan is in an interesting situation in regards to Iran, here's a comment on that that might be interesting.
Afghanistan seems to be keeping things together now that China and Russia are helping them out a little more. I think there have been rumblings that the US wants to get involved there again, but I imagine that's not the main focus right now. It's certainly not the direction I would choose to attack Iran from given the terrain.
What's Oman up to?
Excellent summary, thanks for taking the time to type up this comment.
Syria, Lebanon and Iraq can't even be said to be nation states at this point, they are broken shattered and hollowed out. They have no military or sovereignty and can barely function to just do day-to-day existence. They've all lost millions of people who have fled as refugees.
Egypt is just pretending nothing is happening. Jordan i'm sure is coordinating with everyone in their airspace and clamping down on any dissent, normal Jordan stuff. They're just gonna try to lay low I guess and hope Iran doesn't notice them facilitating everything
I see
what decades of US intervention will do to a mf
Did anything ever happen with their deployments in the Sinai? Israel wasnt happy with that iirc