Mere hours before Trump’s 8pm Tuesday deadline yesterday, Pakistan’s government contacted Iran with a US-written proposal for a two-week ceasefire, explicitly stated to also include Lebanon, during which they would negotiate a permanent end to the war on the basis of Iran’s 10 Points. Among other things, these points include 1) maintaining strict control (joint with Oman) over Hormuz, complete with a toll; 2) the end of sanctions on Iran; 3) keeping their enriched uranium; 4) a withdrawal of US forces from the Middle East [stated by the Supreme Leadership Council but not in the 10 Points, so who knows], and 5) some plausible guarantee that Iran would never be attacked again. I’ve heard rumors that China may have prodded Iran to accept these terms.
In theory, these are relatively confident and maximalist demands. In practice, Iran has already achieved military and economic control over Hormuz and the withdrawal of many US troops and bases from the region, so at least a few of Iran’s demands are, to a greater or lesser extent, already achieved, and with little hope for an increasingly exhausted US to undo these achievements short of nukes.
A couple hours after the ceasefire, the Zionist entity began a wave of airstrikes in Lebanon, killing hundreds of civilians, as well as flying drones into Iranian airspace. This was a strange move to make even if you assume - very sensibly - that the US is completely agreement non-capable: why not agree to the ceasefire and simply pretend to negotiate for two weeks while regrouping/repairing what assets you can and then start hitting Iran again?
One theory is that the Zionists are testing to what degree Iran is actually willing to have solidarity with Lebanon and Hezbollah. While the Resistance has been relatively united since October 7th, the formation of separate peaces instead of negotiating terms as a united front has been a major exploitable weakness. Alternatively, it’s been proposed that the US didn’t even consider using the ceasefire to regroup and deceive Iran, and that Trump merely wanted a way to chicken out of his threat on Iran’s electrical grid - the fact that US officials have since stated that Iran’s 10 Points were not the same ones they agreed to is a point supporting this, I suppose. If the conflict resumes and Trump does not deliver another 48 hour deadline (and/or makes it something silly like a month from now) then this could be the explanation.
From Iran, I am getting the sense that a lot is happening behind the scenes. Statements from top officials like Araghchi have stated quite plainly that there will be no ceasefire and no negotiations unless the Zionists stop attacking Lebanon, but as of ~24 hours after the ceasefire began, there has been no significant military response from Iran yet. There have apparently been phone calls between Araghchi and numerous regional officials, but it is unknown to what end. All the while, the global economic situation continues to deteriorate. Over the next week or two, the last tankers that left Hormuz before it closed will arrive at their destinations. If the missile exchanges begin once more, then the West, much like most of the rest of the world, will be experiencing all sorts of fuel, energy, food, and product shortages while trying to justify why they broke the ceasefire to kill more Lebanese civilians.
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
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.
I am sure this is what the fossil fuel monopolists and their political puppets in the US state would like to achieve, but it seems doomed to failure. This will only make reindustrialization even more impossible, it will obliterate AI, it will enrage a much more powerful China, doesn’t address Russia, can’t discipline financial capital, destroys every alliance (which are actually necessary to the maintenance of empire), and the US fundamentally lacks the industrial and political capacity to wage a long war against Iran.
Correct. But it’s even worse than that.
It accelerates electrification of industry, EVs, maybe even electrification of ships and planes.
The strain on US oil industry to sustain higher production will lead to more accidents and failures.
The US oil reserves were not filled, as they insanely believed that this would be a short war. These are set to run out soon.
The world’s consumers were have less disposable income to spend, and the rich will try to buy up assets to preserve wealth. Asset buy-up is not the same as economic activity. Two dudes swapping a stock between them doesn’t do anything for consumption.
The US failed to reindustrialize with tariffs and strongarming. Case in point, the Hyundai plant where ICE rounded up all of the engineers who were building it and who were meant to train local Americans.
The US is experiencing a brain drain, as the people most capable of reindustrializing America leave the instability and chaos the US is causing to try to retain empire.
There is so much to why the US is failing.
The fossil fuel CEOs saw the writing on the wall, and they would love to have a few great years to replace the slow decline and death that was awaiting them. So capital gets their profit rates back. US citizens pay the bill for the destruction.
https://www.spr.doe.gov/dir/dir.html
At least according to the DOE, they’ve basically not touched the reserves as of the (start?) of April. That’s just the reserves of the US itself though, and I have no clue how much the IEA has released out of the planned 400million barrels. Also, given how long it takes for shipments to get from hormuz to the US (about a month or more?), its possible that there was no reason to actually use it yet in March. Perhaps by May we’ll have significantly drained it.
Oh wow
I think this is one of the key points that “US 5D chess” takes don’t really tackle. They’re all predicated on the idea of “actually, the US looting its vassals to the bone is part of the masterplan and not desperate stripping the copper out of the walls”, which I don’t think holds up - empires need vassals to project power. This very war is a direct showing of that - without the US having bases in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Europe, as soon as they got driven out of the Gulf they would have basically been out for good, the one carrier in the Arabian sea could have simply not sustained any reasonable rate of sorties - but thanks to having a ton of vassals, losing their bases in the closest ones to Iran, while having an impact on operational tempo, still didn’t prevent them from being able to carry out a bombardment campaign.
Now, this doesn’t disprove it being the plan of course, just shows that it’s unlikely to work. Another aspect to the monopolization idea is that a monopoly doesn’t do anything for you if you crash everyone’s economy in the process of gaining it. The US cannot immediately make up for the loss of Gulf oil - so, in the interim, a whole bunch of countries’ economies are going to severely decline. Now, this is perfectly in line with the current capitalist class actually, who do seem to have generally lost grasp on the idea that products need to actually be bought at some point, and that squeezing everyone dry of all their wealth for short-term profits is going to eventually leave you with no further wealth to squeeze. But yes, not a recipe for long-term success.
The US’s capacity to actually maintain a global pirate regime is also doubtful, given the sheer costs involved - for example, Medhurst says at 29:48, “what guarantee does anyone have that the US won’t position another carrier strike group in the Indian ocean and do the exact same thing [as the Venezuela blockade]”. Well, there’s a very simple guarantee - there are no other carrier strike groups. The US now has three active CSGs, one of which really shouldn’t actually be active and has had its rest and maintenance delayed for so long that it might comically dissolve into dust at some point, one of which has already been in the region for two months and could really use some rest and resupply, and a final one which is traveling to the region, allegedly. The US, plainly, does not have the number of ships to actually control all naval chokepoints - they can keep their “backyard” in the Caribbean under control, and maybe have one more deployment elsewhere, at least for the immediate future, until more carriers come out of maintenance. Maybe in like 20 years, after a concerted effort to rebuild their shipyards (
the US would be able to carry this out - but by then this plan may or may not even be relevant anymore, depending on other economic and geopolitical developments.
The gameplan as outlined by Medhurst also falls apart if Russia and China also begin waylaying tankers headed for the Gulf of Mexico. I think Medhurst even implied this in his video (The British state has jailed him before because they think he’s a member of Hamas despite being a Syrian Christian, so he understandably can’t say everything on his mind due to state censorship). If the game becomes the US waylaying tankers headed for Iran and Russia/China waylaying tankers headed for the Gulf of Mexico, then it mostly resets the board. And since Russia has larger natural reserves than the US and China is much more ahead in renewables on top of being able to manufacture ships (in order to replace tankers captured or sunk by the USN) at a much higher rate than the US, the US still loses out in the long run.