Image is an illustration that I have made to show what each side means when they say that Hormuz is "open" or "closed", as various officials and analysts have created a lot of confusion with their statements, both intentionally and unintentionally.
I'm tentatively going back to the weekly thread format in the hopes that even if/when the conflict resumes, daily comment counts will keep us at or below ~3000 per week. If not, we'll just go back to the 3000 comment threshold being what triggers a new thread being created.
The events of the last two weeks have been the most unintelligible of at least the last four years, and on some days I took one look at the situation and decided to just not even bother and do something else until the next day.
To attempt to summarize:
long summary
Against many people's expectations, including my own, the ceasefire was not immediately scuttled upon its inception despite violations (predominantly against Lebanon), which indicates to me that both the US and Iran wanted a ceasefire more than they wanted to continue firing, at least for two weeks. For both sides, it represented an opportunity to reorganize, rebuild, and restrategize going forward.
The US has continued its rapid flurry of airlifting to and from the Middle East, and while what exactly they have brought and intend to do next is a mystery, airlifting is a very inefficient method of transferring resources en masse, meaning that any kind of massive ground invasion is still many months away (though I still strongly doubt it'll ever happen). Attempting to do more raids like the failed Istafan raid seems like the most likely option, as well as perhaps some disastrous attempts to hold Gulf islands.
Meanwhile, Iran has been excavating the entrances to their missile cities and has rapidly rebuilt bridges and railway lines. While the rate of reconstruction has shocked some observers, people like us who have paid abnormally high attention to the Ukraine War will not be surprised - infrastructure is very difficult to take out for any meaningful length of time even when it's not purposefully decentralized. It also seems extremely likely that Iran has continued to receive shipments of resources and weapons from Russia and China, though what exactly is being supplied is not concretely known.
Iran sent a highly qualified team to Pakistan to negotiate, and the US sent, among others, Vice President Vance too. After a marathon ~20 hour session, no deal was struck, and both sides left Pakistan (the Iranian team taking many precautions to not get shot down). While the nuclear issue seemed to be the major sticking point, it is very difficult to see the US - and Trump in particular - formally agreeing to a tollbooth in Hormuz or the retreat from their Middle Eastern bases even if they have already effectively retreated from most of them.
These negotiations took place in an environment of constant violations of the ceasefire on the Lebanon front. Iran initially tied their attendance of talks to a total cessation of conflict in Lebanon, though ultimately decided to go to Islamabad without a de facto ceasefire but with some sort of guarantee that we'll go tell Netanyahu to stop firing for a while. A few days after the negotiations failed, a more comprehensive ceasefire was actually achieved in Lebanon. It's still a Zionist Ceasefire ("you cease fire, we keep attacking"), and the Zionists committed several massive civilian atrocities just before the ceasefire began. After the ceasefire began, violations have, to my knowledge, been remarkably few up to the time of me writing this.
Shortly after the failure of negotiations, the US began their own blockade of Iran's ports. As the US Navy cannot get within a few hundred miles of even the entrance of the Strait of Hormuz, the blockade is taking place at some line in the Sea of Oman, where Iranian ships will be intercepted. The confusion caused by this situation has been incredible, with a few days of people tracking Iranian tankers closely, concluding that if they had crossed the Strait of Hormuz, they had successfully ran the blockade (they had not). After about a week of this de jure blockade, it was indeed confirmed to be real when the US captured its first Iranian oil tanker. This prompted Iran to fully close the Strait of Hormuz (see the megathread image), and there are reports of, as always, at best questionable veracity that in response to the US's blockade of their blockade, Iran possibly intends to 1) totally blockade Gulf State ports in the Persian Gulf of any kind, not just oil, and/or 2) talk to their ally Ansarallah and have them blockade the Red Sea (and they seem keen to do so in support of the Resistance).
Additionally, Iran has made the end of the US blockade the precondition to enter into new negotiations. The short term and even medium term effect of the US blockade will be minimal - China has a colossal strategic petroleum reserve which will last them several months even with their economy at full steam even assuming all Middle Eastern imports are cut off overnight, and Iran itself is not wholly reliant on oil exports for basic survival like other oil states (though it'll certainly hurt the economy if prolonged). There are also certain ways that the blockade can be subverted, like potentially some advanced shadow fleet tactics with the cooperation of allied countries, or, in the long term, the construction of overland oil transportation routes (a significant railway route was constructed in the last few years between Iran and China).
