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.
What happens after Fordow is penetrated? I assume the US can blast down to it with enough B2 sorties and Iran can’t really stop them. How would this affect Iran’s nuclear program?
They can attempt, but it’s highly unlikely that they would succeed. Look into how successful the bunker busters were in Afghanistan, these are bunkers with layers of reinforced steel and other materials, plates to divert the missiles, and it’s built under a literal mountain.
They can try to drop a nuke, but then it’s over for all of us. Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine used to be* (read edit, not that clear) retaliation for nuclear strikes against a Muslim country.
Edit: apparently the Pakistan foreign minister has explicitly denied retaliatory strikes. Past doctrine was ambiguous but rejected no-first-use, instead claiming “Full Spectrum Deterrence” which can extend to destabilization efforts outside its borders. However, the material that I’d read regarding protection of Muslim states is aligned with Israel so it might have been all warmongering bullshit. Current nuclear doctrine for Pakistan is even more ambiguous, I hadn’t read up on that in a few days. Apologies.
And if they use a nuke with no push back that gives Russia the nod to use a nuke on Ukraine, and will lead to all out nuclear war I fear as well.
Russia has no reason to want a nuke on Ukraine. If they wanted, they could push their enormous missile advantage already and bomb them to smithereens.
There’s a reason they prefer drone warfare followed by infantry engagement. They’d rather prevent as much as they can having an Iraq War scenario next door once an end to the hostilities is negotiated (which seems unlikely to happen with Zelensky at the head and potentially on the hook once it’s over, but that’s another story). They’ve always said the nuke would be reserved for direct western incursion into Russia.
“Use the biggest, most devastating, most horrifying weapon you can get away with using” is a thoroughly western doctrine and it never works except for the guy who sells it.
It is?
It’s a little ambiguous, but it seems so. https://www.businesstoday.in/world/middle-east/story/iranian-general-claims-pakistan-would-nuke-israel-if-it-uses-atomic-weapons-report-480511-2025-06-16
The warning that Pakistan issued regarding the use of nukes and urging Muslim countries to unite against Israel seemed like an implicit reminder of earlier rhetoric regarding their status as the only nuclear power in the Islamic world.
However, I just read up on it again and it seems the Pakistan foreign minister denies it so it’s back to he said she said and ambiguity. Edited my comment to reflect that, thanks for making me read back up on it.
So that’s the big joke, right? Even if the Americans totally destroy Fordow, 100% destruction, (which is itself doubtful, Fordow is probably ~100m down under hard rock, the bunker buster the B2 can carry is rated to 60m of reinforced concrete, getting multiple hits in exactly the same point is rather difficult, etc etc), Iran’s nuclear program is set back maybe a year? Maybe? You can’t kill knowledge, Iran has been operating reactors for decades at this point, knowledge of nuclear science is well dispersed and it’s not that hard to build more reactors. Iran can enrich uranium up to the purity for a nuclear weapon with or without Fordow quite easily, the “hard” part comes with the delivery mechanism which they haven’t really fiddled around with due to Khamenei’s fatwa on nuclear weapons development. Destroy Fordow is much more about PR and claiming the US/Israel “got a win” so they can get an offramp to this miscalculation rather than meaningfully degrading Iran’s ability to get nuclear weapons.
And even if Israel and the US could just magically bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities out of existence, then that merely leaves the status quo, and that status quo is a country with thousands of perfectly good conventional missiles and drones that is firing them at Israel through their air defense and causing major societal and economic disruption. Even compared to Iraq, the propaganda buildup to this war is just so ridiculous on so many levels. It’s this fantastical fever dream where there’s so many contradictions and “the enemy is strong and weak” claims flying around and ruses and stalling that trying to be informed in this conflict is exceedingly difficult.
In regards to the Fordow thing, I’ve seen so many different opinions from various people who seem like they have some degree of military knowledge and know what they’re talking about generally. Like, here’s a list of the claims I’ve seen:
At this point I’m just waiting for the Americans to try the goddamn bombing run. It’ll either work or it won’t, but as I said above, while it’s obviously not irrelevant if the US can take out Fordow (e.g. it has implications for the Iranian underground missile cities), it in and of itself is just a single aspect of a wider war being currently fought with conventional weapons regardless.
The GBU-57/MOP has been misreported here. While the real capabilities are likely still classified, the weapons are only rated for 60m of penetration into soil, and much less on concrete, and even less on the highly reinforced concrete developed for bunkers like Fordow.
It may be totally understated and fed to the press for sake of encouraging enemies like Iran to build shallower bunkers. Or maybe it’s overstated since the state relies on representing itself as a tiger until you’re close enough to see the paper fibres that make up its skin.
Also, final note is that even if Fordow is destroyed, the amount of time it would take to then finish off every other militarily significant underground facility, confirm the lack of any others, and then tackle the other capabilities of the Iranian armed forces, Iran not only could build a weapon (both by America’s stated intelligence but also the likely realities that the weapon’s existense is a political decision), but could also leave a bloody nose in the entire Western Empire.
If the Americans go ahead with the operation it’ll incur some of their worst losses in decades, even if it succeeds.
Yeah I feel like the game plan in the last part there has to be the most likely.
Still though, history doesn’t have any qualms about being unpredictable and Iran has been pretty firm on getting the last shot in.
Nothing on its own. The facility is probably already evacuated, or the most sensitive equipment and materials are. Enriched Uranium stocks are already dispersed and hidden across the country.
The only way to totally dismantle their progress is by killing so many people that the Iranian economy and state is utterly devastated to the point that any remaining personnel and resources are too scattered and exhausted to recover.
Basically, a Syria or Yemen or Iraq or Libya where Israeli/US/UN commandos make visits every time they get intel on a Uranium stash or a VIP scientist/regime holdout.
I’m not certain it is possible or likely to be successful, but the point being that Fordow will not be the end of the nuclear programme, but the start of something potentially far bloodier.
Sounds like they would have to use a nuke…
Is it actually feasible today—politically, economically, industrially, and militarily—to destroy Iranian society with an air campaign? I sure fucking hope not.
Look at Gaza. Look at Syria. You can erase all infrastructure with enough ordinance. It’s not a question of inflicting Iranian casualties. You don’t need to do that when you can essentially send the country back to the middle ages.
Assuming an unapposed bombing campaign, you’re looking at every hospital, factory, power plant, waste treatment plant, oil refinery, all destroyed. They want Iran to look like post invasion Iraq, and given enough time, it will.