this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2025
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Image is of the damage caused by an Iranian Kheibar Shekan ballistic missile in Israel, causing dozens of injuries.


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

If you have evidence of Israeli 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 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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[โ€“] YEP@hexbear.net 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Humvees and MRAPs, which admittedly are probably not that relevant outside of a COIN context, but if they're getting canceled

The US is replacing both with the jltv they have already manufactured 10k of them?

this one's merely "paused", but the new self-propelled artillery program - the 4th in a row one to not go anywhere

I think Ukraine has shown that very advanced heavy spgs have a lot of problems. The German one had maintenance issues. Guided artillery seems to have been much to costly to justify its limited combat effectiveness.

[โ€“] Tervell@hexbear.net 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

The US is replacing both with the jltv they have already manufactured 10k of them?

It's the JLTV which is getting cancelled (I just put it under the general label of MRAPs since I assumed people would be more familiar with that term, the US military has way too many incomprehensible abbreviations for everything). Canceling that does make sense, the problem is that they're seemingly also canceling basically everything else to do with transport vehicles. The US at this point seems to have about 7000 proper APCs and IFVs at best (I guess technically there's also 2k M3 Bradleys, which I assume can be used as M2s if the need arises, as they're mechanically mostly the same vehicle, just serving in two different roles with separate designations), plus 2k base M2s in storage (which would likely have to be upgraded to a modern standard before being pulled out), 4.7k M113s that are woefully outdated at this point, and the 12.5k JLTVs and 9k other MRAPs (which were designed for COIN, and while they can be pushed into the role of conventional APCs as they have been in Ukraine, it's not ideal). The AMPV was supposed to add another 3k, but it was cancelled. More Strykers could have been made, but they were canceled.

7k sounds like a big number, but:

  1. that amount of vehicles and more have already been destroyed in Ukraine

  2. the US, as per its position as global hegemon, kind of needs a lot of stuff so they can maintain a military presence in Europe, the Middle East and East Asia all at the same time. China for example has about 5.6k modern APCs and IFVs, recently started manufacturing a new one, and another 7k of older stuff (plus who knows how many MRAPs). In the event of a future conflict, the US obviously wouldn't be able to deploy it's whole force entirely against China - that 7k split up between a bunch of fronts doesn't end up being so much.

Edit: actually, it turns out like 2.4k of the Strykers are an assortment of other variants, like mortar carriers, combat engineer vehicles, ambulances, air defense, etc.. 545 of those are the recon variant which is relatively close to the base APC in configuration, so let's be generous and count those as APCs - we have to subtract 1.9k from the US's APCs count

I think Ukraine has shown that very advanced heavy spgs have a lot of problems. The German one had maintenance issues. Guided artillery seems to have been much to costly to justify its limited combat effectiveness.

The Russians are using some guided shells too. In fact, the proliferation of drones is opening up a whole new avenue for guided artillery (https://tass.com/defense/1426745, https://armyrecognition.com/focus-analysis-conflicts/army/conflicts-in-the-world/russia-ukraine-war-2022/analysis-how-russia-is-using-new-laser-guided-krasnopol-m2-artillery-rounds-for-precision-strikes-in-ukraine).

Western systems have definitely not performed well, but that's all the more reason for continuing to look into developing new systems (although admittedly, the Western MIC would probably end up coming up with something even more over-complicated than the current stuff). With this being the 4th in a row failed attempt, the US is still stuck with the M109 Paladin which goes back to the 1960s (although it has admittedly gone through several extensive modernizations since then).