Image is of a destroyed American AWACS plane in Saudi Arabia, of which there is a very limited supply and each of which is enormously expensive both monetarily and in terms of components. Iran hit this with a precision drone strike that likely cost ~$20,000.
I don't have much to add from the last megathread description. This isn't to say that nothing has happened or has changed since then - decades are still happening in weeks - but the general flow of the war is remaining the same. Trump sometimes threatens to open the Strait with troops and flatten Iran to rubble, and other times threatens that he's gonna back off and let other countries handle it if they really want little trifles like "fuel" and "energy" so much. Iran continues to strike across the Middle East. The West continues to bomb civilian infrastructure due to their relative inability to affect the missile cities. In all: things are generally getting worse for America and the Zionists.
April is the month where the last ships that left Hormuz before it was closed will arrive around the world, so the last month of economic turmoil has been a mere prelude to what's going to occur in the near-future. The silver lining is that Iran appears to be formalizing the new state of affairs in Hormuz, creating a rial-based toll to allow passage between a pair of Iranian-controlled islands where they can be monitored, meaning that, as long as the US doesn't do something exceptionally stupid, the global energy crisis may "only" last a couple years instead of simply being the new reality from now on. Some countries have already agreed to this arrangement, and others will inevitably follow despite their consternation as their economies increasingly suffer.
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.
NYTimes with a new article, insane that the mainstream American press is printing stuff like this but such is the world the Epstein Class has decided to birth. «The War Is Turning Iran Into a Major World Power» is the title, and nothing in there is anything we haven't talked about here extensively, but to see the mainstream press draw these conclusions still reads like a fever dream to me.
Per https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/06/opinion/iran-war-strait-hormuz.html
That two-paragraph excerpt almost reads like they are goading the Trump administration into continuing the war
I mean, this is what you get from logic like "any state that's able to militarily or economically resist the US coercion is a power on par with it" It's an insidious framing that ignores how overextended and global U.S. reach rly is and how intricate the networks it uses to extend that power are. A lot of pseudo-communist orgs in the west have fallen for this.
Damn almost as if you would have been better off simply trading with them instead of doing this shit but the britbongian brainpan renders its bearer incapable of behaving like civilized modern humans
Now why would 12% of the world population need (much less deserve) 30% of the oil?
Seems more like they're saying that 12% of the world's population should have at least 70% of the world's oil, because it is an affront for them to not have even just 30% of it.
On top of all the oil they already have control over
Incredible the comments on this one folks. The two top rated comments are:
"Stone Age country" successfully keeps the Strait of Hormuz closed is going to hit hard. The European Bell Beakers would be so jealous of the stone age tech Iran has invented. I'm sure the Stone Age peoples of Çatalhöyük would love launching a Shahed-136, really cutting edge Stone Age tech.
"A few pipelines well within the range of Iranian standoff weaponry will make Hormuz and Iran obsolete!"
the stone age country with more engineering graduates than the US
Of course Stone Age types think "literacy" and "engineering" are values; it's because they don't have "books" and "machines." True post-Stone Age enlightened beings like Americans know the world actually runs on vibes, willpower, and "war fighting" spirit.
These people are absolutely unprepared for reality, and will become even more delusional and violent as the decline becomes more undeniable
The satanic racism of NYCrimes commenters would make an 18th-century European Count blush
Pipelines, fast and easy to construct? I'm sure
This is more optimistic than I've seen anyone argue for here. Iran not just as a major regional power with fully secured sovereignty that has weakened the empire, but in itself a global power on the same plane as Russia, China and the US? I don't think I'm willing to go that far if only because its population is too small. I don't think a nation of 90 million people could project global power with the big players.
There is, I guess, a path to this sort of outcome, but I don't think it's as likely or as neat as this piece says. If Iran facilitates the birth of a unified Arab republic/confederation of the Levant, Mesopotamia, and the Arabian Peninsula (and even more optimistically, the whole Arab League), that would be a new global power able to assert itself as a 4th pole in close coordination with Iran. But then we're only a few steps from the total defeat of imperialism, so let's not get ahead of ourselves.
I think it also supposes that the entire reason Iran would be able to become a world power is because the world will continue to run on oil. Their power comes from denying or allowing the passage of oil from West Asia to the rest of the world, but if the world transitions away from oil, then their power goes away. Obviously that won't happen within the next few years but it's not like you can build a 500 year empire off of blocking 20% of the world's oil supply.
Even if the world becomes less dependent on oil it’s not like that’s the only thing that passes through the strait. It’s a massive trade route.
Iran is a lot like China. Always a major player at some level during every period of history.
They call themselves "civilization states" for that reason. Who else can claim relevance and meaningful continuity for thousands upon thousands of years? India basically. Russia and Egypt make the claim.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_state
May the global order change irrevocably in favor of the global south!
it's going to, the only question is how much and how quickly
One would hope as soon a possible but realistically it's gonna take decades to fully happen. We need to keep fighting and supporting eachother, especially those the empire focus the most each time. But it will happen.
leftists being correct too early etc
Describing a new dynamic in the control of oil as a "cartel" sure is an interesting choice.
Breaking our cartel monopoly is actually you making a cartel.
"Cartel" what lmao are they gonna accuse Khamenei of being a drug cartel leader and pull a maduro? I hate western journos. Everything bad and scary for them is a cartel now.
Yes, it's some framing their doing, but it's about a cartel in the classic economic sense: companies controlling supply and setting prices high to avoid competition. Like the OPEC cartel is already doing for oil, except without US influence through the Gulf countries.
Western stenography enemy epithet buzzword salad