A reminder that as the US continues to threaten countries around the world, fedposting is to be very much avoided (even with qualifiers like “in Minecraft”) and comments containing it will be removed.

Image is of a Khorramshahr-4 medium range ballistic missile, which has a range of about 2000km.

As I said in the last megathread, trying to figure out what exactly is happening is becoming ever more difficult. The gist of things is that Iran has, very justifiably, refused to negotiate (assassinating their leader and striking their country with hundreds of missiles in the middle of negotiations causes some reluctance to return to the table, I suppose). Censorship across the Middle East has further ramped up, with reportedly extreme punishments for posting footage of Iranian strikes online. From what I can gather, Iran’s number of strikes have stabilized at a comfortable daily rate, with strikes into both the Gulf monarchies and Occupied Palestine continuing apace. Official charts of these strikes over time seem very disconnected from reality on the ground, but again, it’s hard to really get at the specifics.

The messaging on how long the war is expected to last is rather muddled on both sides. The Trump administration fluctuates more than daily - and even sometimes in the same speech - on whether the war is already won or whether it’s going to last months longer. The US seems to be coming up a new possible scheme every few hours: a ground invasion with the Kurds? A ground invasion without the Kurds? An amphibious assault? A series of commando operations to steal Iranian uranium? A massive parachuting operation into Tehran? Fuck it, let’s just send the Navy into the Strait of Hormuz? There doesn’t seem to be a coherent plan for continuing hostilities beyond firing more and more of a limited stockpile of cruise missiles into mostly non-military targets, hitting easily replaceable drone and missile launchers with a limited stockpile of drones, and burning a limited stockpile of interceptors at an astounding rate (and, in the process, disarming every other Western-aligned country of their interceptors).

Meanwhile, from Iran, I’ve seen rumors and reports from classic anonymous “senior IRGC officials” (no doubt some invented by Zionists to sow confusion), that I don’t know how to substantiate, ranging anywhere from “If the US pulls back their forces now, we will restart negotiations,” to “It doesn’t matter what the US or the Zionists do or say, we aren’t stopping until every last trace of Zionism in the Middle East has been extinguished,” to a few positions in between those poles. Despite the damage to infrastructure in Iran, it doesn’t seem like there has been any political or social fracturing. Not to speak too soon - perhaps the West will start earnestly trying to overfly Iranian territory to drop their very plentiful bombs soon - but every indication is that there will be no regime change nor societal collapse in Iran in the short and medium term.

The US is desperately trying - and mostly failing - to keep a lid on the economic firestorm they have ignited. There has been much ado about oil prices and oil futures and indexes and what all the myriad Lines going up and down signify and things like that, which is befitting such a financialized empire which is so disconnected from the actual physical flows of materials and much more attuned to vibes and speeches. The only thing I’m personally paying much attention to on the economic front is the drones and missiles slamming into fossil fuel infrastructure, the Hormuz blockade, and the resulting global shockwave of shortages, stoppages, closures, bankruptcies, and force majeures spreading out from the epicenter that is Iran.

Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine

If you have evidence of Zionist crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:

UNRWA reports on the Zionists’ 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.

Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.

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.

  • Tervell [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    62·
    2 months ago

    I’ve mentioned the build-up to the Iraq wars before, but it was nested in various comment chains, so here’s an article about it too https://archive.ph/0JzFQ

    U.S. Took 6.5 Months to Mass 540,000 Troops for 1991 Iraq War, Iran Ground Invasion Would Need Similar Timeline

    Two Iraq wars show U.S. needs months to concentrate forces: 6.5 months for 540K troops in 1991, 4 months for 150K in 2003 ground operations

    more

    U.S. and Israeli air operation against Iran has certain chances of escalating into full-scale war with a ground operation. Currently this is only one scenario variant that U.S. President Donald Trump has not ruled out. At the same time, even the possible ground operation scope remains unknown. Specifically, discussions have mentioned very possible limited actions against specific targets. Particularly for guaranteed destruction of enriched uranium stockpiles. This would then involve limited special forces and an operation somewhat similar to the Maduro kidnapping. The possibility of the U.S. conducting an amphibious operation and capturing Kharg Island, through which almost all Iranian oil exports are conducted, has been discussed. Capturing and holding this 8 by 4 km island in the Persian Gulf also would not require significant forces.

