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.
One potential hypothesis, highly unlikely but non zero possibility: could Israel be using "nuclear blackmail" against the United States?
Sounds wild and highly unrealistic, but here me out. We know that Israel cannot destroy or even damage Fordow with conventional weapons, but Israel could have low yield tactical nuclear weapons with an Earth Penetrating Warhead (EPW). Israel also says that they have their "own plan" to deal with Fordow. What if Israel's "own plan" is to use nuclear EPWs on Fordow, and Israel is telling the US that if they don't send in the B-2s with the conventional GBU-57 MOP bunker buster to bomb Fordow, that Israel will use nuclear EPWs on Fordow. A form of "nuclear blackmail". The Zionists might just be mad enough to pull something like this.
Plausible, my only counter is that I am becoming increasingly concerned that the US/Israel/NATO really want to “break the seal” on tactical nukes and Fordow represents the perfect opportunity for this. The West could easily spin that tactical nukes were the only option there, and the number killed would presumably be very low (US could potentially warn when they will bomb and tell Iran to evacuate, even). The real goal here wouldn’t even be the destruction of Fordow but to try and get the world over its fear of tactical nukes. If the US is able to nuke Fordow without much criticism, get ready to see tactical or even low yield conventional nukes in the places where the West decides to turn its imperialist gaze (I could see them going back and dropping tactical nukes on Yemen and Lebanon if they do so on Fordow and face no consequences).
I'm old enough to remember the Bush administration floating the idea of using tactical nukes. The Us has been wanting to legitimize their use for a long time, and now there is a perfect opportunity.
They never could've dug a hole deep enough for General MacArthur to not claw back from.
This bloke is very confident that Israel has already used a tactical nuke in Syria last year. Others say it was an ammo depot, but I did find this report. Not sure what to make of this info though or how reliable it is.
Pissreal using a nuclear bomb and not telling anybody is not something that would surprise me in the slightest.
this isn't unlikely, this is the officially stated doctrine of Israel. They blackmail everyone around them constantly
Also Israel has a huge amount of their intelligence services (spies) in Washington DC.
Many countries have that there. But Israel has the most spies and agents per square foot of the capital building. And they spend a lot of time, and money, blackmailing office holders.
This is not a new thing and talking about it goes in and out of fashion over the years.
But I think that Israel has multiple methods to get its way in Washington. They personally threaten people, they threaten to use nukes, and they threaten to spend funds in the primaries.
And this is in addition to the true believers in Congress who think an Israeli state is an important requirement for their sky god to destroy the world (Armageddon). Many underestimate this.
It’s 30 layers of corruption and craziness built up over 3/4 of a century
The Zionists hounded James Forrestal to his death over his opposition to the creation of Israel, and possibly assassinated him outright. It’s been going on for decades.
Not the first time Israel has threatened the US with nukes.
I guess I find it hard to believe the US couldn't just shut down Israeli nukes before it became an issue. You know they have every single bit of possible intel, played a major have in the tech, could precision bomb every site, intercept the relatively small number of missiles, and maybe even have a backdoor to just turn it off. Like, if Israel threatened Trump with a nuke, don't you think he'd just bomb the fuck out of them?
i'm sure the U.S. knows where most of them are but no back doors since they are of French design.
if the U.S. cared they absolutely could perform an op to seize most and intercept some but I'd imagine some would get through even if perfectly executed
If I were president and Israel even implied they'd use nukes, I'd tell them we're going to launch fighters from the Mediterranean to Iran but have them bomb every single nuclear site within an hour, before Israel could even understand what was happening.
Why the hell aren't I president?
i'd vote for you
If Israel did use nuclear weapons what possible consequences would they face? A shrug from the rules-based international community as they strengthen sanctions against Iran when it comes time to rebuild?
Israel will never face consequences for their actions until they are dropped by the United States unfortunately. They could nuke Tehran proper and nobody would bat an eye.
It's their only play. Without US intervention, in a matter of weeks Tel Aviv would look like Gaza. They either nuke Iran to save themselves, destroying the international US led status quo since 1945 or the US keeps it conventional by bearing as much of the war as Israel wants it to.
Edit: and if Israel drops nukes I think the chances of Pakistan getting involved and possibly responding in kind skyrockets.
if i were writing a tom clancy book i'd have israel drop one of those on Fordow and assassinate Khamenei and then claim that it was an iranian nuclear test but that they don't have a second bomb so all the other genocidal fascist states need to fully commit to a conventional war.
What is stopping Israel from just going ahead and doing it? They could simply lie and say they used some secret non-nuclear capability. The explosion would be contained underground, and the contamination would be mixed with the destroyed nuclear fuel. Plausible deniability, and I seriously doubt anyone would question it.
Don't think so, the radiation from some enriched U-235 leaking and a nuclear detonation should be quite different, and even if the explosion is mostly contained underground, there should still be some ejecta. No expert on nuclear weapons though.
Though using nuclear weapons if radiation is going to leak anyways could lower the threshold for their use.
Noble gasses (e.g. xenon) diffuse through the ground into the atmosphere and can be detected some time after detonation. For example, from memory all the DPRK underground nuclear tests were confirmed with atmospheric results.