Title is a reference to Resistance imagery about how Israeli soldiers will enter Gaza alive but leave it in coffins - the same is true for American soldiers in the Middle East if the regional war expands.
The image is of the Fattah-1 Iranian hypersonic ballistic missile, which its creators boast can overcome any missile defense system on the planet, has a range of 1400 kilometers (and thus Iran can strike Israel), and has a terminal impact velocity of Mach 13.
Dozens of American soldiers have been injured and 3 have been killed on a base in the Middle East. There has been confused reports about whether the attack was on Syrian territory or Jordan's - the Al-Tanf base is in Syria, but Tower-22 in Jordan is another base that helps supply Al-Tanf, and Tower-22 is the one that is alleged to have been hit. These is the first confirmed deaths of American troops since the conflict began, though it's not likely that this is actually the first deaths after hundreds of drone/missile strikes throughout the region on American bases, unless you think American soldiers are having extremely timely heart attacks just after a missile hits.
The attack is certainly impactful, though it does also have considerably symbolism. Courtesy of John Helmer:
The operational success of the strike for the attackers is strategic. Tower-22 is a logistics, supply, and rear guard post for the Al-Tanf base which US troops are operating thirty kilometres north across the border in Syria. The attack demonstrates that both Tower-22 and Al-Tanf, Jordan and Syria, are newly vulnerable to weapons which the US forces have failed to detect and neutralize. Just as significantly, the massive US airbase called Muwaffaq Salti, 230 kilometres west across Jordan, is also vulnerable now.
It indicates that Iran now possesses Russian expertise in countering American equipment:
“This is a significant accomplishment,” one of the sources said. “Was the bypassing of the US air defence system at Tower-22 pulled off with Russian assistance? US bases generally rely on the C-RAM [Counter Rocket, Artillery and Mortar] system. It was sent to Ukraine last year where the Russians have been learning to defeat it. What now of American EW [electronic warfare]? They’ve been doing a fair job of knocking drones down up to now. It seems a ‘coincidence’ that, not a week after the meetings in Moscow with Arabs and Iranians, we see this success. It’s a success the circumstances of which, we can be sure, Biden and Austin are not keen to advertise.”
I am putting my take on the table right now: I am 99% certain that the US won't attack Iran directly. I think we are still quite a while away from that being a possibility. Much more likely is that Iranian officials in Iraq or Syria will be hit by a retaliatory strike, as Israel has done recently. It is a significant escalation nonetheless. And it comes as Israel seems to be gearing up for a suicidal war with Hezbollah.
The Country of the Week is Iran! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Updates continue to be AWOL - but I am cooking something. Hopefully.
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.
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 daily-ish 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
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.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
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.
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.
I've been mulling it over for an hour and I just don't think we have enough information to know exactly what's going on. Some of my ideas:
Idea 1: It is literally as they claim - Iraqi Hezbollah will stop attacking American troops and bases in order to facilitate a deal between Iraq and the US that will eventually lead to a withdrawal of US troops, after being asked by the Iraqi government to do so.
Idea 2: It is a little more complicated - Iran and the US have been talking in back channels and have agreed that the US response strike will be reduced in magnitude in exchange for a cessation of strikes against the US for the time being.
Idea 3: Iraqi Hezbollah want to continue striking and nobody has asked them to back down, but they have received intel from Iran or Iraq about the intended location of the strikes and they are deemed significant enough to warrant focussing on moving equipment around instead of conducting further strikes, and are just managing expectations when strikes on US bases cease.
Given the nature of these groups and their commitment to the Palestinian cause, I very much doubt that it was because they were just really scared of the response or whatever.
For what it's worth, it seems that other Iraqi Resistance groups have put out statements that suggest they are not backing down, so it could just be the Iraqi Hezbollah that has decided to back down.
Either way it's not terribly concerning, the major fronts throughout the Middle East are still active and if anything getting more active by the week
I'm just more worried about the US response that's set to last multiple days. I think they are about to do something insanely evil. As much as US says that they don't want war, something has changed in the past few days.
Bombing Iran while there's multiple regional conflicts means World War 2.5.
If Iran gets dragged in fully, the most optimistic projection is that Saudi Arabian oil production gets heavily damaged and oil price skyrockets. Europe, Japan, and South Korea who are net energy importers can't take the hit since their economies are already reeling so they'll become irrelevant for a decade when America needs them.
A pessimistic projection has Israel going down.
The American state apparatus isn't dumb and knows this. Do you think they'll risk it?
Yeah, it's hard to put together a sensible rationale for how the US has been behaving. Biden ideally wants the war to end in time for fall, and with as little face lost as possible, and he must have supposed that the axis was not as robust as they are.
But starting an open war with Iran is the opposite of trying to wind things down. Maybe he thinks the US can win it quickly? Or maybe he knows the fix is in and his second term is guaranteed?
Or he's just red, mad, and senile and the party/cabinet are too full of yes men to grab his collar
I'm not sure you've been paying attention. Biden and his handlers' bloodlust is irrational and systemic.
If the whole state apparatus was actually dumb, they'd have made one of the following mistakes -
American foreign policy as a whole is quite coherent and calculated, even if it looks like rambling madness on the outside. There's the election heads who get replaced every election, but the government apparatus that stays consistent underneath is still competent.
how rational is it to escalate against Russia, Iran and China simultaneously and drive them into a technology sharing military alliance and Eurasian superpower? The rational thing would have been to pick them apart one at a time, divide and conquer slowly through soft-power on the one hand, and terrorist hybrid-warfare on the other. Like what Obama was doing to reel Iran in, then Trump irrationally destroyed their neoliberalizing trade deal and made Iranian anti-imperialist hardliners come into full uncontested power. That's not rational. Letting Israel openly gendocide and isolating itself is not rational. They should be doing it slowly and covertly.
Funding ETIM/ISIS to fuck up Belt-and-Road infrastructure under Obama was evil but rational from the empire's short-term perspective. Obama's strategies of NGOs and money on one hand, and terrorist networks on the other was very effective at colonizing and subduing Libya, Syria, Afghanistan and African nations for their resources.
What we are doing now is very different. Biden's admin does not have the steady cunning hand of Obama's.