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A reminder that as the US continues to threaten countries around the world, fedposting is to be very much avoided (even with qualifiers like "in Minecraft") and comments containing it will be removed.

Image is of Iranian missiles in one of their many fortified underground facilities. I sincerely hope this isn't AI generated, because I'm very wary of posting footage of explosions or combat and having it later turn out to be fake.


Now that the initial shock of the war's beginning is over and there's a meaningful dataset to analyze, the takes from the many hundreds of Geopolitics Understanders are flying in, with predictably extreme variance about how long they predict this war to last and who will ultimately be the victor - and, indeed, what victory even looks like for either side. There are some who are already toasting to their side's victory, but most serious analysts seem to believe that if there isn't any negotiations, and it's just attrition to the death, then it's gonna be a long war (months or even years), and then, depending on the analyst, either the US or Iran then concedes defeat.

All of these takes are being informed by quite possibly the worst information environment yet conceived by humanity. There's the usual stuff: falsehoods, lying by omission, wild exaggerations, state propaganda, doctored videos, masses of bots boosting certain narratives, etc - but now also easily accessible AI which creates images and videos that can be quite convincing unless further inspected by tools online, and people claiming that some non-AI videos were made with AI. On top of all of that, censorship across the Middle East is now in full effect, spawning arguments about whether Iran's strikes have actually decreased in intensity (and if they have, then why), or if we just aren't seeing them as much on social media anymore. Scant footage here and there confirms that strikes are still happening, but I suspect that most of the evidence of further damage to Western facilities will either be satellite imagery or indirect indicators like rescue crews gathering in certain areas, as well as the he-said-she-said of official statements by either side. Given the West's utter lack of reliability with reporting... well, pretty much everything, but especially the Ukraine War, I know which side I'm predisposed to believe, but obviously Iran's government generally isn't going to report successful strikes by Western forces for a myriad reasons.

However, the military conflict is being gradually eclipsed in importance by the growing likelihood of a global economic crisis of massive proportions. A very large proportion of the fuel that keeps the world running is now not moving, and may remain so for weeks or months. Some are even predicting that 2026 will be the year of the biggest energy crisis in world history, dwarfing the crisis of 1973, as countries around the world begin to restrict oil and gas exports and tap into limited reserves. In such a situation, Iran clearly holds all the cards, because even if the US eventually achieves air supremacy, it is still relatively trivial to fire cheap drones en masse at tankers in the strait and at oil facilities throughout the Gulf. Assuming that Iran and the US do not negotiate, then even if the US eventually somehow wins and can reopen the strait within a few months, the global economic and political situation may be so degraded that the victory will be pyrrhic.


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

If you have evidence of Zionist crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.


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[-] oliveoil@hexbear.net 58 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Larry Johnson, former CIA - Russian propagandist.

The US intelligence community is covering its ass here.

One of the comments:

https://sonar21.com/us-intelligence-community-is-covering-its-ass-what-is-really-going-on-with-the-us-war-on-iran/#comment-377013

George Galloway suggests a small yield nuke is on the way from Great Britain to hit the nuclear facility in Iran. I hope he is wrong but he rarely is.

~~# Can anyone confirm for me that Galloway said this? Urgent please.~~ Confirmed.

https://sonar21.com/us-intelligence-community-is-covering-its-ass-what-is-really-going-on-with-the-us-war-on-iran/

::: spoiler article: Let’s start with the big news from a US Intelligence Community leak to the Washington Post… John Hudson and Warren P. Strobel got the story:

A classified report by the National Intelligence Council found that even a large-scale assault on Iran launched by the United States would be unlikely to oust the Islamic republic’s entrenched military and clerical establishment, a sobering assessment as the Trump administration raises the specter of an extended military campaign that officials sayhas “only just begun.”

The findings, confirmed to The Washington Post by three people familiar with the report’s contents, raise doubts about President Donald Trump’s declared plan to “clean out” Iran’s leadership structure and install a ruler of his choosing.

The report, completed about a week before the United States and Israel initiated the war on Feb. 28, outlined succession scenarios stemming from either a narrowly tailored campaign against Iran’s leaders or a broader assault against its leadership and government institutions, the people familiar with its findings said. In both cases, the intelligence concluded that Iran’s clerical and military establishment would respond to the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei by following protocols designed to preserve continuity of power, these people said.

