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.
Preliminary count of US fighter and bomber aircraft in the Middle East, according to everything I’ve viewed so far. A lot of these movements took place months ago, a few in the last few days.
At bases throughout the Middle East, aboard USS Carl Vinson and Nimitz, and at Diego Garcia and Guam:
Think that’s a total of 262 aircraft. Anyone feel free to double check the numbers. Israel has 270 fighter aircraft of their own as far as I know.
Just want to give an idea of what’s been deployed. The EA-18G numbers are likely significantly higher, I was going off of the standard 4 aircraft per electronic attack squadron. But that will likely be higher when anticipating a conflict.
If I’ve learned anything from the last 5 years, it’s that we should ignore all rhetoric and realize a large military build up means they’re going in and they have already decided to go in.
This is what I’m thinking. As much as people go TACO, is there even room to chicken out? Are they just going to pack up and go home?
I’m gonna be the contrarian and say yes, there’s a definite possibility of them doing just that.
Unfortunately they haven’t…
Maybe if this regime was one where the military and the political class were acting in lock-step and not the former desperately dragging the latter for permission to let hell rain down across the world for the fun of it.
That’s a huge number of planes. Does anyone know how many the deployed before attack Saddam in Iraq 2.0?
Was the totals for aircraft use throughout the war.
US + Israel right now is around 520 fighter aircraft in the ME region. A total of 735 fighter aircraft were used during the Iraq war.
Oh no, not the chud mobile
Maybe I’m underestimating it, but it always struck me as a weapon that’s mostly for terrorisng civilians. Have they used the A-10 against anyone with an airforce?
I don’t think they’ve even used the A-10 against anyone with something approaching a working air defense system. My understanding is that it was designed to defeat 1970s Soviet armor flooding through the Fulda Gap, with point defense provided by MANPADS and AAA guns - and a such, has basically always been obsolete since its introduction. Their use in Iraq and Serbia was only after air superiority and SEAD was achieved - and still managed to get shot down.
And the F-111s did most of the tank plinking with Paveways during the Gulf War, think about 75% of tank kills were by the F-111.
They’ll use it to bomb the popular mobilisation forces in Iraq and take out Iranian speedboats, if the war happens. Also anti drone patrols.
Iran needs to launch a preemptive strike to take them all out, they’re fully justified.
Yep, use the first nuke on that base on Saudi arabia.