Image is Israeli interceptors trying and failing to intercept missiles over their cities.
Israel just carried out a widespread bombing of Iran, which has killed a number of senior officials inside Iran (though it seems the leadership is more-or-less intact) as well as a number of civilians. Important facilities have been targeted, but the amount of damage is unknown so far (note that many important Iranian facilities are deep underground, making them both hard to damage but also hard to determine if they are damaged from just satellite imagery, so reports of damage will be he-said-she-said).
It appears the attack took Iran by surprise, given that a residential block was targeted that contained some senior officials - if one saw an attack coming, one would imagine they’d be in bunkers. Nonetheless, like the rest of the Resistance Axis, I suspect that Iran has adapted their military structures to be resistant to decapitation strikes by ensuring that replacement figures are ready to take the place of killed officials.
Iran has delivered a massive missile barrage in response to Israeli aggression, even though Israel is continuing to bomb Iran. Iran is now aware of the location of many important Israeli sites, including secret nuclear sites, due to their recent intelligence haul, giving them a distinct edge.
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.
Big news on the Iran front. An advisory was just released a few hours ago by the UKMTO with regards to the Arabian Gulf, Gulf of Oman, and most importantly, the Strait of Hormuz.
US embassy in Baghdad is being evacuated
Departure of all nonessential personnel from Bahrain and Kuwait also reported
All US assets are again in place on Diego Garcia as of June 9, with 4x B-52H Stratofortress bombers, 6x F-15E Strike Eagle strike aircraft, and 6 KC-135 Stratotanker mid air refueling aircraft.
Iran also tested a ballistic missile with a 2000kg warhead this week, and announced it today. Here’s the opinion of a suspected ex Iranian Air Force member:
Iran testing longer range missiles with larger payloads is part of their negotiation strategy.
Israeli sources are saying that they’re ready to strike Iran, as early as next week
Lmao they moved them off just to put them back again a month later?
They were probably there or thereabouts the entire time since the B-52 deployment. The B-52s replaced the B-2s about a month or two ago. What’s interesting is that all the assets were visible at the same time. Usually some of the fighters or bombers aren’t visible.
Does them being visible on the runway indicate anything about readiness for strikes? Or are there too many to keep covered?
Think them all being visible in the open is more about strategic signalling/sending a message to Iran than anything else. They should always be ready to strike in theory, it’s why they’re there in the first place.
So could just be more flexing to attempt to scare Iran into agreeing to something
Israeli sources are saying that they’re prepared to strike Iran as early as next week, and that air defences have been moved to protect sensitive sites such as Dimona nuclear facility and Nevatim Airbase. Which would explain all of this. However, they say that the US will not directly participate. I’ve added it to the main post.
God I hope the intel breach was real and significant
Unfortunately I don’t think so. A lot of the information released so far has been known about for years. Iranian nuclear scientists being assassinated due to being named in IAEA reports? This was already known about in 2020, the IAEA report that named the assassinated scientist was published in 2015. Israeli covert agents getting access to confidential IAEA reports from IAEA officials in Iran? This was already known about in 2018. European - Israeli collaboration on nuclear weapons? Known for decades. So far, all signs point to this being related to a hack on the Israeli Soleq nuclear research facility last year, and not Dimona. Soleq is the civilian research facility that gets inspected by the IAEA, Dimona is the military facility that is not inspected.
I did a comment on that here
Are there no aircraft shelters at Diego Garcia? It is pretty far away from everything I guess.
There are four climate controlled hangars designed for B-2 Spirit stealth bombers, but I don’t know how well they’d hold up against any attack, it seems as if it’s more of an environmental protection thing than anything else.