this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2025
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Bulletins and News Discussion from June 16th to June 22nd, 2025 - Iran, Harden Your Heart
(hexbear.net)
Image is of destruction and damage inside Israel, sourced from this article.
Iran and Israel have struck each other many times over the last few days. There has been a general focus on military facilities and headquarters by both sides, though Israel has also struck oil facilities, civilian structures and hospitals, and in return for this, Iran has struck major scientific centers and the Haifa oil facilities.
Israel appears to have three main aims. First, to collapse the Iranian state, either through shock and breakdown by killing enough senior officials, or via some sort of internal military coup. Second, to try and destroy Iranian nuclear sites and underground missile cities, or at least to paralyze them long enough to achieve the first and third goals. And third, to bring the US into a direct conflict with Iran. This is because the US better equipped to fight them than Israel is (though victory would still not be guaranteed depending on what Iran chooses to do).
Iranian nuclear facilities are hidden deep underground (800 meters), far beyond the depth range of even the most powerful bunker busters (~70 meters or so), and built such that the visible ground entrances are horizontally far away in an unknown direction from the actual underground chambers. Only an extremely competent full-scale American bombing force all simultaneously using multiple of the most powerful conventional (perhaps even nuclear) bunker busters could even hypothetically hope to breach them (and we have seen how, in practice, American bunker busters have largely failed to impair or deter Ansarallah). There are several analysts on both sides who have concluded that it is entirely impossible to physically prevent Iran from building nukes.
I fully expect the US to join the war. I believe the current ambiguity is a deliberate invention of the US while they work to move their military assets into position, and as soon as they are ready, the US will start bombing Iran. After that, Iran's leadership must - if they haven't already - harden their hearts, and strike back with no fear, or risk following the path of Libya, Syria, and Iraq, either into either surrender, occupation, or annihilation. Every day where they do not possess a nuke is a day where lives are being lost and cities are being bombed.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
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Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel's 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.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
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.
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My understanding is that Israel, as a nation, has completely shut down economically. No one is working, everyone is in bunkers and safe rooms. IF this is true, this is the most unsustainable aspect of the war. It cannot continue for much longer. Israel, as a much a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie as any western nation, will either have to sue for peace or force people out of the bunkers and back to work under fire.
David Harvey defines capitalism as “value in motion”. Motion is the process of producing something, selling it, then taking the proceeds and investing it in more production. Marx explicitly proves this at the end of volume 2 of Capital but really, the idea that capitalism must always be in motion and always be expanding saturates his works. Motion is the beating heart of capitalism. It’s not that a country can’t survive because there’s no economic activity. Under other economic systems yes, but the lack motion in capitalism will kill it.
In the US, we were always going to just let COVID rip. One reason is because neoliberalism has hollowed out the state’s ability to respond to crises. But just as much as that, capitalists cannot let everyone just stay home, even if the state reimbursed their losses.
I don’t think can go on for many more days, much less weeks. I expect we’ll hear stories about how Israelis need to “get back to work” to show Iran they’re not scared or whatever. But even Israelis are not above the whims of capital.
This is one of the reason's and biggest contradictions on why the current situation is so risky for Israel and the US. Iran and by extension any opposition in the area does not need to land a decisive blow and literally destroy the entity in its entirely. Instead it just needs to give enough reason for the vast majority of the wealthy elites that provide the base of support to leave. Crippling economic and technological capabilities to the point where the risk adjusted returns of the project isn't worth it is one of the ways this can go.
Even if the ISSraeli government pushes people back to work as you suggest that would likely just exacerbate the issue and convince more settlers to leave. It's a lose lose situation which is why they must either escalate and swiftly destroy the Iranian's or back peddle hard to deescalate the situation. Any sort of in between situation leading to a long drawn out conflict with heightened tensions will lead to the entity slowly bleeding out.
The Iranian state has its own bourgeoisie, though, which is obvious enough when we consider the levels of infiltration possible by Israeli agents. There is a real possibility that Iran sees factions move to overthrow the system with the promises of peace and sanctions relief as much as there is for Israel's economy to implode more than it has already
I don’t disagree.
I think this is an initial shock reaction that will pass. People are terrified because there's suddenly missiles hitting buildings next to them, but if it goes on long enough, people will learn to live with it like they do in other war-torn countries. In case of Israel, however, many of them might also just move back to Brooklyn.
