Image is of a Khorramshahr-4 medium range ballistic missile, which has a range of about 2000km.
As I said in the last megathread, trying to figure out what exactly is happening is becoming ever more difficult. The gist of things is that Iran has, very justifiably, refused to negotiate (assassinating their leader and striking their country with hundreds of missiles in the middle of negotiations causes some reluctance to return to the table, I suppose). Censorship across the Middle East has further ramped up, with reportedly extreme punishments for posting footage of Iranian strikes online. From what I can gather, Iran's number of strikes have stabilized at a comfortable daily rate, with strikes into both the Gulf monarchies and Occupied Palestine continuing apace. Official charts of these strikes over time seem very disconnected from reality on the ground, but again, it's hard to really get at the specifics.
The messaging on how long the war is expected to last is rather muddled on both sides. The Trump administration fluctuates more than daily - and even sometimes in the same speech - on whether the war is already won or whether it's going to last months longer. The US seems to be coming up a new possible scheme every few hours: a ground invasion with the Kurds? A ground invasion without the Kurds? An amphibious assault? A series of commando operations to steal Iranian uranium? A massive parachuting operation into Tehran? Fuck it, let's just send the Navy into the Strait of Hormuz? There doesn't seem to be a coherent plan for continuing hostilities beyond firing more and more of a limited stockpile of cruise missiles into mostly non-military targets, hitting easily replaceable drone and missile launchers with a limited stockpile of drones, and burning a limited stockpile of interceptors at an astounding rate (and, in the process, disarming every other Western-aligned country of their interceptors).
Meanwhile, from Iran, I've seen rumors and reports from classic anonymous "senior IRGC officials" (no doubt some invented by Zionists to sow confusion), that I don't know how to substantiate, ranging anywhere from "If the US pulls back their forces now, we will restart negotiations," to "It doesn't matter what the US or the Zionists do or say, we aren't stopping until every last trace of Zionism in the Middle East has been extinguished," to a few positions in between those poles. Despite the damage to infrastructure in Iran, it doesn't seem like there has been any political or social fracturing. Not to speak too soon - perhaps the West will start earnestly trying to overfly Iranian territory to drop their very plentiful bombs soon - but every indication is that there will be no regime change nor societal collapse in Iran in the short and medium term.
The US is desperately trying - and mostly failing - to keep a lid on the economic firestorm they have ignited. There has been much ado about oil prices and oil futures and indexes and what all the myriad Lines going up and down signify and things like that, which is befitting such a financialized empire which is so disconnected from the actual physical flows of materials and much more attuned to vibes and speeches. The only thing I'm personally paying much attention to on the economic front is the drones and missiles slamming into fossil fuel infrastructure, the Hormuz blockade, and the resulting global shockwave of shortages, stoppages, closures, bankruptcies, and force majeures spreading out from the epicenter that is Iran.
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.
I'm sorry this is extremely funny given that Russia said for months that they would never invade Ukraine, including in talks with the US and Europe (to the point that a lot of us on here in the news mega naively believed them, including me), only to launch a war that has lasted 4+ years with no signs of stopping. And at the start of the war, Russia tried to have their special forces enter the Ukrainian capital and perform such "personal attacks" aimed at the political class of Ukraine as part of denazification.
Welcome to international relations and geopolitics. Everyone is trying to play, deceive and fool the other parties. To think otherwise is naive, and Russia of all nations would know that. The US knows it. This is not a shift in anything, but rather a return to the norm. China talks openly about decapitation strikes with hypersonic weapons on Taiwanese political leadership in the media, and this was before the US war in Iran, and operation in Venezuela. So they know it too.
Russia didn't interrupt successful peace negotiations by going to war. US and Britain sabotaged the negotiations and only then Russia attacked. In the case of Iran, the mediator from Oman had already booked the venue for the peace celebrations. Iran had already given in to all the core demands. The Iran war is not an attempt to achieve militarily what could not be achieved by negotiations. It's war for wars sake. To keep the war machine rolling, to get rid of excess value to lower the crisis of overproduction. The fascists can't help but destroy themselves with endless war.
