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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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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Important to note that Iran has the type of army that many "alt media experts" think is the future: tonnes of one way attack drones, thousands of ballistic missiles, and almost no air force. Israel has the army that "alt social media experts" call outdated and silly: strong airforce, lots of manned aircraft and stealth aircraft, lots of stand in and stand off air launched munitions and reconnaissance drones.
Yet the "outdated" Israeli Airforce is dropping bomb after bomb on Tehran and missile cities in Western Iran using manned fast jets, and not a single "game changer" one way attack drone has landed a hit on Israel yet. The ballistic missiles get through, but there's little counterforce targeting taking place.
Lesson: don't listen to so called experts in the alt media space that think one way attack drones can replace an airforce. After the war, Iran needs to build a strong conventional military and air force like Poland (over 30 stealth aircraft in order) or Pakistan (rumoured J-35 customer) for deterrence, it's clear that one way attack drones can't replace an airforce. Thank goodness China is building lots of manned stealth aircraft, J-20, J-35, J-36, J-50, at least China knows better than the alt media experts.
Iran is also the type of army that is sanctioned and fighting a war against 50 countries pretending to be one, and the IDF is the type of army to have the support of the richest colonial forces on earth. I am sure Iran would've been pumping out 5th gen fighter jets if they were able to make them.
That's very true, Iran chose to adopt drones and missiles as deterrence because they were the only options, not because they had a free choice. A lot of people don't realise that, the most advanced thing they got out of Russia were the S-300PMU-2 air defence systems, a decade late out of fear of sanctions I might add. If Iran could have gotten advanced fighter jets, they would've. They've made many attempts to do so. But no one was willing to sell or collaborate.
But I've seen so many people talking about how an airforce is obsolete and militaries should just focus on one way attack drones, that they should willingly choose that, over the years that I thought it was worth posting this. Of course drones are important to war now and in the future, but you still need an airforce.
Why might that be? I've been combing over all the updates and what I've gathered is that Iran hasn't been interested in purchasing arms and such from China or Russia, my brain is also mush so I have probably missed something important when it comes to the history here
China follows American sanctions like good little boys
Read up on the saga of Russia selling the S-300PMU-2 air defence system to Iran. Got delivered a decade late out of fear of sanctions.
Will do. Also really wanna thank you, @Awoo@hexbear.net , @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net , and @CoolerOpposide@hexbear.net for holding it down with all of the updates on here. It's where I'm getting my updates exclusively, I don't do Telegram and am unfamiliar with some of the non-Western sources you all seem tapped into. I feel like I should buy y'all some beers or coffees or something because I imagine it's a LOT of work to keep up with posting and without it I would just be exposed to the garbage spewing forth from NPR right now, probably lol.
Here's a simple one about a trainer jet
Ah yes, silly me of course it was AmeriKKKa. Fuck. When in doubt I need to remember: the answer is always the US
Thanks comrade
Right. Also Iran developed the HudHud which Hezbollah used mapped out every target bank that is being struck in the northern occupied territories today.
Why the hate on the drones lol
This comparison is nonsensical. Israel's military is probably worth an order of magnitude more than Iran's with all the aid they get from the US and there are still dozens of missiles hitting Israel whenever Iran fires another salvo. The one thing they should not do is trade all that away for what the US military has been gearing up to fight for the last 20+ years.
Seriously, how can you even pretend to know the effectiveness of Iranian strikes with the extensive media censorship Israel is doing? The psychological effect alone is bad enough that Israel has literally had to close airports just to keep their settlers from fleeing the country.
The drone force would work well if Israel wasnt over a thousand kilometres away. They'll make for good defenses or harassment for the American navy, though.
What makes an air force so much better than drones and missiles? Is it a matter of flexible pilot decision-making?
The amount of ordinance they can carry, speed, altitude they can fly at, etc. I'm talking about one way attack drones in particular, which have very small warheads compared to the 2000lb bunker buster bombs fighter jets can carry.
No one way attack drone is doing this