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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I'm getting really annoyed that whenever you express disappointment with China's passive foreign policy, some people immediately act like you're being unreasonable and asking China to declare total war, as if there aren't a dozen other things the world's biggest manufacturer could do with the amount of cards they have. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, because if continuing (and even strengthening) trade with the Zionist entity during a genocide didn't stop those people from making up excuses, then nothing will.
Zionist air defense missiles are almost certainly made with the rare earth metals that China both has a monopoly on and resumed trading them with the US, the country that manufactures the Zionist AD missiles.
I think they got slightly lowered tariffs in return for switching the US MIC back on. Hope it's worth it to them.
Chinese corporations making 3% more profits is worth sacrificing all your geopolitical allies and giving your enemies weapons
Bro the Americans will place nukes in Taiwan and the CPC will give them their 892928th final warning.
Read my comment here from earlier.
If China threatens to stop exporting its goods until all parties can come to a ceasefire, the global economy will literally grind to a halt. There is simply no replacement for Chinese goods at the moment.
The rare earth export restriction was a taste of the cards China actually hold against the rest of the world.
Yes, this will blow up China’s own economy, but so too will the rest of the Western world. China is in a unique place where such a predicament did not exist back in WWII or during the Cold War.
Anyone who says China is this smol bean that is too weak do anything also cannot possibly claim that China has overtaken the US.
So far it is the US that is willing to use its power to get what it wants. It would be a reasonable ask for China to step in to stop this madness. It’s all about having the political will.
economic acts can and should be taken as acts of war tbh, and there is no doubt in my mind the US would take this as the equivalent of being nuked, because in economic warfare that's absolutely what that would be, and i have to imagine that the US would immediately look to go to war against china in this scenario
See my response in this thread:
i would not trust the psychos who run the united states government to not try and call china's bluff
If that’s the play then nobody should do anything. Literally every country should just not respond to anything that the US wants to do even if there is a genocide going on.
i think there's a big gap between "do nothing" and "drop economic nuke on the west". i'm also not even saying china shouldnt risk it, dare to struggle dare to win and all that but i also dont think we should act like there's no risk to something as drastic as destroying the global economy
I also hate the "ussr did it and now where are they?". Sure let's do opposite of everything ussr did. Drop the communism, embrace fascism, declare utter obedience to USA. Maybe stop funding schools or hospital, they didn't save ussr that means they are useless lol
Obvious strawman
If China was unilaterally run by one person it would be easy to make such decisions but when you consider the sheer amount of people that need to be convinced to make policy changes of this caliber, not to mention the time it takes to implement, it just isn't realistic to expect China to go so drastically off course of the plans and strategies they have been implementing since Deng. The type of cards we want to see China play have been intentionally removed from their deck for years in order to focus on their long term strategy of win-win, they would only have them available if directly attacked, otherwise they are going to continue on the path they have been on for decades.
They can't do anything but strengthen trade deals with a genocidal country that's only a minor trading partner because it would negatively affect their long term plans and strategies?
They likely want to position themselves to lead mediation that they hope will come and are wary of being seen as adversary by the negotiating parties. They are also strengthening trade deals and empowering the abilities of the enemies of Israel as well. Not to mention things we probably aren't aware of like giving Iran access to their satellite capabilities.
I'm not saying anything about this is "good" it is just expected behavior and any major changes would be surprising. China ultimately isn't going to sacrifice their nation's interests for a situation they are not directly involved in or responsible for.
Any non Chinese citizens who thinks China should be doing more are probably not doing enough to change their own nation's support for Israel and imperialism in general, and it seems chauvinistic to think China should be taking any risk to solve a crisis that is solely the responsibility of the NATO members and their citizens.
It emotionally resonates, China being some savior hat solves the worst problems of the world would be ideal, and they are doing a lot towards those aims in regards to climate change, and other ways. They can't do it all though and it isn't reasonable to expect them to.
What current plans and strategies are China implementing since Deng? Was joining the WTO part of Deng’s plan as well?
I swear Western leftists have this blind spot of China from 1996-2018 where absolutely nothing happened during this 20-year gap and simply a homogenous and single-minded execution of this nebulous well-oiled strategy that Deng personally planned decades ago.
I mean since Deng as in, coupling with neoliberal economies and becoming reliant on them, not a specific tactic announcement made during his time
Deng advocated for an NEP-style reform and opening up, not joining the WTO and giving up labor protection rights.
That happened in response to the 1995-1996 economic crisis, which resulted in unemployment and inflation never seen before under Mao (and partly caused by Deng’s price reforms a few years back but that’s another story). That period pretty much signaled the end of Dengist reform era. We are now wayyy past what Deng had in mind when he initially called for the “liberalization of China’s economy” ever since joining the WTO.
You are hyper fixating on me mentioning Deng in a way that isn't really relevant to what I was saying. I didn't anything about Deng prescribing what is happening now when he was in office. As I already responded, the pathway towards becoming tied into global capital started with him and has continued beyond what he may or may not have had in mind. The point is that this process and the principles around it by which China operates have been decades in the making, and expecting some radical shift from that is naive
I feel like asking for countries to declare war on israel and actually intervene militarily to prevent genocide isn't an unreasonable position, either.
