Mere hours before Trump's 8pm Tuesday deadline yesterday, Pakistan's government contacted Iran with a US-written proposal for a two-week ceasefire, explicitly stated to also include Lebanon, during which they would negotiate a permanent end to the war on the basis of Iran's 10 Points. Among other things, these points include 1) maintaining strict control (joint with Oman) over Hormuz, complete with a toll; 2) the end of sanctions on Iran; 3) keeping their enriched uranium; 4) a withdrawal of US forces from the Middle East [stated by the Supreme Leadership Council but not in the 10 Points, so who knows], and 5) some plausible guarantee that Iran would never be attacked again. I've heard rumors that China may have prodded Iran to accept these terms.
In theory, these are relatively confident and maximalist demands. In practice, Iran has already achieved military and economic control over Hormuz and the withdrawal of many US troops and bases from the region, so at least a few of Iran's demands are, to a greater or lesser extent, already achieved, and with little hope for an increasingly exhausted US to undo these achievements short of nukes.
A couple hours after the ceasefire, the Zionist entity began a wave of airstrikes in Lebanon, killing hundreds of civilians, as well as flying drones into Iranian airspace. This was a strange move to make even if you assume - very sensibly - that the US is completely agreement non-capable: why not agree to the ceasefire and simply pretend to negotiate for two weeks while regrouping/repairing what assets you can and then start hitting Iran again?
One theory is that the Zionists are testing to what degree Iran is actually willing to have solidarity with Lebanon and Hezbollah. While the Resistance has been relatively united since October 7th, the formation of separate peaces instead of negotiating terms as a united front has been a major exploitable weakness. Alternatively, it's been proposed that the US didn't even consider using the ceasefire to regroup and deceive Iran, and that Trump merely wanted a way to chicken out of his threat on Iran's electrical grid - the fact that US officials have since stated that Iran's 10 Points were not the same ones they agreed to is a point supporting this, I suppose. If the conflict resumes and Trump does not deliver another 48 hour deadline (and/or makes it something silly like a month from now) then this could be the explanation.
From Iran, I am getting the sense that a lot is happening behind the scenes. Statements from top officials like Araghchi have stated quite plainly that there will be no ceasefire and no negotiations unless the Zionists stop attacking Lebanon, but as of ~24 hours after the ceasefire began, there has been no significant military response from Iran yet. There have apparently been phone calls between Araghchi and numerous regional officials, but it is unknown to what end. All the while, the global economic situation continues to deteriorate. Over the next week or two, the last tankers that left Hormuz before it closed will arrive at their destinations. If the missile exchanges begin once more, then the West, much like most of the rest of the world, will be experiencing all sorts of fuel, energy, food, and product shortages while trying to justify why they broke the ceasefire to kill more Lebanese civilians.
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The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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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.
Medhurst's argument seems to be, "Even a temporary US monopoly on energy could precipitate durable capital flight into the US, reindustrializing the US and deindustrializing Asia and Europe. Then the US seals the deal with naval piracy, unless Iran, China, and Russia can defeat the US navy and/or make that piracy too costly to maintain."
Is that accurate? I struggle to imagine the US reindustrializing. Maybe the plan is to situate that industrial growth in south and central America and then extract the profits back to the US? The other thing is, militarily -- and correct me if I'm wrong -- aren't navies easy to disable with missiles and submarines, assuming you can locate the ships? It would be a major escalation, sure, but no more an escalation than this plan to hold global shipping at gunpoint to strangle the economies of rival nuclear superpowers. The US can't just put their navy under their nuclear umbrella -- or some other retaliation umbrella -- and do whatever they want. China, Iran, and Russia have their own means of destruction. At the end of the day, MAD alone is not a basis for primacy, and it kinda seems like MAD is what this plan boils down to.
*I'm not disagreeing with Medhurst, I bet this is the plan.
It isn't intended to be temporary. It's intended to be permanent via Chevron. The capital flight and de-industrialization of Europe has already begun. The question becomes really if they can make China unattractive and noncompetitive to force de-industrialization and capital flight to the US. They can at the least with this plan put a really big hurt on China and make them reliant on the dollar and maintaining its hegemony which means US hegemony which also means the B&R fails which means the US succeeds in enslaving most of the planet and China's attempts to free them fail which ultimately if not interrupted at some point in this process leaves China a mere regional power totally under the economic power of the US in a world also controlled by the US.
In other words China and Russia but China especially need to be strident and prepare for combat on the high seas against this pirate empire. The US won't go down easy. If this video is to be believed they have no intent of retreating to the Americas as many here like to speculate rather they may cede air power and all their air bases for a handful much more defensible and important naval bases and choke points across the globe and attempt to maintain power via a navy.