    Especially compared to a full ground operation, which could aim not for total control over the entire 1.6 million km² country (for understanding Iran is 2.7 times larger than Ukraine), but only its key objects: capital, largest cities, industrial centers, oil fields, and so on. Even with total air superiority, one must count on possible resistance from remnants of Iranian armed forces and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Specifically according to estimates, regular Iranian military total strength comprises 610,000 personnel, of which ground forces are 350,000 and IRGC 190,000. However, in case of ground war with the U.S., Tehran will quite expectedly announce mobilization. Purely for reference, Iran involves a large quantity of very obsolete weapons, for example 1,500 tanks, over 1,000 IFVs and APCs, 3,000 large-caliber artillery pieces and multiple rocket launchers.

    If the U.S. intends to completely repeat Operation Desert Storm in 1991, when Iraq was first bombed for 38 days before the ground operation began, one can start from its indicators regarding necessary forces and time for their concentration. Specifically, the U.S. concentrated 540,000 personnel, to which coalition allies also joined, approximately 1 million people total. Their concentration began August 7, 1990 within Operation Desert Shield. Main force transfer continued until November, necessary stockpile concentration until January. The ground operation started February 24, 1991. In other words, overall the U.S. assembled forces for approximately 6.5 months, completing it in 4 days. Data regarding U.S. force concentration before the Second Iraq War can also be cited, when the ground component numbered 150,000 American military personnel plus 40,000 allies. The U.S. began deploying main forces in November 2002, with peak force arrival in January 2002 through February 2003. The Second Iraq War began March 20.

    Thus, if the U.S. does make a decision to conduct a full ground operation against Iran, force concentration will take months. Even in the case of counting on absence of significant resistance, following the 2003 Operation Iraqi Freedom example.

    I’d actually argue that the timeline would be way worse now - from the Gulf War to the '03 invasion there’s already a substantial reduction in the rate of build-up, from an average of ≈80K troops a month, down to ≈38K, and US sealift has massively degraded since.

    https://warontherocks.com/2019/01/sealift-is-americas-achilles-heel-in-the-age-of-great-power-competition/

    https://www.history.navy.mil/research/archives/Collections/operational-records/ops-m/msc-operation-desert-shield-storm.html

    https://www.maritime.dot.gov/sites/marad.dot.gov/files/docs/resources/newsroom/fact-sheets/3551/fact-sheet-rrf-2017-3.pdf

    Airlift has also degraded (thought I think not as extremely), but it’s not suitable for such large deployments to begin with - we actually already saw this problem in the build-up to this conflict, with the US turning out to not be able to actually evacuate its troops and just stashing them in hotels to be droned by the Iranians.

    • Wakmrow [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      26·
      2 months ago

      I was not conscious during that time. What about the degradation of bases and international willingness from specifically the Gulf states allowing US troop masses?

      • Tervell [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        38·
        2 months ago

        That’s a key factor too - back then the US was able to just line up thousands upon thousands of troops in Saudi Arabia, and base aircraft there and in the Gulf States. The build-up to this war literally started with them retreating from some of those same bases, not moving assets to them.

        And even if the US today was to coax some neighbor of Iran into allowing troops to be deployed there, said troops would be vulnerable to strikes while building up, which is something that the Americans didn’t have to worry anywhere near as much back in the day. Today, thanks to the proliferation of missiles and drones, even less technologically-advanced countries can manage to do deep interdiction strikes, which was formerly the prerogative of mainly the US and to some extent its NATO allies.