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?
Last week’s thread is here. The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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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.
Removed by mod
hope you eventually figure out that comments list a username and stop engaging in this redditor bullshit
It’s obviously a non-serious remark, there’s no reason to feel attacked.
It’s obviously also an attack, don’t play coy.
I’m on hexbear, I’m also attacking myself then.
It’s a joke about the stress we’re dealing with when trying to make sense of a complicated issue we spend a lot of time on and the quickly oscillating emotional states we’ve all felt.
I’m quickly approaching that point
The argument was that Iran was the only country with the ability to defeat Israel, and such a defeat would be very beneficial not only in a humanitarian sense but also in the geopolitical strategic sense of reducing American influence in the Middle East, and so China should do anything they possibly could to help Iran achieve it. But now I know that it wasn’t China’s fault for not trying to help, but Iran’s fault for not accepting any. On October 8th 2023 at the absolute latest they should have knocked on the doors of Russia and China and gone “We think it’s possible that Israel will go berserk and start a regional war and that will include us, we want to sign economic deals, we want to sign military deals. If you can’t do much officially due to the sanctions regime then we’ll accept covert help, plus we’ll be gearing up our nation for this eventuality and doing intelligence sweeps and dragnets that we should have done earlier and at a greater intensity when Soleimani was assassinated, plus getting reforms ready” but because of the internal contradictions of the Iranian political class, I suppose that just wasn’t possible. They just didn’t have the existential sense of urgency required until it was too late and Hezbollah was pacified. I remember Iran going around talking to the leaders of Gulf states trying to get an embargo on Israel early on but that was pointless, they would have never broke off trade with Israel.
Ironically now, the Middle East might be the strongest holdout of the US going forward. I expected that the approximate series of American imperial collapse would be Middle East -> Africa -> Asia -> Europe -> South America but maybe Israel will still be putting people in concentration camps well past the mid-century. With the benefit of hindsight, that the US would spend inordinate effort to protect the world’s oil supply was predictable, but the Resistance was just much stronger back in late 2023 and we weren’t aware that their efforts would be squandered due to an ineffective and infiltrated Iranian leadership, so Israel’s defeat in the short term seemed plausible even if a little unlikely.
Iran’s problem is the liberal reformers. They gained power for a real reason. That being forcing women to cover their hair and having morality police who religiously police all kinds of small sins and infractions is not what the people want. Unfortunately they had no understanding of imperialism, no understanding of how compromised their neighbors are and how hemmed in they are, no understanding of the west’s overarching strategic goals and strategy for their region and a false belief they could negotiate and compromise with them to something mutually beneficial.
I will once again recommend a skim of “The Grand Chessboard” by Brzezinski, it’s not just about the oil though that’s definitely a nice bonus and pretty important for dollar hegemony and sanctions power. It’s really about controlling this crossroads of land power. By occupying and destabilizing this one little strategic region you can block Asia (China), Russia, Africa, and Europe from ever uniting and locking the US out an ocean away via trade, defense, etc. It has been the great fear of the US to see this kind of integration and before them it was the fear of Britain who existed across a channel and separate from Europe and who like the US had a massive naval advantage that was totally undercut by the idea of land-power and overland trade, cooperation, military connections, and transport. It harkens back to the old British strategy used on India which is keep your enemies divided, play them off each other, and in the chaos you exert control and you have absolute power. This is true on both a micro and macro scale. The west seeks to do this in the middle east by sewing terrorists such as ISIS and other “moderate rebel” groups to keep certain areas in chaos (they also do this in Africa) but on a larger scale they seek to keep those aforementioned parts of the world Asia (China), Russia, Africa, Europe divided from one another, the chaos in this region preventing them from uniting.
It is a US hegemonic imperative to control the middle east/west Asia. It will be the last place they’ll let go IMO as they’re still running on old British empire playbook which says secure the oil but also secure this region to divide your enemies. Only once climate change sets in and makes the region unlivable and therefore denied to their enemies may they begin to fall back to some sort of climate fortress model.
Ideally there would be a synthesis of the hardliner approach to Israel and the West but the reformist approach to social issues, plus a willingness for, if not outright socialism (given Iran’s anti-communist history that seems totally implausible in the short-term) then at least a strengthened capitalist-based command economy. The reformists will destroy Iran by not sufficiently opposing Israel, while the hardliners will destroy Iran by being too repressive internally on issues that simply don’t need to be repressed even under an Israeli siege and propaganda warfare situation. But of course, it’s not as if the government merely dictates these opinions from on high, there must be many factions based on social and economic classes pulling one way or another, so even a hypothetical coup by a hypothetical “synthesis party” wouldn’t ameliorate the contradictions in the short term.
