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.

An image of Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, c. February, where Iranian strikes have caused substantial damage and several US soldier deaths and casualties.

My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.

preamble

After an uncertain beginning to this second major period of hostilities, we can now see the overall plan for either side.

For the Americans, their fire has been primarily focussed on southern Iran, where they have been attempting to break Iran’s control of Hormuz by a steady campaign of striking both military and civilian sites. Additionally, it looks like the US is attempting to shape the battlefield around Bandas Abbas and Qeshm Island for some kind of incursion, as we have seen bridges and tunnels in the vicinity struck by missiles. The key word there is “attempting”, because there are several things wrong with this plan both tactically and strategically.

Tactically, Iran has demonstrated the ability to very quickly get their transportation infrastructure repaired, and the US simply isn’t firing volleys in the required amounts - and towards the right targets (they’re using several missiles on purely civilian targets, like fishing boats) - to meaningfully degrade Iranian control of even this sector of the coastline. Additionally, an amphibious assault on Qeshm Island in the style of the WW2 Pacific theater is essentially impossible unless Iran, for whatever reason, allowed it. The gauntlet that any ship holding Marines would have to run to get to the island precludes this, let alone also transporting heavy weaponry and materiel for resupply. Using helicopter-borne troops or paratroopers would be much more feasible, but runs into even greater logistical problems if the US wanted to do anything there other than a brief skirmish before withdrawing. Strategically, even if the US waved a magic wand and took Qeshm Island, it’s unclear what this would do to fulfill war aims. The most obvious intention would be to trade it back to Iran in return for a major Iranian concession, but what if you take the island, you call up Iran saying “Alright, let’s get this deal running! First, I want no Hormuz tolls–” and Iran just… hung up, and kept firing drones and missiles and artillery at your forces on the island until they either all died or were forced to retreat? It’s not a tenable position to hold, and Iran’s capabilities to affect shipping in Hormuz are obviously not all concentrated on one single island.

So, what is Iran’s strategy? It’s what one analyst (Amerikanets) has termed “debasification”. If the first phase of the war from late February to mid-April was focussed primarily on generally destroying and disrupting the US’s military infrastructure in the region, what this second phase has planned is something more like a region-wide missile advance. Starting from the Gulf states and their US bases, the plan is to push back American planes and soldiers to further and further afield bases and thereby make sorties against Iran take much more time, fuel, and use more resupply planes. Iranian strikes are, as of me writing this, concentrated on Jordan, where a recent Iranian strike caused the first admission of soldier deaths in quite some time. The Iranian goal is clearly to push back all US planes to at least the Zionist entity, by which point, unless they are withdrawn further back all the way to Europe, the planes will all be so concentrated on so few bases that it will become a physical impossibility to get them all scrambled before Iranian strikes hit. Compared to the US’s strategy, Iran’s is immediately bearing fruit, with US strikes already very limited in intensity compared to the first phase of the war months ago. The irony of the US breaking off negotiations - again! - to pursue a new strategy that already looks to be profoundly failing is truly some inspired stuff; the genocidal architects of American imperium in the mid-20th century are rolling in their graves.

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:

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.

  • Tervell [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    29·
    2 days ago

    Rare Earths are actually common as fuck, what’s rare is the scale of industry and an workforce trained in material sciences. This can be developed or bought with enough money and time

    “with enough money and time” is really burying the lede here. A massive amount of money and time, so nowhere near soon enough to address their current problems. What possible indication do you see from the state of American industry (https://hexbear.net/comment/7308554) that they’ll be able to pull this off within a reasonable timeframe? They’re trying to “solve” the problem with startups for fucks sake (https://hexbear.net/post/8655385/7206767), the entire American reindustrialization plan is a blatant corruption scheme.