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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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/ArmchairW/status/2046781484208410741
Counterpoint: the brave Nazis are mostly dead. There are still a lot of Nazis left who don't ever get close to the front lines and prefer to play the role of execution squads for the mobilized who try to desert or surrender. Azov notoriously ran from multiple battles as soon as they noticed they might actually be engaged in combat, leaving the mobiks in the trenches to be overrun. When the Kursk incursion happened they were happy to let the cannon fodder advance first while they came behind after the territory was seized to torture and murder civilians. Not to mention all the Nazis who work for the TCC (mobilization office) whose job it is to roam the streets in packs hunting and beating up any adult male not rich enough to pay the bribe and stuffing them into vans, and of course the SBU (Gestapo) Nazis who come to break your door down and throw you into a torture facility if you make a post on social media advocating for peace. Denazification is not yet done.
Once one understands fascists they understand they're cowardly. If Russia were to kill every man and woman of adult age in Ukraine due to every one of them being pressed into service you can bet the Nazis would be among the last 25% to die and many of them would flee the country and/or be evacuated to the west for use as disposable assets for the CIA and MI6.
Sadly Russia's campaign of grinding was never going to get rid of the Nazis who cling to all the levers of power and disdain their fellow non-total-Nazi citizens as scum who should kill or be killed for not seeing things as they do and not contributing with Nazi street brawling to make Ukraine a Banderite "paradise" as they have.
Indoctrination is also a thing, the war's hot phase been going on 4 years, if it continues another 4-6 you'll have kids who were entirely from birth indoctrinated as Ukro-Nazis turning into adults many of whom will indeed die as fodder but many of whom will assume other positions.
Russia lost their push for a quick end to the war. They lost the "special military operation" they launched even if they'll eventually win the long-game of the war by simply taking and retaining territory and even if it takes them 10 years to complete this and ends in continued lower intensity intermittent fighting. Meanwhile Ukraine's Nazis will be shipped all over the world by the US and UK to help the zionist entity, to attack the Sahel states, to attack Latin America, to do terror attacks in Russia, set up things around China if possible, and so on. You'll be seeing Ukrainian Nazis around the edges of every conflict and color revolution and palace coup the west instigates for 20 years to come.
I don't know... I'm betting that there were a lot of good-meaning liberal volunteers early on, and they were just sent to the frontlines by the Nazi commanders who were put into positions of power after 2014. The propaganda at the beginning of the war was quite crazy. Meanwhile, the real Nazis are mostly hanging back in Azov, only participating in certain battles for a short time. Remember, the real Nazis are not a big percentage of the overall population. Now they have forced conscription resulting in truly random people dying, the majority of whom cannot be Nazis, statistically speaking. Currently it looks like no matter what happens, we will have well armed Ukrainian Nazi militia groups running wild in Ukraine and in the EU after the war. It is crazy how wanting to end the war and stop the killing is still an unacceptable position in mainstream politics. Some people literally want to run the war until there is no one left to fight. But at that point, what is stopping Russia from just taking all of Ukraine?
Currently, taking the average from both Russian and Ukrainian records, the K:D ratio involving defenders privilege has never been higher than I think WWI? Russia does not seem extremely keen on wasting manpower on a large push, and Ukraine simply can't take back any substantial territory if it isn't completely rural.
However, imo, the Russians are extremely wary of spooking the Europeans, and believe that Ukraine is still just the vassal of the moment. The big thing that they were worried about, which is that a potential full civil war between the Donbass regions and Ukraine could spill into Russian territory, has been completely mitigated. They are still making money under sanctions, and their relationship outside of the Western world has completely stabilized.
Think of it like the U.S. Any offensive push is always a gamble, none more so than right now. Given what we have seen in other modern theatres, a re-evaluation of the nature of the Russian 2022 offensive should be in order. In hindsight, it was extremely effective, took and held a significant amount of ground with comparatively little forces. That doesn't mean it accomplished all of its objectives, but compare this to recent Israeli or U.S. offensive pushes, that can hold no ground, and have accomplished none of their stated objectives.
At this moment, the absolutely worst thing that Russia could do is make a massive push into Ukraine, and lose. The attrition war has, as it always has, favors them in the long run. Let Ukraine empty itself out.
That's one way to get closer to denazification.
I'm honestly surprised there aren't more videos of press gang officers getting gunned down in the streets.