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.
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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.
https://aje.io/gn5i1t?update=3780384
These bombs are fucking enormous btw, this image is the same size as teh B-2 bomb bay. It fills it entirely.
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I heard “analysts” on TV all afternoon talk about how the US needs to use “bunker busters” dropped from B-2s on Fordow and destroy it. But isn’t Fordow like, 800 meters down? And even if it’s half that, even dropping a Tsar Bomba on top will just rattle the teacups down there?
Fordow is roughly 90 metres down (source on that is here). They’d need to drop one GBU-57A/B Mop, which are absolutely enormous 30,000lb bombs that only a B2 can carry. They can penetrate up to around 60 metres. So realistically they’d need to drop two, maybe three, to destroy Fordow. Very possible, but only because this bomb has been specifically designed to penetrate.
That said, a really big nuke would do the job too. Take, for instance, the Sedan nuclear test, which tested a nuke’s potential for mining. They created a crater that was around 100m deep, so that’d probably destroy Fordow. Nuclear craters can regularly get to around ~50m depths, so two or three large sized nukes would also do the job.
Surely you meant ~50m?
Absolutely did, just corrected.
Claim of 60 meters reinforced concrete. Reinforced concrete is much weaker than rock. Penetration most likely less than 40m rock. Number even then very optimistic because it is almost marketing.
Not knowing fuckall about bombs or anything I guess you wouldn’t have to completely destroy it, just damage it enough to trigger the existing contents to become unstable.
Hopefully Iranian scientists have some sort of protocol in case they come under attack to quickly do something to make the situation more safe and prevent an even bigger disaster. If such a thing could be done, which maybe they shouldn’t.
The wikipedia link about the crater mentions “The explosive device was lowered into a shaft drilled into the desert alluvium 194 m (636 ft) deep”. So would dropping it on the top, side or in the vicinity do the same job? (Can these things be aimed precisely?) And is the composition of the terrain a consideration? Surely a sandy desert is different than a rocky mountain?
If I was israel I’d probably be trying to get a bomb smuggled into one of these mountains. It seems like getting bombs nearby their enemies is something they are good at doing although their aim is shitty. Then I would also aerial bomb it to confuse what happened and try to make people think my aerial bomb was more powerful.
What are the odds that the US was just waiting around to have a bunker buster capable of hitting Iranian complexes before it unchained Israel to escalate?
I suspect what is more likely, should the US attack Fordow, is that they are basically going to try and seal it shut and then strike any rescue/wreckage cleanup attempts. 200M isn’t enough to do it unless they just start pounding it with GBU-57s (which also could happen), but it is enough to collapse every entrance and ventilation tunnel.
They will do it by dropping dozens.
Can not work. Each bomb would have to land inside hole from previous. Would take many many. Penetrator is mostly kinetic. It would work very badly with solid rock.
https://archive.ph/2EqaR
They managed to do it to kill Hassan Nasrallah. It took 15 bombs.
Concrete bunker short distance under city block is a different task compare with deep rock. Much more easy to compromise structural integrity.
Well yeah that’s what I’m saying they’ll do. Drop dozens and dozens all on the same spot. It’s the only way.
It will be very difficult. Hole is not very large at opening compared with bomb and bomb will lose a lot of energy if it impact the side.
If the US likes to do anything its dump a load of explosives in one spot with no effect for the fun of it
I don’t even know how many GBU-57s the US has, and I know they used some in Yemen. It’s also on the table they they use some of these and then come in with a B61 nuclear bomb, which has an earth-penetrating variant, or a B83, which I believe they had been testing an earth-penetrating variant on but scrapped (but tech might still be around in storage).
What a cuck.