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.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
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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Is there any refutation of zei_squirell's post from the other day that I can read up on? This war's forecast seems heavily in the US/Israel's favor.
Iran is not Khamenei. I thought it was a pretty antimaterialist reading because, as much as it's possible that the Zionists reduce Iran's deterrence to make assassination of the Ayatollah possible, they still aren't going to cause a Libya or Syria style completely collapse with only assassinations, they'd need boots on the ground or proxies fighting actively to take territory in Iran (she did allude to this possibility but the kinds of proxy networks needed to destroy Iran take years to build).
Agree. The older population has seen this before and deposed the US puppet, and the younger ones have learned about it their entire lives AND saw Saddam get blasted by his own puppet masters. There is no appetite the military or civilian populations for regime change, and the attacks were brazen in their lack of logic. I think any assassinations will harden resolve rather than weaken it.
Elijah Magnier - https://xcancel.com/ejmalrai/status/1934783722789691813#m
Also, on this vid (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iHpCUmoqaI) he mentions that the decisivity of the war depends on:
On the question of Is it possible that Israel wants to kill Khamenei, he thinks its 100% certain they want to kill him, yet this is not the decisive action that changes the course of the war because the Army has already put a solid chain of command that follows Khamenei's orders even on his death.
I am just reading over the Project Esther document, and some of the objectives within it seem to align with this. Like this could be the objective of the escalation in Iran right now. If the Zionist entity is already fine with using its own people as human shields at home, why not endanger their lives even further abroad to really try to legitimize the anti-semitism angle. This could be in hopes of turning the tide on public opinion, and then there will be enough impetus to start using live rounds and shit to target the "Hamas terrorist orgs" in the US like every leftist activist/org. The PSL is already getting targeted as well as other anti-ICE groups in California. Real terror can then be justified, and perhaps Israel can regain legitimacy.
From Project Esther:
HSN's and HSO's being "Hamas Support Networks" and "Hamas Support Organizations"
Us Americans have the collective memory of a fucking goldfish so this could work, especially with long term agitation. But I also feel hopeful that this was a terrible move and that people won't be able to forget these atrocities, even if they want to. Maybe this is obvious but I just put it together
I am of the opinion that people at the highest echelons of power in the west are not actually geniuses who have carefully studied Marxism and materialism and have an accurate understanding of reality. They by and large believe their own bullshit. I don’t doubt that if the west ever came after the DPRK, they would definitely attempt to assassinate Kim and would genuinely believe that would unravel the DPRK government.
This is not true. If you listen to Michael Hudson, a lot of the neocons came from Trotskyist background, many of whom are descendants of those from Eastern Europe who “fled Stalinism” and had been recruited by the Fed to take their vengeance against the USSR. Hudson himself (who wrote Super-imperialism) was recruited when they learned that he came from a Trotskyist family, but declined their offer.
According to him, most of the neocons believed in and turned Trotskyist idea of “exporting revolutions to the developing world to bring about global communism” into “exporting regime changes to the developing world to ensure the supremacy of the US empire”. A lot of their theories were derived from Marxist/Trotkyist lines.
If you read into the history of the neocons, there will be a lot of deranged articles about how they are a Jewish conspiracy, but really, they are just Trotskyists.
Hudson is 86 years old. The neocons he's talking about are of a similar vintage, and large swathes of them have already died of old age, and their replacements are the boomers who suckled at the teat of their propaganda and now have their grubby hands on the levers of power. Yes, the top level of American officials are of Hudson's age, but they're not the ones actually behind the wheel anymore.
Thank you.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
My refutation is telling the squirrel to chill and trust the plan