Both Iran and Ukraine are primarily examples of the US turning away from successful negotiations, not the other party. And in the case of Iran the negotiations were a farce to begin with and were ended demonstratively with a horrible terrorist attack on school children. This intentionally sends a very clear message: don't ever negotiate with us, we only want war.
And this is the actual honest class position of the imperial ruling class, they are afraid of peace. Their mouthpieces might use other rhetoric, but materially they need war to sustain hegemony. Significant parts of the russian oligarchy on the other hand wanted the Ukraine negotiations to be successful. They were rightfully afraid of sanctions and loss of trade.
In negotiations, the US won't take "yes" for an answer.
Lukyanov is clearly criticising the countless murders of negotiators by Israel and the US.
This has nothing to do with a war being waged or not, or being denied.
You can't have reasonable negotiations at the table, if the other side will use the Intel of where you are to kill you.
Uhh, you're leaving out a giant chunk of context here that lead Russia to do what it did. And this all goes way back before 2022. It goes back before 2014, even. Let's not forget historical materialism and the universality of contradiction in our analysis and understanding of events that come to pass.
Yes, Russia invaded Ukraine. But that wasn't the start of this. Anyone who says that also says Palestine started the war in October of 2023.
I can agree with this to an extent. Though no other actor engages in the scope and scale of clandestine operations that directly violates the sovereignty of literally everyone as the Americans. Being in the traditionally dominant position they have been, they set the tone and the precedent and others have to act accordingly.
I think Marmites point was about the rhetoric, not to litigate whether Russia's invasion was justified. Deception is the norm, everyone knows it, and it’s not new. Particularly Russia has done similar kinds of deception, so while the complaint is true it is hypocritical.
Ok, Well then the example used is contradictory to the point trying to be made. Because Russia made it pretty clear from the day the USSR was illegally dissolved to now that it wouldn't accept NATO making any moves on Ukraine. And it was well understood within NATO itself that Russia would, in fact, move to confront it in Ukraine.
It would have been more accurate to simply put the conversation into class context and say the bourgeoisie rarely say what they mean to the proletariat and default to libspeak to candy coat reality.
There is a bit more truth to the statements than you are giving Russia credit for.
Russia have intentionally refrained from killing Zelensky over the last four years. They had many opportunities to do so and never took them.
Additionally, Russia earnestly tried to resolve the Donetsk crisis with diplomacy for eight years before finally pulling the trigger on an opponent that constantly used negotiations as a chance to rearm and prepare another attack. European officials openly admit that any negotiations were for this exact purpose.
Compare this to Israel who has also been using negotiations as a weapon - it is the common thread in Western strategic thought.
Why would they? It's not like Ukraine has been pulling off upset victories under his stellar leadership and tactical foresight, and if they kill him they give the west a martyr to rally around.
I think the Istanbul talks in 2022(?) just after the invasion of Ukraine began is a key point of difference.
Russia did apply military force as an extension of diplomacy but it did not cease diplomacy.
Military force and diplomacy were connected, part of the same strategy.
What you’re seeing with Israel and the USA is simply military force. They’re not seeking any kind of settlement, they’re seeking complete capitulation and dominance.
Like compare:
Start of SMO Russia demands were no NATO and language rights, Ukrainian neutrality. Demands not met. Military force as an extension of diplomacy.
Start of Iran-2026, Iran agreed to no nukes, no enrichment, essentially a complete agreement to US demands before the USA struck. Demands met. Military force disconnected from diplomacy.
It’s not the same ball-game. What Russia wants from Ukraine might be a bitter pill for Ukraine but there is a deal to be had. What deal is possible for the USA when it attacks even after Iran gives in to all of their demands?