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.
Can Iran develop nukes fast? Are they trying to develop nukes? I don’t see how Iran survives a joint attack from the two zionazi entities without pointing a gun right at the center of Israel. The thought of a country with a 100 million people being turned into Libya is a tragedy on the scale of a world war.
Depending on their level of insanity, Iran hypothetically has MAD right now: blowing up the Dimona nuclear power plant, which would create the worst nuclear disaster in history, poison the land around it for at least centuries including much of occupied Palestine and kill many Israelis and probably everybody in Gaza and the West Bank depending on the wind. They could also do this with dirty bombs, which any state with access to nuclear materials can make.
Even under the level of mutual world-ending insanity that MAD requires both parties to have, it’s hard to imagine Iran doing this though; for starters, it would make them a total pariah even beyond what a country that uses nukes would be, and killing millions of Palestinians and other groups in the crossfire might be unacceptable collateral to them. And nukes are much cleaner than nuclear power plant fallout (Hiroshima and Nagasaki were habitable relatively quickly) and more immediately devastating, though I believe Israel has a triad so there is no possibility of a first strike disabling Israel’s ability to respond with nukes.
The fatwa against weaponizing nuclear material still exists, so in theory they would be very behind on the implosion device. Enriching the uranium they have is doable. Building a device and building a device that can be put onto a missile are two projects, too.
The fatwa is up for interpretation, and some people even doubt it exists beyond being a political tool to protect the Iranian government from claims of nuclearisation. Fatwas dont appear to be strictly documented the same way as other legally binding decrees are in other systems (ie. executive orders).
If it is real, there are figures in the IRGC that have hotly debated the interpretation of the fatwa, and whether it simply forbids weapons that indiscriminately kill civilians (which is standard Islamic law). They could retroactively justify a nuclear weapon to Khameini on the grounds that it these weapons are tactical,m in nature or that they will simply not be used.
If it is real, there is no reason why Khameini would announce to the world that he has changed his mind. The same way it would not make sense for Iran’s government to announce nuclear intentions until after a test. If he personally turns a blind eye to the IRGC’s research, who would stop them?
What does the fatwa actually mean, though? Can their scientists theorize about how nuclear bombs would work? At what point does it become weaponization?
Is it possible that they already have tentative designs, and “all” they have left to do is build and test them?
Some hardliners had argued an interpretation that they were only forbidden from using WMDs, not from holding them as deterrence. Obviously that argument didn’t seem to win over the Iranian establishment, but there’s definitely different interpretations of the fatwa
Kinda strange form of deterrence if you have to, at all points, say “we can’t actually use this it’s just to scare you”
I think this is what we call strategic ambiguity
Holding a nuke you are forbidden from using is still more effective as a deterrent than having nothing. After all, who’s to say those with control of the nuke will always follow the fatwa forever even as they are being nuked and existentially threatened?
Plus if the fatwa is ever lifted you don’t have to start from scratch, you have nukes ready to go. Gives a lot more power to the one issuing the fatwa to threaten to remove the fatwa as leverage
it was the South African doctrine. Have just enough nuclear capability to commit to tests when under threat to coerce US intervention against Cuban and Soviet-backed forces in Angola.
No idea. Maybe American intelligence is legit (lol) and Iran is near a nuke. Maybe not.
A crude nuke? probably easy enough. Unless I’m mistaken, there isn’t much stopping Iran with its stockpile of enriched Uranium from making a “gun type” bomb - Basically a chunk of uranium shot into another chunk at high speed. It’s super inefficient, large, and heavy, and unsafe to handle.
South Africa developed 6 of these covertly in the 1980s. The US dropped one on Hiroshima, and didnt bother testing it beforehand out of certainty that it would work.
The second design often used early in a country’s nuclear weapons development is an implosion weapon. They’re safer, more efficient, and lighter. However, they’re harder to design as the timing of the explosives (the “implosion”) needs to be precise to ensure a proper detonation.
The US used this type in their first nuclear weapons test, as well as against Nagasaki. The IAEA alleged recently that Iran had tested an “implosion device” - the explosive sphere that projects nuclear material into a single point to create an explosion.
So the question is, how quickly can Iran melt a bunch of highly reactive uranium into the precise shapes and sizes to create an explosion, but then mount it into a device that keeps it from spontaneously vaporising its nearby scientists, but then detonate to a high degree when expected.
Moreover, can it convince the US and Israel that not only can they do all of that, but that they can do it after that sensitive, unstable, and potentially sophisticated device has travelled hundreds if not thousands of miles on board a delivery mechanism capable being military effective?
that enriched uranium enriched far below weapons grade.
I don’t know what the Iranian stocks are but yeah it looks like a gun type weapon wouldn’t work but an implosion design (Comrade marmite has another reply to me with supposed Iranian designs for one) would work with as low as 20% enrichment
Not making a nuclear weapon is a political decision, because moving too close guarantees an attack by the US on Iran. From a scientific perspective it’s not complicated for modern nuclear scientists as far as I know. Iran has had the scientific capability to make a nuclear weapon since at least 2003 when the IAEA was making a ton of noise about it.
Here are the schematics of an implosion type weapon to fit in a re entry vehicle of a Shahab 3. The Fattah-1 and Khorramshahr re entry vehicles are more than big enough for this, even if Qadr and Emad’s are too small. There’s little chance a gun type bomb would fit in a ballistic missile re entry vehicle. Which is why apartheid South Africa’s nuclear weapons made little difference in the end. And these aren’t super secret, top results on Google.
Oh shit you can just find schematics for their planned nuke design on google lmao. Okay very useful ty
This is the gamble both sides are taking for better or for worse. Unfortunately unless there’s a user here with intricate knowledge of Iran’s nuclear development program and is privy to incredibly secure details we have no idea how close or far they are. Optimistically, even if they have in good faith avoided the development of nukes, they have the infrastructure as well as deep institutional knowledge of nuclear science and rocketry that I think there always was some truth to western propaganda about how they’re literally about to develop nukes.
I had a theory that Iran’s surprise that people would remember for “centuries” was that Russia, vis-a-vis their joint security agreement, were going to “loan” them a nuke so they could detonate it and establish deterrence that way.
But yeah that never ended up happening.
North Korea is more likely
The treaty never included mutual defense, unlike the one Russia has with Belarus. don’t think Russia would nukes anywhere it isn’t willing to fight for
https://apnews.com/article/russia-belarus-security-agreement-nuclear-doctrine-c07ef5d341f93be6934ac14a77b58f8b