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.
Would be pretty crazy to be among the hundred or so Russian workers at Beshehr nuclear plant being used as a human shield/tripwire force. o7 to the heroic workers keeping the nuclear plant stabilized and working in the middle of a war while Israel and the US want to kill them so badly, and they're nationality is the only thing keeping them alive.
https://archive.ph/n4Sg6
ST PETERSBURG, June 19 (Reuters) - The head of Russia's nuclear energy corporation warned on Thursday that an Israeli attack on Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant could lead to a "Chernobyl-style catastrophe".
An Israeli military spokesperson said Israel had struck the site, but an Israeli military official later called this statement "a mistake" and said he could neither confirm nor deny that the Bushehr site on the cost of the Gulf had been hit. Bushehr is Iran's only operating nuclear power plant and was built by Russia.
President Vladimir Putin told journalists in the early hours of Thursday that Israel had promised Russia that Moscow's workers - who are building more nuclear facilities at the Bushehr site - would be safe, even as Israel tries to degrade Iran's nuclear capabilities by force. The head of Russia's state nuclear corporation Rosatom warned on Thursday that the situation around the plant was fraught with risk. "If there is a strike on the operational first power unit, it will be a catastrophe comparable to Chernobyl," the state RIA news agency cited Alexei Likhachev as saying.
Likhachev was referring to the world's worst nuclear disaster in 1986, when a reactor exploded at Chernobyl in Soviet Ukraine. An attack on Bushehr would be "beyond... evil," Likhachev added.
Russia has evacuated some of its specialists from Bushehr, he said, but the core workforce - which Putin said numbered hundreds of people - remained on site.
"We are prepared for any scenario, including the rapid evacuation of all our employees," RIA cited Likhachev as saying.
Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said Israeli attacks on peaceful nuclear facilities were unacceptable and illegal. "We are especially concerned about the safety of the Bushehr nuclear power plant, in whose operation Russian specialists are involved," she told reporters.
"We would like to especially warn Washington against military intervention in the situation, which would be an extremely dangerous step with truly unpredictable negative consequences," Zakharova added, underlining a warning that Moscow first issued on Wednesday. Putin, in his comments early on Thursday, was defensive when asked what more Moscow would do to help Tehran. He said it had not asked for military assistance, that ties were strong, and that the continued presence of Russian workers building more nuclear facilities at Bushehr showed Russia's support for Iran.
But Putin also stressed the importance of Russia's ties with Israel - even though he later condemned its behaviour in a phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping - and said he believed a diplomatic solution that would satisfy Israel's concerns about its own security and Iran could be found.
Russia signed a strategic partnership with Iran in January and also has a relationship with Israel, although that has been strained by Moscow's war in Ukraine [and Syria]. A Russian offer to mediate in the Israel-Iran conflict has so far not been taken up.
Mikhail Bogdanov, another Russian deputy foreign minister, recoiled on Thursday when asked by Reuters about the possibility of the U.S. joining Israel's war with Iran. "God forbid, the consequences would be hard to predict,” he said.
I love this as it's the classic Zionist lie, where you're just like "We successfully destroyed and eliminated a key facility in Gaza/Lebanon/Syria/whatever, fatally crippling our enemy" and then it's revealed it was a hospital or a clinic or refugee camp and they realize the optics of it and then they either go "Actually, we didn't do that, we are launching an internal investigation about who said this was the case" or if it was indeed visibly damaged they go "Okay, this just in, our strike failed but an enemy missile coincidentally misfired and crashed into the building with an explosive intensity beyond that which Hamas or Hezbollah could even create and perfectly matches previous Israeli bombs"
though in Gaza they obviously stopped even trying to justify striking sites that are very clearly not military in any way
Makes me question why Iran doesn't request a few of them transfer to Fordow
Why? Just why? You know they're just a proxy state, an extension of the same MIC that's supplying the enemy in your current war, right Russia? I wish everyone would stop trying to coddle Israel. Just take them out lol.
maybe the principled anti imperialists here can answer your question while dancing around the primary issue of putin's class interest.
Putin can spend hours discussing the historical ramifications of a Russian general getting the shits during a battle hundreds of years ago, but somehow cannot connect the dots between Ukraine, Israel, and America.
do you really think the niceties of formal diplomacy reflect what Russia actually thinks?
it's just standard diplomatic pablum. every country does this (except DPRK)