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
If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.
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.
The decapitation strikes served their purpose, to prevent the initial barrage of hundreds, if not a thousand, ballistic missiles being fired at Israel as soon as they attacked (with no one alive to give the order, it never came), and to buy time for Israel to secure air superiority over the missile cities in Western Iran and start bombing them, crippling the ability of these assets to stay in the fight. I don't think anyone serious expected an immediate collapse of the Iranian government, and the president or Ayatollah were not targeted by this. Main targets of the decapitation strikes were the aerospace forces and head of the IRGC, to serve this purpose, preventing the initial counterstrike by Iran.
There's plenty of footage of JDAMs (24km max range) and SPICE 1000 (100km max range) or SPICE 2000 (60km max range) being dropped on Tehran. Plus footage of what would usually be a strike done by GBU-31 JDAMs with BLU-109 penetrator warheads on bunkers in the mountainsides of Tehran. Drones will not be making such huge explosions, that's just not possible, they don't have the payload or warheads to do that... Plus, the first large craft Iran shot down was a Hermes 9000 (Israeli equivalent to an MQ-9 Reaper) over Isfahan. If Hermes 9000s, which shooting down is the equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel for any surface to air missile system (Yemen has shot down over 20 MQ-9s) are flying over Isfahan, what does that say about Iranian air defence? If they can fly over Isfahan with platforms like that, they can fly over Tehran. I know this is a difficult pill to swallow, but there's so much evidence of this now that it's not worth denying anyone.
SPICE 2000 or GBU-31 JDAM over Tehran on June 16
Airstrikes on bunkers in Tehran
This is not being done by drones:
Khordad series is probably the longest range air defence system outside of S-300 and Bavar-373, and probably the most advanced currently in the Iranian arsenal. The Sayyad-3 missiles on the Khordad 15, which Israel did provide footage of being destroyed, have a stated 200km range. That's not short range. HAWK may be an old system, but Iran have over 200 batteries. As for Bavar-373, I think it's capabilities have been exaggerated (there's no way it's better than an S-400) and it may just be a unicorn system if Iran only has a couple of operational batteries. If only one or two are actually operational, they're not going to be making a difference on the battlefield, and have likely been relocated to the far east to avoid destruction, further than Isfahan, if they haven't already been targeted. The main use I've seen for the system is allowing use of components of the S-300 system that were not destroyed by previous Israeli airstrikes, like the missiles and battle management radars. If Bavar 373 was as good as Iran claims, why have they put so much effort into integrating the surviving S-300 components? The backbone of Iranian long range air defence are the S-200 systems, they have enough of those operational to actually make a difference. But I doubt that modern fighter jets are very vulnerable to hit, only 1 Israeli aircraft was shot down by S-200 in it's history of service in Syria. Keeps rearward assets like mid air refueling aircraft and AWACS at bay though.
This is not true, F-35 were armed with stand in weapons like JDAMs over Yemen, and even suspected of being armed with Hellfire missiles. Most of the stand off strikes were carried out by the F/A-18s. Aircraft were audible on video over Sana'a multiple times. There's quite a difference between ambushing an aircraft and taking shots at it that it has to evade, and actually denying the airspace. Iranian airspace is still not safe for Israeli rearward assets like mid air refueling aircraft and AWACS, just like how Syria's wasn't during Assad. Which is why everytime Israel attacked Iran beforehand, they had to suppress Syrian air defence.
And obviously it's a regime change operation, it's called Operation Rising Lion. Anyone familiar with Persian history will immediately get the reference to the sun and lion, part of Iran's flag until the Islamic Revolution.
Interesting, not sure many people noticed that even here, I certainly didn't.