Image is of a Quds Day march in Bandar Abbas, Iran.
It now seems likely that, very soon, the US and the Zionists will attempt to bomb Iran. Compared to the buildup to the Iraq War, the stated goals of such a move are being kept a little more generalized - some say the point is to overthrow the government for “humanitarian” purposes (others are more honest and want to partition Iran into a dozen powerless statelets). Some people instead say the point is to get rid of the ballistic missile program, which is synonymous with outright surrender, as no matter the deal, bombers would be en route within 10 minutes of the last batch being handed over.
Still others say that the goal is to destroy the Iranian nuclear program, which, as the thread title implies, is now in a bizarre propaganda superposition: it is apparently simultaneously true to the Trump administration that the US obliterated the nuclear facilities and set back Iran’s nuclear program years, if not decades, but also that Iran is mere days away from finishing a nuke and a new round of bombing is urgently required. This obviously casts newfound doubts on how effective US weapons even are at penetrating Iran’s underground facilities (though it doesn’t necessarily mean they didn’t breach them, as Iran was almost certainly moving nuclear material out of Fordow and other sites in the days before the Twelve Day War). The sheer quantity of US anti-air defense equipment they’re shifting into position also casts doubts on whether Iran’s air defense was mostly destroyed during that conflict, as those who assert that the Zionists had total air supremacy over Iran seem to be implying.
I’m not a military guy, and so I have no novel insights on how such a war is likely to go, nor do I feel confident predicting either side’s victory. I’m looking at most of the same sources that you’re all looking at. Some confidently boast of the total destruction of Iran’s air defense within hours, allowing US planes to fly directly over Iranian cities and drop bombs en masse; others cast doubts on whether this will ever occur, and say that the US’s limited supply of Tomahawk missiles is the only major firepower they will be able to safely unleash. Some say this war will last mere days before state collapse; others say months, maybe even years. I have no idea.
I do at least feel somewhat bolstered by the fact that Russia and China finally appear to be pouring in meaningful information and matériel to help Iran this time around, though of course, one can still debate whether it’s enough. I feel like we are at the culmination of decades of war planning by both the US and Iran, and the result could have deep ramifications indeed.
Last week’s thread is here.
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The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
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.
Reply to this post with additional material on how to participate in the anti-war movement.
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that’ll do, Feb 23 newsmega, that’ll do
To anyone wondering, this was the end of the last Shah of Iran:
Mohammad Reza wanted to go back to Mexico, saying he had pleasant memories of Cuernavaca, but was refused. Mexico was a candidate to be a rotating member of the UN Security Council, but needed the vote of Cuba to be admitted, and the Cuban leader Fidel Castro told President José López Portillo that Cuba’s vote was conditional on Mexico not accepting the Shah again.
He left the United States on 15 December 1979 and lived for a short time in the Isla Contadora in Panama. This caused riots by Panamanians who objected to the Shah being in their country. General Omar Torrijos, the dictator of Panama, kept Mohammad Reza Shah as a virtual prisoner at the Paitilla Medical Center, a hospital condemned by the former Shah’s US doctors as “an inadequate and poorly staffed hospital”, and in order to hasten his death allowed only Panamanian doctors to treat his cancer.
General Torrijos, a populist left-winger, had only taken in Mohammad Reza under heavy US pressure, and he made no secret of his dislike of Mohammad Reza, whom he called after meeting him “the saddest man he had ever met”. When he first met Mohammad Reza, Torrijos taunted him by telling him “it must be hard to fall off the Peacock Throne into Contadora” and called him a chupon, a Spanish slang term for “someone who is finished”.
Torrijos added to Mohammad Reza’s misery by making his chief bodyguard a militantly Marxist sociology professor who spent much time lecturing Mohammad Reza on how he deserved his fate because he had been a tool of the “American imperialism” that was ostensibly oppressing the Third World, and charged Mohammad Reza a monthly rent of US$21,000, making him pay for all his food and the wages of the 200 National Guardsmen assigned as his bodyguards.
Torrijos is underrated af lmao
President Carter did not wish to admit Mohammad Reza to the US but came under pressure from Henry Kissinger, who phoned Carter to say he would not endorse the SALT II treaty that Carter had just signed with the Soviet Union unless the former Shah was allowed into the United States, reportedly prompting Carter more than once to hang up his phone in rage in the Oval Office and shout “Fuck the Shah!”.
On 22 October 1979, President Jimmy Carter reluctantly allowed the Shah into the United States to undergo surgical treatment at the Weill Cornell Medical Center. While there, Mohammad Reza used the name of “David D. Newsom,” Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs at that time, as his temporary code name, without Newsom’s knowledge. Mohammad Reza’s time in New York was highly uncomfortable; he was under a heavy security detail as every day, Iranian students studying in the US gathered outside his hospital to shout “Death to the Shah!”, a chorus that Mohammad Reza heard.
