this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2025
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Bulletins and News Discussion from June 23rd to June 29th, 2025 - Iran, Harden Your Deep Military Sites
(hexbear.net)
Now in our second week of the conflict, we have seen continuing damage to both Israel and Iran, as well as direct US intervention which nonetheless seems to have caused limited damage to Fordow and little damage to Iran's nuclear program. Regime change seems more elusive than ever, as even Iranians previously critical of the government now rally around it as they are attacked by two rabid imperialists at once. And Iran's government is tentatively considering a withdrawal, or at minimum a reconsideration, of their membership to the IAEA and the NPT. And, of course, the Strait of Hormuz is still a tool in their arsenal.
A day or so on from the strike on Fordow, we have so far seen basically no change in strategy from the Iranian military as they continue to strike Israel with small barrages of missiles. Military analysts argue furiously - is this a deliberate strategy of steady attrition on Israel, or indicative of immense material constraints on Iran? Are the hits by Israel on real targets, or are they decoys? Does Iran wish to develop a nuke, or are they still hesitating? Will Iran and Yemen strike at US warships and bases in response to the attack, or will they merely continue striking only Israel?
And perhaps most importantly - will this conflict end diplomatically due to a lack of appetite for an extended war (to wit: not a peace but a 20 year armistice) or with Israel forced into major concessions including an end to their genocide? Or even with a total military/societal collapse of either side?
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.
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.
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Also, another note on manufacturing - this bunker buster uses tungsten, I'm not clear on how much but it's presumably a substantial amount given the total weight. I've brought this up before, but it just so happens that the biggest tungsten producers are... China, Vietnam, and Russia (with Bolivia being 5th
, and even North Korea showing up with a little bit 
).
Given the wide variety of industrial applications, tungsten's obviously pretty pricey, and we already have an example of lack of tungsten affecting US procurement - the NGSW program, which intended to introduce a new rifle and fancy cartridge that could penetrate modern armor. Except, instead of doing what is traditionally done when you want armor penetration, which is use a harder material (and given that steel alloys aren't sufficient anymore, the next step is tungsten), they went with highly-overpressurized rounds - essentially, instead of making the projectile harder, you make it travel faster and with more energy, in the hope that this will compensate. In practice, as more information is starting to come out with those rifles now in service, it seems like such penetration isn't actually really achieved, and tungsten-tipped variants will be needed anyway (https://www.armytimes.com/opinion/commentary/2023/02/28/the-not-really-next-generation-weapons-program/#%3A%7E%3Atext=tungsten)
So why did they bother with this whole thing in the first place, given that tungsten-tipped variants already exist for existing calibers (https://www.nammo.com/product/our-products/ammunition/small-caliber-ammunition/7-62mm-series/7-62-mm-x-51-armor-piercing-8-m993/, https://www.nammo.com/product/our-products/ammunition/small-caliber-ammunition/5-56mm-series/5-56-mm-x-45-armor-piercing-45/)? Well, because those are far too expensive to field in large quantities - precisely because of the use of tungsten.
Now of course, a handful of aircraft bombs are a very different manufacturing context from millions of rounds, but said bombs also obviously involve a substantially larger amount of material. So even if the US wanted to make a whole bunch of these, there's simply a hard limit imposed by availability of tungsten.
(also, something else about the tungsten producers - Canada's actually 4th, so I guess we might see the Fallout 1 intro but about ores instead of oil
)
Funny thing is that the new Liberal minority government, with the help of the Conservative party, recently passed a prominent piece of legislation that seems laser-focused on making it easy for mining companies to ignore a lot of safety and environmental regulations. I wonder if the idea is to make Canada the go-to source for minerals important for the US defence industry and use that as a trade-negotiation bargaining chip now that the US is having problems sourcing them from China, Russia, and countries allied with China and/or Russia.