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.
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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.
On the trucks that were outside Fordow in the days prior. It looks like this was an excavation and material/soil transportation effort to fill the entrances and exits with soil in anticipation of a US strike, to try prevent them from collapsing and entombing Fordow. (The US did this kind of attack with cruise missiles at the two other sites, Natanz and Isfahan, and they said that two GBU-57 MOPs were dropped on Natanz as well, no images of that yet though). The trucks outside of Fordow are dump trucks with empty open box cargo beds/tippers, likely after offloading soil/earth to fill up the entrance and exits. The problem is, that at Fordow, the US didn't even bother to attack the entrances and exits, they dropped at least six bombs, with some sources stating up to twelve, directly at where the cascade and enrichment facilities were located.
Edit: 20 were built. Potentially 14 used last night. Meaning 6 remain in inventory.
The US only has about 14 of these bombs. If they just used 12 of them, that’s basically the entire arsenal used in a single operation.
And it didn’t even destroy the site.
These are not production line bombs. If fully 12 of them were used then the threat of them being used is now exhausted.
Those numbers are years old. As of 2024, the US upped production capacity on the GBU-57 to 6-8 bombs per month, it was 2 per month previously. There are still plenty in the stockpiles. 8 bombs per month is 96 per year, a large number for such a boutique weapon, which has multiple variants customised for a specific target set, rock and soil type, etc.
US to Boost Output of Bombs Designed to Hit Underground Nuclear Facilities - Bloomberg, May 14 2024
20 is the number for the GBU-57 A/B MOP, a specific variant.
They have more of other variants but this variant is the super massive, super deep penetrating one.
“2 per month” would be the production rate for all variants.
They have other variants of the 30 000lb GBU-57 too, the GBU-57F/B is actually the latest known, and the one likely used on Iran.
Those production numbers are specific to the GBU-57.
Sorry I know this is serious, but
I haven't heard this, can you elaborate?
I double checked my numbers.
Only 20 of these things were ever built, a single order & delivery in 2015.
I’m seeing reports of up to 14 used last night.
So maybe there are 6 left?
20 is the original amount delivered to the USAF in 2015. We don't know if there have been more built, and that wouldn't necessarily have been reported on if there were more built and delivered. There are some military sources saying that the suspected stockpile is much larger. 20 should be the floor estimate.
The US increased production capacity of the GBU-57 from two per month, to 6-8, last year already, in preparation for exactly a situation like this.
Where did you find production numbers?
Bloomberg published them last year with regards to expanding the facility that produces them
The one time I don't bother to go to page 2 of the Google search...
Wtf how do you build only 20 of any single-use thing that cant be right.
These numbers are for this specific very massive variant.
There are other “bunker busters” designed to take out heavily fortified buildings. This particular variant is a particularly massive version.
I guess there just aren’t that many super fortified deep underground bases that need to be bombed.
For-profit military industrial complex DO NOT go brrrr
They are incredibly heavy and made with incredibly expensive. Also bombing nuclear sites was at least kinda a taboo question at the time, so these were probably not designed with destroying Iranian nuclear facilities under an entire mountain in mind.
I would imagine there is more since the initial delivery, especially as they need to train with them too.
The real limitation on these bombs is their launch platform, which despite their stealth and long range still take hours to arrive from a friendly base, hours to return, then many more hours for the necessary maintenance and upkeep to do that all again. Oh, and all while the pilots and the refuelling tankets have to recover too.
Even with unlimited bombs there's a limited rate of delivery, and every sortie is another sortie that might prove their "invisible" plane to be a myth after all.
How would they find out where the facilities are located from above ground? Is it feasible for the IAEA to be able to acquire that information?
Mossad and the CIA