The former Shah was obsessed with watching news from Iran, and was greatly upset at the new order being imposed by the Islamic Republic. Mohammad Reza could no longer walk by this time, and for security reasons had to be moved in his wheelchair under the cover of darkness when he went to the hospital while covered in a blanket, as the chances of his assassination were too great.
Sayed Mohammed Marandi: tw for footage
The number of schoolgirls murdered by the Epstein regime at their elementary school in Minab city has reached 115. They rape and murder girls. Now they bomb them.
I want every single person to remember that the very first wave of attacks on Iran the US-israeli death cult massacred over 100 little girls. Read this sentence out loud to yourself and sit with this. 115 little girls killed in an instant in a elementary school by a US missile.
This should be the first thing that you say to anyone you talk to who even hints that they support “overthrowing the regime.” There are many worse words that I want to write now but it is Ramadan.
https://xcancel.com/ripplebrain/status/2027873748020301883
In a matter of hours the Iranians have imposed a total air blockade and partial naval blockade on half a dozen countries. All it takes is a missile or Shahed once a day to keep every airport in the region closed. How long will the Gulf states be willing to tolerate this?
It’s well within Iranian capability to keep every international airport in Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Israel closed indefinitely.
Listening to the UN Security Council meeting.
The US just called it the United States Security Council and continued as if it wasn’t a mistake.
Freudian slip, but entirely correct.
Like in the 24 hours before kicking off a war against Iran, igniting the Middle East, the Defense Secretary of the United States had, as his priority, demanding that some actual children cease undermining the patriarchal order of the United States.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was apparently not invited to the Mar-a-Lago command room.
Instead he was ranting in twitter about girls being in Scouts.
What is going on?
Genuinely what calculus went into operation Epic Fortnite Chungus that made the US decide it was a good idea? They ignored every single war game scenario where Iran regularly fucks them up with drone and missile swarms to the point that the teams representing Iran are given special rules against using obviously plausible Iranian strategies to allow the U.S. to win. Did they seriously think a decapitation strike on an 80 year old man would topple a nation like Iran?
Now there’s a near constant barrage of not just missiles, but slow ass Shaheds turning US bases into cinders? This is so fucking funny. Where is the “superior” air defense? Iran hasn’t even brought out the big guns yet.
The PRC better have finished taking notes and started preparing its reunification with Taipei. The U.S. is completely ineffectual against a regional power everybody assumed it dwarfed immensely. At this point you’d have to imagine that the PRC would face essentially zero challenge to achieving its regional goals
So the gloves are off, the Gulf is burning, the dream of the UAE as a tourist hub is in shambles, many American troops are likely dead, Trump has been stunned into silence. All we’re missing is a carrier kill and some Saudi oil fields burning. What a difference in vibe from the opening of the Twelve Days War.
They really did believe there would be an internal uprising, they were honestly that delusional
Free from constraints Iran can begin to slowly pulverize US imperial infrastructure across the region; every base degraded is another year ticked off on the lifespan of the comprador regimes
Every hour the US and Israel wastes expending hundreds of tons of resources on interceptions adds hundreds of future new recruits to the ranks of anti-American groups
They stumbled into imperial catastrophe because to them the whole world is Gaza, that’s all they can see now
Absolutely brilliant move by Amerikkka to evacuate the barracks on a base to a hotel only 500 meters away, and then allowing service people to post pictures from their balconies.
It’s like asking to be hit by missiles. They got what they asked for.President Trump: ‘The entire Iranian military command is gone, and the rest wants to surrender’
“All the military command wants to surrender, they’re right here, just out of frame.” This is 100% something you say when you’re winning, in fact when you’re tired of winning.
IRGC is promising their biggest attack yet very soon. Please, Iran. Sink an aircraft carrier.
No statements to press expected from Trump today
The White House called a travel and photo lid at 4:22 p.m. ET on Saturday, signaling that President Donald Trump is not expected to make any in-person appearances before reporters at all today.
The press pool has not seen Trump in person since Friday, ahead of his early morning video announcement revealing US military strikes on Iran.
While a lid typically indicates no further public events, the president usually communicates through posts on Truth Social regardless of a lid. Trump has also been holding phone conversations with members of the media as developments unfold Saturday.
I think this is a sign things are going bad. If he had something to shout about he’d shout about it.
Baghdad Airport has been struck by the Iraqi resistance due to the American presence there. Super surreal to see the airport in flames, I flew out of there just a few months ago.
We also have unconfirmed reports of some kind of incident at the British Akrotiri Base in Cyprus. Might be an Iranian strike, might be some kind of British incompetence thing.