It's very unreasonable when the backer of said Israel is the United States who is willing to kill and destroy everything you hold dear. You cannot expect China, a country of 1.5 billion people, to put it on all the line and risk nuclear war with the preeminent superpower to save the lives of ~2 million Palestinians in Gaza. I agree with the OP here that there's vastly more China can and should do, but it's not reasonable to ask them to unilaterally declare war.
What base would China launch an attack on Israel from? Are we talking just launching DF's into Israel the same way Ansarallah has done for a few months? Because they could get the exact same effect at much less diplomatic cost from just... economically supporting the Resistance and blockading Israel, what we're advocating for right now.
You can’t be serious
Beautiful post on Twitter by 'Carl Zha': https://x.com/CarlZha/status/1934960939771818145
"Unilateral sanctions on Israel won't work because the West will supply whatever Israel needs"
"Chinese people don't owe you anything"
That's hard to argue with, unless china copies the western sanctions regime where you're completely cut off from interacting with the chinese economy and products if you trade with israel, and even then the theory would be that, say, europe wouldn't drop china in order to keep toeing the US line
Also if China tried to flex that kind of power I find it hard to believe the US wouldn't start a war over that either. The US is itching to pull the trigger and I will not fault anyone who is trying to avoid war, especially knowing it would be a horrific WW3 situation
There is no war with China, a nuclear armed state.
A US-China hot war would end in about 45 minutes, with the total destruction of both civilizations. And it literally does not have the supply chain for self-sufficiency if China simply stops exporting its treats to the US.
The US political class is filled with Sinophobic Evangelical freaks who think they'll go to heaven. They do not give two shits about civilization if it means they can exterminate the Chinese on the way out. There's a Dulles bros-era memo about the US nuking China should the US go to war with the Soviet Union and the US political class has become much more unhinged since then. "We're no longer number one, so we're taking the goddamn [Chinese ethnic slur]s with us" is a legitimate train of thought. It doesn't mean we should never take any risks (dare to struggle, dare to win), but to handwave it away as an impossibility is just another form of cope.
Should China do what you think they should do, China will do a great deal of work to humanity, but China will also pay a price. And this isn't a political or economic price. It's a human price that can only be paid in blood. Are the Chinese people ready to pay that price? Are you ready to pay that price?
You are talking about a time when China was extremely poor and far weaker than what it is today. The China between those two eras are not comparable at all.
And you underestimate the Chinese libs’ ability, ever since the PRC has entered this marriage of convenience with the US, to convince the latter of its indispensability in whatever plan the US has for itself.
Trump tried very hard to decouple from China, and the more he does, the more he finds the US unable to do so. I’ve said it before and I will say it again: there will be a rapprochement between the US and China simply because of such material factors. The two cannot live without the other, and that gives China a lot of leverage.
Nearly half a million Chinese volunteers died fighting in Korea, without whose sacrifices the modern state of China would not have survived. Do you seriously think that Chinese people aren’t taught about their own history and know nothing about sacrifices?
They died for the sake of China, not for the sake of Korea. I personally do not think most Chinese people would be willing to put their lives at risk for the sake of Palestinians and Iranians. Your outline of economic warfare by China against the West would almost certainly lead to reprisal against the Chinese people. If you aren't convinced by the plausibility of nuke, there's always sabotage. Blown up factories, bridges rigged with explosives, poisoned food supplies, etc. China's internal security isn't so great that a truck with drones can't sneak its way in like what happened in Russia and Iran. The main difference is that Russia and Iran are fighting an active war with a populace that understands it will have to pay a human price while China is officially still a neutral bystander.
I don't think the US would start a hot war over that, what they would do is take the opportunity to try to completely cut off china from the world economy, which, if it works, could prompt china to start something drastic
I know it's a minor thing but you may want to consider using nitter or xcancel instead of directly linking to that Nazi-bar website. This also helps people who don't have an account and would otherwise be prompted to login.
All you need to do is replace x.com with xcancel.com or nitter.net.
For example the link would then become: https://nitter.net/CarlZha/status/1934960939771818145
I can only speak for myself but I'm noticing a bunch of this rhetoric all at once and it's hitting my
alarm. Of course it's also relevant. But I think the passive threat that there could be ops going on messes with people too.
Did you happen to forget that Hexbear is a serious posting website only and that you can only give cold, calculating, professional, objective analysis and if you utter any words of disappointment or frustration that comes naturally out of a high stress situation, that you will need to write up a report defending that position to your dying breath even when it should be obvious that underneath it all you know that the situation is more nuanced?
I am really invested in reading through everyone's analysis and predictions and even the pushback between positions is illuminating, but I said this in another comment I think there needs to be a bit more grace for people. The same sentiments being recycled over and over can get annoying for sure but people cannnn just ignore the comments they don't like and move on, especially if they've been argued over dozens of times already. Feels like we are due for our monthly spat of strugglesession though so we just gotta ride it out
Like an assassin who got into online posting and needs to be right all the time.
In order to post on Hexbear you must become a CIA asset