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114

Bulletins and International News Discussion from June 15th to June 21st, 2026 - The Memorandum of Misunderstanding (hexbear.net)

submitted 2 days ago by SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net to c/news@hexbear.net

405 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A reminder that as the US continues to threaten countries around the world, fedposting is to be very much avoided (even with qualifiers like "in Minecraft") and comments containing it will be removed.

Image is of Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi (below) and Iranian Speaker of Parliament Ghalibaf (above, right) in the Iranian parliament in 2024. These two figures have played a major role in the war so far.

My summary of the situation as I understand it is in spoiler tags below.

summary

After many long weeks, Iran and the US have agreed that they're going to begin negotiations on certain topics in a process lasting at least 60 days. Due to America's perfidy during previous negotiations, trust has broken down so far that Iran demanded $12 billion of their frozen funds and several other promises, such as the end to the naval blockade, to even return to the table, which seems perfectly reasonable to me. Iran also demanded that negotiations take place in two stages, and that nuclear issues will only be discussed in the second stage, which will be several weeks from now if everything goes as planned.

The terms of the MoU have themselves been a big source of confusion and suspicion, for me and many other pro-Iranian spectators. Getting the wording exactly correct is important, because the US really is like the devil - leave room for any possible interpretation in the contract that favors them more, and they'll insist that this was the only interpretation up for discussion. Additionally, the US might be historically bad at winning wars, but they're very, very good at winning peaces: they set up the post-WW2 order to best suit them by playing the European powers off each other; the DPRK might have survived the Korean War politically intact but existed for nearly the next hundred years as a sanctioned pariah; Vietnam was soon forced to economically engage with the country that had dropped triple of all the bomb tonnage of WW2 on them; and so on. It is no exaggeration when I say that the negotiation phase will be the most dangerous part of this war and it could lead to the most death and destruction without a single missile impacting Iran.

However, there's one little genocidal colony in the region that could stop this whole process from even beginning, as the US appears to have promised Iran that the Zionists will stop the war against Lebanon (and perhaps Gaza too? I'm a little unclear) and even withdraw entirely from southern Lebanon, including all bases set up since this broader conflict began. Apparently, the US promised this in return for Iran not striking the Zionists in return for their most recent strike on Beirut on June 14th. Now, the issue with this whole situation is that the US greenlit the Zionist strike on Beirut, and they knew that Iran would respond to it because they did in response to an earlier strike. If the US made such major concessions to Iran in return for this response strike not occurring, then why authorize the Beirut strike at all? Why make their position worse? Right now, I can think of two reasons. First is that they attempted to create one final embarrassment for Iran, under the assumption that Iran was so desperate for a deal that they wouldn't risk responding. Second is that this is all one big ruse or misdirection; the US does not intend to follow through with the MoU and subsequent negotiations anyway, and so the terms they're "agreeing" to don't really matter.

With the MoU signing apparently set for June 19th, we'll know for sure soon.

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.

The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine

If you have evidence of Zionist 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 the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:

UNRWA reports on the Zionists' 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.

Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.

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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[–] Tervell@hexbear.net 31 points 8 hours ago

https://archive.ph/83HUk

UK defense chief says operations to be ‘dialed back’ without additional spending

Richard Knighton, chief of the UK defense staff, told a House of Lords committee today that he is “most concerned” about day-to-day operations budgeting.

The UK’s most senior uniformed official gave a warning to lawmakers today that future military operations will be reduced if extra funding is not approved by Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the Treasury to support the Ministry of Defence. Richard Knighton, chief of the UK defense staff, told a House of Lords committee that he is “most concerned” about day-to-day operations budgeting, which falls under a Resource Departmental Expenditure Limit (RDEL) account. “Without changes to the settlement that, as [former Defense Secretary] John Healey set out” then operations, training and exercising “will come under pressure,” Knighton said. Healey resigned from his post last week, amid a row over a defense funding plan, which he viewed as insufficient, and said “could make the country less safe.” When asked by George Robertson, chair of the Lords International Relations and Defence Committee, if the UK will have to reduce its capabilities as funding uncertainty persists, Knighton said, “We will have to dial back our activities and our exercise and operational activity if the level of resource funding that is available to us does not increase.” He further noted that the matter “is still to be debated and decided.”

It remains to be seen if Starmer and the Treasury will offer new UK Defense Secretary Dan Jarvis funding above £13.5 billion ($18.1 billion), a figure reportedly offered to Healey in a bid to stem a £18 billion gap to support big ticket acquisitions. The alleged budget is reportedly set to be partly funded by cutting other departments’ capital budgets by 1 percent. The new funding is set to be included in the UK’s forthcoming Defence Investment Plan (DIP), billed to outline major equipment investments and cuts over the next decade. After months of delay, the document is expected to be published before the NATO Summit in Ankara next month. “What we need is a clear path” to meet NATO’s core defense spending target of 3.5 percent GDP, Knighton said today. “We will need to settle what that trajectory is, because it’s that which gives us the ability to plan, and industry the ability to know what to expect.” The UK committed at the NATO Summit in the Hague last year to hit the new alliance target by 2035. Starmer is proposing spending of 2.68 percent GDP by 2030, up from 2.3 percent spent in 2025.

Knighton revealed, however, that cuts are on the way near term. “In the [2025] Strategic Defence Review … the plan was for some capabilities to be removed from service, because they could be modernized, they could be delivered in more effective ways,” as the UK took heed of lessons from wars in Ukraine, Nagorno-Karabakh and the Middle East, he outlined. He pushed back on any sense that the UK’s credibility in the eyes of NATO allies has been adversely affected by the DIP delay. Since taking up the post of chief of the defense staff last year, “One of the things that has struck me is just how valued the UK’s leadership is in NATO,” he noted. Knighton pointed to two joint British-French missions, as examples of deployments where “other nations look to us to lead.” The European partners are committed to leading the coalition of the willing in Ukraine, and the maritime multinational mission in the Strait of Hormuz, once peace is restored in Kyiv and the troubled waterway.

"we're committed to going in after all the trouble's over"

The UK “may soon have to put our money where our mouth is” to adequately support those planned international operations, “but where’s the money?” Paul Taylor, senior visiting fellow at the Belgian-based, European Policy Centre think tank, told Breaking Defense today. “There is an enduring mismatch between the UK wanting to exert leadership in NATO on defense” and its available resources, added the analyst.