This is also why Trump's plan for building American ships by imposing fees on any ships coming to the US that aren't US made shouldn't be scoffed at right now as transitioning from an air power to a naval power would require increased shipbuilding capacity which would be helped by opening new naval yards, expanding existing ones via commercial orders. However, even if that should fail the US has enough ship-building capacity as well as established ports around the world to fairly effectively carry out this strategy.
Navies are not easy to disable no. Compared to air forces that sit on tarmacs fairly static ships are constantly moving so a lot harder to find, target, and destroy than air forces that can't be in the air all the time. Additionally these carrier groups carry anti-sub equipment, travel with attack subs, and have aegis anti-missile defenses on them.
It's not impossible if China wants to war with the US for them to attack them and start destroying them but two things: 1) China doesn't want to fight the US, has resisted any military action against them because the US is run by mad-men with nukes who are seething at Christianity losing, white supremacy losing (but I repeat myself), and capitalism losing and China also does a lot of business with the US and while the US might take a lot of slaps from China they'll probably cut off trade and crash the Chinese economy if China goes to war with them. 2) China does not have a deep water navy. They lack the ability to project power like the US does. They don't have logistics chains for projecting power like the US does. They don't have all these colonial hold-over ports and different fleets all over the world supported with air power resupply. Ultimately the US could carry out their piracy just with subs so developing ultra-long-range missiles for taking out carrier groups while firing from China and evading their interceptor defenses won't be enough to stop the US because the US can continue to carry out this strategy with subs. Thus China requires a deep water navy capable of sub hunting in vast stretches of multiple oceans around the world. This will take time to build, take time to figure out logistics for because they don't have land bases to resupply from anywhere in the world at this point so it would be more expensive and intensive on them. This gives the US probably another decade of dominance at least during which they can do a lot.
If China strikes now, dissuades the US they might be able to prevent this strategy from fully unfurling and the US might indeed flinch this early on. However if the plan progresses, Europe de-industrializes and the US somewhat reindustrializes or at least "friend-shores" the industry to say Latin America, Asian lapdogs, etc then the US will become progressively less likely to flinch. Problem is China's navy at the moment isn't really ready for a full confrontation with the US that rages far from the SCS (US has been very careful in this plan to have its choke points and blockade points far from the SCS).
This seems like a possible Chinese strategy for naval piracy scenarios. Just put missiles and drones on the cargo ships themselves disguised as regular merchant ships. Not sure how effective that would be long-term in a hot war situation, but it's an interesting concept for these scenarios.
https://news.usni.org/2026/01/07/chinese-merchant-ship-sports-electromagnetic-drone-launcher-vertical-launching-systems
https://asiatimes.com/2026/01/chinas-drone-carriers-hide-in-plain-sight-among-merchant-ships/
this is a quibble, but I think China does have a sizeable blue-water navy -- mainly lagging the US in number of carriers (China 3, US 11) -- but in any case, as you point out, China lacks the many overseas naval bases the US can use to refuel its ships around the world, which is a major disadvantage
But what about economic leverage? If the US threatens to wage essentially a U-boat campaign against global shipping unless everyone buys American, I would think China, Russia, and Iran combined could still exert considerable economic leverage in the other direction, creating a "fucked either way" situation where it costs money to defy the US but also costs money to concede to the US, forcing a negotiation. Am I being naive? Or is the crucial point that, as you said, China does not want to fight the US to begin with?
The idea is for the US to create a trap with significant friction if China resists at any point early on (like barbs pointed backwards to prevent leaving it), allow China some exceptions early on so they are less likely to react, then once they're in deep snap the trap shut after they've drained Europe and strengthened themselves. So I don't think the point is to spring the trap in 2028 but maybe 2030 at which point China is deeper into the trap, US has had time to benefit, to strengthen itself, to drain its vassals, etc.
The point is also keeping China doubting that this is a plan, from seeing it and acting on it. Because there must always be doubt when we're talking about starting a war with the US, the rational minds in China will say let's not over-react, we don't have sufficient proof of this, etc. And they'll want to wait and that is how China operates, it is patient, it doesn't react dramatically and the US knows this, the US has studied China and the US will count on this for their trap to work.
There are a lot of ways this could go wrong. It's not fool-proof even if it is very clever, very intelligent, very elegantly designed. Even if it does go wrong the US has already cemented a lot of power and will continue to drain its vassals, force them to send capital to the US, reduce their competitiveness, and in all likelihood in Europe's case lead to a resurgence in angry far-right politics which the US wants to see. So even if they don't achieve their maximum win conditions out of this they're still likely to profit and extend their life and strength quite a bit by it.