If the war continues then Iran might - might - manage to win anyway, but I’m really getting the impression that in Iran, the left arm doesn’t know what the right arm is doing. This goes beyond the standard messaging issues where you promise some overwhelming once-in-a-century response and then little happens; even Pezeshkian himself admitted a while ago that he doesn’t always know what’s going on.
Israel is not making it to 2030
This probably belongs in the general mega, not the news mega. I chuckled.
The Hexbear doomer logic is to pick whatever is the wrong choice, most of the same people asking Iran to go to a full on war or get nukes could end this genocide by doing a revolution against America.
just do a revolution against america! is the “just seize leningrad” meme
You realize there’s a 0% chance of any revolution happening here in the next couple decades at least right? there’s absolutely 0 left or organized parties
whereas Iran has been promising to destroy Israel and liberate Palestine for decades, and set up an entire proxy network with this explicit purpose and then… just didn’t use it. They literally had a button on their desk to free palestine and they didn’t push it. We don’t have any such button over here.
“Khamenai, just press the Free Palestine button… we’re not going to press the do a revolution in the U.S.A. button though that’s unrealistic”
Another part you’re missing is that the war hasn’t ended yet, it has barely begun, the zionists wasted so much money on these 2 weeks and they didn’t get much.
no such button exists. the conditions in the USA are not ripe for revolution, there is no organized left. To even begin constructing the button would take years if not decades.
the war has been going on since oct 7th and Iran sat idly by as its network of allies was picked off one by one. The war didn’t just begin, it’s been going for years already
Our unripe conditions, their idle sitting
I really don’t get how you don’t see the vast ocean of difference between the agency of an individual and a nation state. It’s really a fundamental failure in your cognition, a flattening of things to such a comical extent that it destroys any coherency.
The state of Iran was one decision away from destroying Israel. The American left is not just one decision away from revolution. They are millions of decisions and actions away still. There was a good probability Iran could have made the right decision and done what they promised to do, they simply choked and let the moment pass and missed the chance. The probability of a revolution in the short term in America is nil. I’m conjecturing about things that could actually realistically happen, not wishcasting instant global victory.
When discussing history we talk about the movements of nations, not great men or individuals. So why are you like “why don’t YOU go change history?!?”. Because individuals don’t change history, movements and nations do. Iran has a nation capable of acting. We do not have a movement capable of acting. Understand yet?
I think we’re stuck in a loop here where people want to simultaneously spread hopium that Israel will be defeated in some long war of attrition yet when we ask China to materialy ask in this actual war of attrition by actualy hurting their material supplies the nationalists come screeching crying “hmmm acshually daddy Xi knows better”. Israel has sadly achieved the air superiority days ago while the pre-war hopium already thought would take weeks. At this point its either a nuke or an alliance, otherwise the current trajectory is only Iran slowly being completely being bombed to hell.
If Israel continues to get infinite money and continuous uninterrupted supplies and fuel to carry on the genocide there will be no long war. Fake Dollar signs on some computer screen are also probably the least valuable thing in this war literally too, after 2 wars and trillions nobody cares about that. The democrats that complained about the wars during the Bush years are also the biggest Zionists like Biden(who actualy approved Iraq like everyone else), like who cares about money.
Is this horseshoe theory
the dialectic marches on 🫡
Dunno if it’s fair to say that it’s the whole “hexbear community” filp flopping like this.
For one there aren’t that many of us here so you could probably find out if it’s actually the same people doing that rather than those who believe one or the other thing being more vocal at different times.
Maybe it’d even be interesting to do a thread where users talk about what their mindset was throughout this and if they were actually changing their minds that much or what they’ve concluded.
I don’t mind saying that I initially did not expect for this to last more than 2 weeks since the stakes were so high, and just enjoyed watching the videos of israel being hit while not dooming during the lulls where iran hadn’t responded or had suffered a loss, also I was keeping in mind that both sides were lying about shit and there’s no way I could actually find out what was going on without more effort.
When trump was threatening to go in I wasn’t fearful of WW3 and thought Iran would retaliate in a manner so as to not draw the US further in, also I trusted people here who were saying that there’s not way they’d actually destroy Fordow
Now we’re at the ceasefire point, which I’m not surprised Iran took because it’s not like they started the war in the first place they probably (hopefuly) want to get started on their nuclear program in silence at this point, and if the ceasefire semi-holds (which is still unclear) I will have been right about the 2 weeks thing.
Doomers gonna doom.