I have a longer statement below in spoiler tags, but for those who just want to get into the megathread itself, the very short version of my take is: things are going about as well as they realistically could go for Iran as of me writing this on March 2nd; the US and Zionists have clearly misplayed their hand; there's so much propaganda it's hard to get a good perspective of the overall conflict; I think if Iran is still fighting on at approximately the same pace as the end of this week then things are looking VERY bad for the West; I am unsure what the ultimate result of this conflict will be now that the new crop of Iranian leadership are in charge after Khamenei's assassination but am hopeful that anti-American sentiment has been yet further cemented and those in Iran who seek repproachment with the West will be further discredited in favor of those who wish to look East.
My Idle Ramblings
As we are now past the initial 48 hours of the war, what can be said with confidence is that the Iran of today is in a considerably more organized position than they were during the Twelve Days War, as the initial delay on meaningfully responding to enemy attacks was brought from something like 10 hours to about 1 hour. Unfortunately, given the not-insignificant number of Iranian top figures killed, Iran still has considerable opsec problems; whatever the hell Sinwar was doing to stay alive for over a year in the most bombed territory on the planet obviously hasn't reached Iran yet. However, to Iran's credit, the recovery was fast and effective, Khamenei had already drawn up detailed plans for the succession chain in the event of his death, and the new figures were clearly in position to take control of the situation within the hour. The name of the game appears to be greater decentralization of the military, making Zionist narratives about "decapitation" essentially meaningless - the hydra has a thousand heads.
This time around, there are fewer direct critiques to level at Russia and China. In an abstract sense, they could certainly "do more" (Xi, donate one million Chinese drones and let Iran and Yemen blot out the sun!), but to be geopolitically serious, it appears that the Twelve Days War delivered a swift kick up the ass of both Iran and China to start working more closely together, and so Iran now has access to Chinese intelligence and satellite tools, has been receiving certain military equipment like much better radars, and, one hopes, will provide greater economic assistance during and after this war's conclusion.
The overall impacts of the US's and Zionists' strikes on Iran, and vice versa, have been very hard to assess due to the customary tsunami of misinformation and comical exaggerations. Clearly, the most sensational claims - that Western aircraft feel safe enough to fly directly over Iranian territory (let alone that they have air superiority, let alone that they have air supremacy); that Iran's leadership have been killed in meaningful numbers; that Iran is on the verge of collapse or giving in; that Western losses are insignificant; that things are going well or better than expected; etc, are obviously for the general population and peanut gallery, and the situation looks very different from within the halls of power. Nonetheless, stitching every individual missile/drone strike together from both sides into a cohesive picture from which we can draw conclusions has always been a major challenge of present-day warfare, and is certainly challenging here. What can be generally gathered is that Iran does not seem to fear striking Occupied Palestine or American bases directly and with pretty significant firepower, but either is deliberately not focussing on the fleet or does not have the capability to focus on it, leaving American warships intact. And from the highest perspective, it's unclear whether Iran is only beginning a long term war of attrition, or whether they hope to not overly anger the US and Zionists so that an offramp later is possible, or indeed, that the West is succeeding in attriting Iran's offensive capabilities faster than Iran can attrit the West's (or a mixture of all three).
The assassination of Khamenei and other figures is a symbolic victory for the West, as he was one of the last remaining pre-October 7th Resistance leaders alive or in power. Reports are that he stayed at his compound despite being advised in the days before the attack that he should leave, knowing that he would likely very soon die, as he did not want to flee to Russia or hide in bunkers. It's currently unclear to me how impactful his death will be in the end. On the one hand, it is obvious to every serious analyst that his death will not negatively impact Iran's military operations, nor will it lead to regime change in the short or medium term - Iran's government is not a strongman regime (few governments truly are), and the current government is both very durable and has very widespread legitimacy. His replacements and subordinates are already in charge, and from what I can tell, effectively were in charge long before his death.
On the other hand, succession is a bit of a risky process for nations today, in the short and long term. If whoever is left as his replacement at the end of this war - I cannot safely assume it will be Khamenei's immediate replacement in the current environment of Western strikes - ultimately leans even a little more reformist and towards reproachment with the West than Khamenei did, then this whole war may be worth it to the West regardless of the materiel losses. Alternatively, if this war causes a permanent shift away from repproachment and genuine, sustained, and hard-to-repair damage to America's foothold in the Middle East as well as the attrition of most of the US's interceptor missiles, we may indeed be looking at a region soon to be free of Zionist designs. It is much too early for me to distinguish which path we are on.
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.
The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
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:
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://xcancel.com/ripplebrain/status/2028925227296546903
it blows my mind that anybody in washington still thinks war with China is even possible
Please let them keep thinking it is
Honestly, I hope they wake up to the fact it is not. Because if it is, that goes nuclear.
The risk of it happening even if they do realise it is exactly what worries me.
They're probably more likely to nuke if they think they can't take China because they"re sore losers. They might be like "there's always tomorrow" otherwise. But to know they've lost would probably trigger a "everyone needs to die with me" narcissit's reflex in them.
Think tanks need to be funded and
needs someone to write essays about killing asians.
If there were ever a job I'd be happy to let the chatbots cover
Tomahawks are not going to be the primary cruise missiles going into Iran as the war continues. The bombers are going to take over that mission. Two nights ago 3x B-1B bombers sortied, last night 3x B-52. That's up to 132 JASSM cruise missiles over 48 hours. The main limitation at the moment is that the bombers are flying out of the continental USA. If the US uses RAF Fairford and Diego Garcia, they can generate more bomber sorties. I don't think the destroyers will re-arm for more Tomahawks, they'll only re-arm if they run low in air defence interceptors. That has probably been the plan since the beginning.
Cruise missiles will also be required less and less as US and Israel gain air superiority. They're already dropping JDAMs on Tehran and flying freely during the daytime deep inside Iran. The problem with this twitter users analysis is that he doesn't think this is happening, and thinks that the US and Israel are relying completely on standoff weapons, despite evidence to the contrary.
I don't think with the way things have unfolded we can credibly say the Americans had a particularly well thought out plan. If they're denying interceptor resupply to their allies...
There's been a bit of footage, but I'm not sure if we can conclude that they have or will gain complete air superiority over the whole country.
The only thing I found was this comment https://hexbear.net/comment/6966925? The "deep inside Iran" is based on the idea that they're entering Iran across its western border (or, in the case of American forces, also from the south) - as we argued about last time during the 12-Day war, the potential scenario of them going to Azerbaijan, and entering from the north via the Caspian Sea is a very different thing.
JDAMs can also be dropped from drones - and we do have conclusive evidence of those being over Iran.
Finally, and this is again a discussion we already had last time, even if there are more direct bombings with fighters flying overhead, the proportion still matters a lot. A handful of fighters getting through and managing to drop some bombs doesn't mean the majority of strikes aren't being done with standoff munitions. Sure, it's not necessarily fair to conclude that it's all standoff, but I don't think at this stage of fog-of-war it makes sense to assume that Iran is completely penetrated either.
Also, for the strategic bombers - while the JASSM stockpile is a lot better, it's still not infinite - 2025 brought in 550 new JASSMs, at the rate you've mentioned, that'd be the whole annual production eaten up in 9 days. Still not sustainable over the long term.
Not sure if the LRASM can be used as a quasi-JASSM in an emergency (since it should be the same base missile underneath, just with some extra gizmos)? But there's just another 115 there.