This means the war in Iran is not going well and the US IC is beginning the Washington game of, “Don’t blame me, I warned you not to do it.” I don’t know if Tulsi Gabbard authorized this leak, or if it came from senior analysts from the four principal agencies that were involved in writing this classified report — i.e., the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and the National Security Agency. It is important to understand that this report was produced by the National Intelligence Council, aka the NIC, and it is under the direct control of Tulsi Gabbard. In any event I see this as a clear signal from people involved in producing this report that they will not be the scapegoats when the Iran war turns into a debacle for Donald Trump

I get dozens of emails a day from readers asking questions and offering commentary. I try to read and respond to all. Today I received a series of questions from one of my subscribers (you know who you are). Instead of responding to this person personally, I decided to save time and post for all to see. Hopefully this helps you plow thru the ton of propaganda being spewed by Trump and the Zionists.

1) I’ve read that Tehran is now being hit with gravity bombs. Does the US now have total air space control? What happened to S300-400 and super long range radar able to detect stealth aircraft?

The US does not have air supremacy. The US and Israeli planes are flying close to Iran’s western border and releasing primarily the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile aka JASSAMs, which have a range between 230 and 600 miles depending on the variant (AGM-158A JASSM (baseline): ~370 km [230 miles] and AGM-158B JASSM-ER (Extended Range): ~980 km [610 miles]). I don’t know how many, if any, S300-S400 are deployed in Iran. Iran has reportedly shot down 29 MQ9s and Hermes drones since 28 February, which represents a financial loss of $800 million.

2) What does it imply that Iran has apologized to its neighbors for attacking them?

That is a misreading of what the Iranian President said. Pezeshkian personally apologized to the neighboring countries (Gulf/Arab states) that had been affected by Iranian missile and drone strikes, saying something along the lines of: “I should apologize to the neighboring countries that were attacked by Iran, on my own behalf and on behalf of Iran.” However, Pezeshkian in later remarks emphasized that any de-escalation gesture was undermined by US actions (like Trump’s response framing it as capitulation). As long as the US continues to conduct military operations from the territories of the Gulf/Arab states Iran will (and has) continue to attack the US targets in those countries.

3) What are the targets of the new cluster bomb rockets? Airfields?

The most recent video evidence shows Iran has hit Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, the oil refinery in Haifa. The clusters from the Iranian rocket are hitting ground targets in Tel Avi and Haifa at a minimum

4) Why can’t Iran stop the constant barrage they are under going? They seem as defenseless as Gaza. 

Iran does not have a perfect air defense system. Worth noting that despite Donald Trump’s threats, the number of US AGM strikes in Iran have declined by 80%. According to Simplicius:

US’s strikes have likewise fallen off from nearly 1,000 on the first day to an estimated 200-300 per day or less since then—and many if not most of those strikes are hitting superficial targets to “fluff up the score”, like a plane boneyard which surely added a couple dozen “points” to the “impressive” strike list

5) is the Iranian Air Force destroyed?

No. The strikes on Iranian combat planes have been largely confined to the Western part of Iran. They still have ample capability in the East. Iran maintains 17 Tactical Fighter Bases (TFBs), and in recent years several new airfields have been constructed in central and eastern Iran, with at least two becoming permanent TFBs — the first established since 1979. One known eastern base is TFB.14 near Mashhad, in the far northeast. To protect assets from preemptive strikes, Iran has moved much of its air power underground. The “Eagle 44” (Oghab 44) airbase, unveiled in 2023, is a massive facility carved into the Zagros Mountains, designed to withstand bunker-buster bombs and housing fighter jets, drones, and command facilities. As of February 28, 2026, reports indicate MiG-29s flying over Tehran and Su-24 strike aircraft being repositioned, suggesting active defensive preparations.

6) is it hard to put airfields out of service? For example send all fuel tanks up in flames. The conclusion I reach is that it requires high precision missiles and Iran doesn’t have enough of those types to expend them on that type of target. Meanwhile Tehran burns and some US radars are gone. 

Blowing up fuel tanks can create a fuel shortage, but it does not disable airfields. Cratering an airfield and putting it permanently out of commission is difficult because the runways can be repaired. You need to stop listening to the US propaganda claims about massive destruction. And how do you know how many high precision missiles Iran has? I don’t know, but what I continue to see is that Iran if firing several waves of precision missile attacks into Tel Aviv and Haifa as well as US bases/ installations throughout the Persian Gulf.

7) The fact that US has been blinded by radar loss hasn’t seemed to help Iran much. Newer Iranian missiles are getting through but that would have been true regardless of those radar stations status.

You answer your own question. Yes, the US loss of the advance radar systems has blinded it and, as a consequence, Iranian missiles are getting through. So what is your real question?

[-] CriticalXipport@hexbear.net 41 points 2 weeks ago

Pairing this information with the doomsday plane that's otw oh-shit

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this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2026
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