Now in our second week of the conflict, we have seen continuing damage to both Israel and Iran, as well as direct US intervention which nonetheless seems to have caused limited damage to Fordow and little damage to Iran's nuclear program. Regime change seems more elusive than ever, as even Iranians previously critical of the government now rally around it as they are attacked by two rabid imperialists at once. And Iran's government is tentatively considering a withdrawal, or at minimum a reconsideration, of their membership to the IAEA and the NPT. And, of course, the Strait of Hormuz is still a tool in their arsenal.
A day or so on from the strike on Fordow, we have so far seen basically no change in strategy from the Iranian military as they continue to strike Israel with small barrages of missiles. Military analysts argue furiously - is this a deliberate strategy of steady attrition on Israel, or indicative of immense material constraints on Iran? Are the hits by Israel on real targets, or are they decoys? Does Iran wish to develop a nuke, or are they still hesitating? Will Iran and Yemen strike at US warships and bases in response to the attack, or will they merely continue striking only Israel?
And perhaps most importantly - will this conflict end diplomatically due to a lack of appetite for an extended war (to wit: not a peace but a 20 year armistice) or with Israel forced into major concessions including an end to their genocide? Or even with a total military/societal collapse of either side?
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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.
To start us off, Simplicius.
Now, there's a somewhat common trope, particularly among pro-Russia and pro-Resistance commentators, of the "allowed strike"; that is, a military strike that both sides know is about to happen and mutually agree to happening for some reason (usually to save face or allow some diplomatic objective). Unfortunately for somebody like me, who thinks conspiracies along these lines are a form of cope and are usually conveniently unable to be disproved because neither side will admit to it, there are actually recent confirmed cases of this happening, like an Iranian strike on a US facility after they assassinated Soleimani that allowed Iran to save face, or a 2017 Tomahawk strike on the Syrian Shayrat base that just so happened to miss all the important targets and deal little damage.
You know where I'm going with this - Simplicius posits that the Fordow strike was allowed to occur by the Iranians in order to provide Trump with a way to appease neoconservatives but also exit from a budding forever war. I personally don't think this is the case, but I can't say it's certainly untrue (again, because they do actually sometimes happen). The evidence he suggests:
Again, I disagree with the above. I think it's more likely that the US did actually try and destroy Fordow but simply failed, which could have been for a number of reasons, including that they didn't put much real effort into it because they were perhaps aware that Iran had already evacuated the facility of anything important. There are a limited number of these massive bunker busters, after all. No point wasting a dozen of them on empty facilities.
But anyway, regardless of what happened at Fordow, there's not a lot else to report. The same attritional dynamics are at play here and the ball is in Iran's court, so we'll have to see what they do; perhaps they are waiting for the Iranian visit to Moscow to conclude before making any significant moves.
An allowed strike like this is nuts.
If Iran can’t trust the US’ assurances when it comes to the previously signed agreements then they wouldn’t trust US assurances that these B2 bombers were just going to leave a scratch.
It seems an almost fantastical theory. Not completely impossible but it seems too implausible.
I could believe the allowed strike theory for this. The problem is believing that the US would actually stick to staying out. If they do, the entity is under terrible risk, with its complete destruction a distinct possibility. I cannot imagine the US allowing that to happen without being properly defeated militarily.
I think something we should enter into our calculations here… I highly doubt that anyone in the top echelons of power in the west thinks there is even a 0.01% chance of Israel collapsing. To nearly everyone else besides us, Israel looks like it’s stronger than ever. It’s western and virtually an extension of the US itself. They don’t see a fascist state flailing from one failed conflict to another. I fully believe they believe they can leave Israel out to dry and that Israel will probably be fine.
That's an interesting idea. It's a degree of hubris that I struggle to understand, but I suppose it's possible.
If it were not for Marxist analysis I myself would have a hard time seeing Israel as anything but basically bulletproof. And even with it, I see Israeli collapse kind of like de-dollarization: something that almost certainly must happen but the status quo makes it likely a ways off. Of course these events can be accelerated or decelerated (I think Israeli collapse is the former while de-dollarization is the later, with China showing every interest in maintaining USD hegemony), but still, the steps it takes to get to Israel collapse are just not how these people think, even the smart ones IMO.
It just seems so straightforward. Iranian missiles rain down on the entity, enormously disrupting the comfortable settler lifestyle. Power outages, extended bunker times, economic decline, destruction of housing stock, etc. Settlers, 90% of whom are there to live a permanent Mediterranean vacation, will leave in large numbers. Without demographic dominance, the power base of the entity starts to waver and crumble.
how concerned is Washington about Israel's current position? Maybe they still view it as "unsinkable"?
The US was never going to be able to destroy the whole facility, and there was no way literally everything was evacuated so there was always going to be a need to come back at least for salvage.
The allowed strike aspect/off-ramp for Trump reads true to me. But I don't think it was done in the official way that the missile attacks after Solemani's assassination, but in the tit-for-tat way they've been talking about hitting Israel.
Trump knows that war is unpopular but dropping big bombs is popular. Ansarallah's truce with him shows that he's willing to leave the zionists in the lurch if it means the price of commodities at home returns to normal. IMO getting Trump to disengage and claim a win now means the Iranians live to hopefully blast the IDF back into the stone age before a regional peace treaty is pushed by the US and Russia
I'd believe the allowed strike theory if the US just hit the entrances and exits of Fordow, which Iran had fortified with material from dump trucks to prevent entombment. But no, the USA directly targeted the 2 main enrichment halls with 6 GBU-57 MOP each, for a total of 12 on Fordow, aiming near the ventilation shafts as week points, with two bombs per hole. Natanz also had the main enrichment hall targeted by a GBU-57 double tap. The imagery out of Natanz has made me rethink, now I believe the two bombs per hole theory. There's no way that would ever be considered an "allowed strike". The USA went for the kill shot here in Iran's most prized and valuable state assets . Damage assessment is extremely difficult to impossible with satellite imagery, but the large plumes of blue greyish ejecta, along with some signs of cavitation, however small (changes in the mountains ridgeline) don't look good, to say the least. Fordow could be absolutely fine, it could be destroyed, we have no way of knowing.
As for the B-2s, we have no evidence that Yemen posed any threat to them, aside from statements by Mahdi al-Mashat, the Yemeni Medvedev. Yemen took some shots at F-35s, which while a commendable achievement, is different from denying the airspace or shooting one down.
Drop tanks from Israeli aircraft have started showing up on the northern Iranian coast, by the Caspian sea. Just add this to all the other evidence that Israeli manned aircraft, UCAVs and MALE UAVs are over the skies of Iran. The US also have suppression of air defence capabilities that Israel do not, mainly the EA-18G Growler aircraft.
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How would you explain Iran not attempting to shoot down the B2s? Just allowing the tat in a tit for tat, and signaling that they don't want a fight with the US?
it would kind of be a waste, they're in it for the long haul and the exceptionally hard-to-hit bomber escorted by SEAD fighters is not a favorable matchup to put many resources into stopping. if the US wanted to do a protracted bombing campaign, they'd have to start using other kinds of bombers, so it makes sense to save resources to fight them.
Edit: wrong scenario. I was thinking of the time a "secret" U.S base on Syrian soil that got hit by the Iranians after the assassination of Soleimani.
~~Funny enough I have first-hand primary sources on that strike, on the receiving end of course, and to this day I am convinced that everyone at that base survived purely based on the wisdom and mercy of Iran's military and political leadership. (But pissed off because one of their outdoor gyms got blown the fuck up lmaoo RIP those Gains)~~