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.
https://xcancel.com/MatthewPHoh/status/2032876808278806546
Given that Trump adores the feeling that he's deceived his enemies (see: the beginning of the Twelve Days War last year, and the Venezuela raid) even if they actually haven't been deceived at all, my prediction is that they aren't going to use the Marines to try and take Kharg (they may try and use them elsewhere) but instead they'll go "We are very smart and savvy operators; those stupid Iranians are distracted by the MEU ship, but what we're ACTUALLY gonna do is parachute a bunch of troops onto the island!" and try and take the island within the next couple days with that airdropped force. given that the US did not destroy the oil infrastructure on it, and that Iran made a point of saying that their air defenses on the island were stashed away during the strikes and then reactivated shortly after, I think this indicates that Iran knows that this is the plan.
for a period of, let's say 3 to 12 hours, the narrative and headlines will be "Critical Iranian territory successfully taken and held by US forces; Iranian regime caught unawares by intelligence ruse" and Trump will do one of his truthsocial diatribes saying that if the Iranians ~~make peace~~ accept their overwhelming defeat now, the US will graciously give back Kharg (as part of the whole "Make Iran Great Again" narrative thing). the oil infrastructure is not being destroyed precisely so it retains its ability to be used as a bargaining chip - otherwise, Iran would have little reason to want to make peace and regain it.
then the drones and short range missiles and artillery will start hitting, it'll be a bloodbath for a while but covered up with "3 dead and 5 wounded today on Kharg island in another unsuccessful Iranian attempt to retake Kharg" (the actual numbers will be at least 10x this) and then eventually Iran will effectively regain control but the whole thing will be memory holed by another dozen major events that took place during that time period and Trump will never mention it again
his key weakness vis a vis these sorts of deception plots is that he's unable to stop talking about the object of his desire. he's like somebody vagueposting on social media about something that happened to them - they keep dancing around the point without quite mentioning it in the hopes that somebody will ask them about it, to the point where you can infer what the plan is just from what he both is talking about and explicitly isn't talking about, like celestial objects orbiting an invisible black hole. if he and Hegseth etc just shut the fuck up about Kharg and never talked about it then it could maybe (but still very improbably) work
That last part feels well put. The rhetorical equivalent of "I'm not touching you!". But like- nah President Slick- you've made a space around the shape, we can see what you're thinking about.
I don't necessarily disagree with this, but another option is that they have assessed that China won't take advantage of a temporary withdrawal from East Asia.
Yeah, these are both important factors. It would be very funny if the PLAN started doing amphibious drills and massing landing ships.
There is a suggestion here that the intention may be to seize Iranian oil tankers. What is the possibility that those tankers start to get a Chinese escort if it comes down to it?
Judging from past actions: 0%.
China does not presently have a big enough deep water navy to truly challenge the US abroad nor is it their policy to do so and draw the US into a confrontation with them.
China will issue angry words to the US about this and if anything will probably lean hard on Iran to just re-open the strait entirely. And I think Trump and the US understands that China has a strong chance of just leaning on Iran to re-open the strait so they can get their oil. That China will take a few weeks of pain at most before it gets very upset with Iran behind the scenes and uses leverage on them to get them to re-open it which will be the American condition for letting oil flow to China again.
The alternative would be China not doing this, relying on strategic stockpile of oil and either doing nothing or trying to route weapons to Iran as punishment for the US doing this. That would the maximum I think they would do. They could also try economic leverage/sanctions on the US to attempt the US to reverse course.
This may very well be Trump's off-ramp for the war. Cutting China off from oil and getting them to lean heavily on Iran to stop the attacks and sign a ceasefire with the US that doesn't meet any of their demands. I hope China doesn't go for it and Iran doesn't either but it could very well happen and this whole thing turns into an aborted nothing-burger that is obviously a failure for Trump but doesn't destroy the empire or its economy as hoped.
There's also other possibilities like they leave Chinese tankers alone due to some private agreement or an aversion to antagonizing them and instead start seizing tankers bound for India, for the global south, for Europe, etc under some pretext. I keep thinking of how the west is unwilling to commit to a land invasion but if they successfully prevent Iran from carrying out exemptions then maybe India, Europe, the global south suffering under an oil blockade will all commit first economic and diplomatic pressure on Iran to remove the blockade and then maybe troops from some of them to put Iran in a kind of "you against the world" situation where Russia and China stand back tut-tutting about free trade while everyone else turns on them for destroying agriculture, consumer prices, heavy industry, etc. Basically a US move to make the rest of the world share the pain. How they'd legally justify doing this and stopping ships from their gulf proxies who are not Iran I'm not sure.
China does not have that level of influence with Iran. Even if China did have that level of influence, Iran has been laser focused on their own sovereignty since the revolution against the shah.
No country can influence Iran to end the blockade and the war except for the Iranians themselves. What could any country do to influence a country that is almost entirely isolated from the international community? What? Are they going to sanction Iran?
They could lean