You forgot Poland!
Israel's GDP is about two percent of the US - in another words, the US could pay every entity in Israel to stay in a bunker for 50 years until another 100% was added to the US debt to GDP ratio
That's just money, though.
Who does the administrative work to clear funds? Who orders imports of goods? Who unloads them from the ships? Who distributes the goods? Who maintains the network of infrastructure necessary for that to happen? How do you ensure ships arrive unharmed? or ensure they even turn up at all?
I doubt there is a total shutdown of the Israeli economy, I'm pretty sure there are different levels of restrictions depending on the area.
I also doubt, however, that money alone can offset that lost labour power. It can, however, make Israel's recovery much less painful.
Palestinians that they recruit from the holocaust camps they've built, probably. That's what they were doing before.
In general I agree, however my concern is that this is a materialist analysis of a situation that, at least in the short term, has shown to not align with materialist logic.
It is likely that on one hand, the US will continue to prop up the entity economically even if it would collapse otherwise.
On the other, it is possible that pure racism and genocidal intent will keep the entity alive for longer than it should, like adrenaline would keep someone alive and moving after receiving life threatening wounds.
Israeli leadership may not think in materialist terms, but they need to deal with material realities. They're going to be crushed economically if they hold tightly to the illusion of safety.
The thing is, in terms of just sending funds to Israel they very well can, they'll send Israel $1T USD no questions asked. But how can Israel actually continue to exist as a nation-state if the ports used to actually exchange that money for goods are getting bombed continuously? If the airports also are getting bombed? If they can't traffic migrant workers into the country to rebuild Tel Aviv after being bombed? If they can't keep attracting American and European settlers into the West Bank? If they can't operate the water desalination plants?
They can't last a year under these conditions.
Leningrad lasted 2 and half + years under much worse conditions.
True, but it was nearly impossible to leave the sieged cities. If anything, I feel like Iran is more comparable to Leningrad ATM, while Israel is more unique in that its economy is so fragile and dependent on a population that can just up and leave at any point.
The estimated number of dual citizens us lower than expected, maybe a million?
The people of Leningrad weren’t citizens other countries and it was truly their home.
I agree with you, but I also wonder how Iran's economy is impacted? Isnt it also shutdown?
Iran is much more spread out than Israel so the effect of any one city being forced into bomb shelters would be softened. Just to illustrate this Israel has about 20 cities with a population of over 100k, Iran has almost 100
Plus Iran has a lot more capacity to exist "under siege" since they endured the Iran-Iraq war.
well yes, but USA can always print money and ship it there. There is always enough copper wire to strip and Americans docile enough to die to prop up the promise land
But I don’t think handing over US dollars can replace the production and circulation of value. Sending dollars can help the Israeli state import weapons, energy, food, etc… but none of this will stop capitalism in Israel from seizing up. Could the Israeli state completely put the capitalists under their thumb and basically do command economy capitalism? Maybe, but I don’t know if Israel is capable of that from a material standpoint. Iran, which already has some aspects of a command economy IIRC, may have an easier time. But I also don’t think the Iranian economy is shut down quite to the extent that the Israeli economy is.
Personally I don’t think this leads to the Israeli economy collapsing, not immediately anyway. I just think it means the Israeli people will be pushed out of their bunkers and back to work.
This analysis is very incomplete. Israel is not "independent" in a materialist sense, they can't just "will the people back to work" because there is simply a larger, far more powerful capitalist group that wants this war to continue. Why would these smaller capitalists win out? The current status quo is already one where the US capital is the one funding most the bill.
Israel fails if the US pulls out support and this is not happening so why assume there is some ideological fracture between profits of smaller national capitalists against the interests of the larger imperialist American capitalist class?
I think you got it completely backwards.
These people will sit on bunkers for months if they have to while the western media proclaims these are great "warriors" and just tell us to "admire their sacrifice" and "this great moment of sacrifice and hardship is exactly why the US must continue to provide unequivocal support" while the zionist family posts regular updates on twitter about their extended vacation from inside a bunker lol.
The whole Zionist thing includes an impossible amount of self-righteousness, they'll sooner start comparing their weekend adventure to their own personal ~~9/11~~ Oct 7th 2.0 than take marching orders back to their cubicle office jobs.
I'd be shocked if any western media starts treating the Nazis with the same level of contempt as the poor working class in western countries.