    Also, love the “enough money” being thrown out after all the complaints you had about non-doomers not being materialist enough - like, one of the most basic materialist points is that what matters is actual productive capacity, not money, which should have been pretty clearly demonstrated by the Ukraine war and Russia being able to massively outproduce NATO in artillery shells despite their supposed “gas stations masquerading as a country” and “GDP lower than Italy” status. The Americans can throw as much money as they want at the problem, but that’s not how this fucking works! (https://hexbear.net/post/8953778/7289530)

    The oil in their reserves is an issue for the overall economy, but their military can still function unhindered well beyond that. The limit of a couple weeks we have discussed is for the public, not for the war machine which has its portion already set-aside.

    Uh huh… https://hexbear.net/comment/7287447

    The next largest item requested by the White House is $17.3 billion for operational costs of the war. The initial campaign against Iran included a wide array of aircraft, ships, and ground assets that require fuel, maintenance, and repairs. The subsequent naval blockade sustained many of these logistics expenses, which were exacerbated as fuel costs rose due to Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz. In May, military leaders warned that they would have to begin curtailing some regular training exercises and operations this summer

    Their F35s and SEAD allows them to clear paths into Iran and use cheap and plentiful glidebombs. They can do this when they feel they need to, it just takes a lot of effort so they do it in waves.

    Indistinguishable from American nationalist arguments of “we could have totally won Korea/Vietnam/Iraq/Afghanistan if we wanted, we just didn’t try hard enough because of the politicians!”. Okay, where is this American campaign of cheap and plentiful bombs? They bombed Iran for 40 days and achieved no strategic objective, and still ran through a bunch of their stockpiles of standoff munitions. Their sortie rate was already decreasing towards the end of that campaign, and it’s massively lower now, plus they’re stuck mainly bombing the coastal provinces, plus they have less and less viable bases to fly from, which further degrades their capabilities. They’re redeploying more assets, including some planes likely meant for SEAD/DEAD, but this is clearly showing that they can’t just launch a campaign like that whenever they want, they have to do a whole bunch of preparation first.

    I mean, you said yourself “it just takes a lot of effort so they do it in waves” - so clearly, they can’t just do this whenever, it takes building up.

    And this also shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how military equipment works (which will be elaborated on a bit further down) - dropping cheap munitions still costs you a ton in maintenance, especially with sophisticated modern planes. The US is already suffering massive readiness issues, and large-scale air campaigns make this way worse. Objectively, the US cannot just do this whenever forever, because they’ll run their airframes ragged until they can’t fly anymore.

    but I think the USA can sustain its current warmongering actions for years

    I mean… sure? Like, the collapse of the empire isn’t going to happen tomorrow, obviously they can still be evil for quite a while longer. But their capabilities are clearly declining - it’s just a slow and gradual thing. This isn’t an action movie, the empire isn’t going to be defeated in a nice tightly-paced 90 minutes.

    especially if they keep pausing

    That’s not how this works. During all these “pauses”, the fleet is still deployed and suffering attrition by just sitting there (https://hexbear.net/comment/7316668). During the MOU period, there were still a massive amount of planes flying to support the attempts to sneak tankers through, and suffering attrition.

    Their air fleet is so vast

    And suffering massive readiness issues, meaning the paper number of how many planes they have does not in any way reflect their actual combat capabilities. (https://hexbear.net/post/8715849/7231598, https://hexbear.net/post/8771608/7241055, https://hexbear.net/post/8594869/7193185)

    They’re still far ahead of everyone else, yes, (not for long though https://hexbear.net/post/8195194/7105754 catgirl-smug ) but their capacity to keep conducting campaigns is nevertheless decreasing, And, as the Iran war is showing, a massive airforce isn’t an instant win button - there are countermeasures against bombardment campaigns. Again, the massive 40-day bombardment campaign did not succeed - it did not meaningfully degrade Iranian missile capabilities, it did not prevent American bases from getting wrecked, it did not prevent the Gulf states’ oil infrastructure sites from being hit. If this, one of the largest deployments of American air assets in recent years, with a massive expenditure of highly sophisticated munitions, could achieve so little results, then… what does this vast air fleet actually do for the empire?

    reserves so deep

    Also, not how this works - military equipment has a shelf life. The air force is shrinking - old equipment is being retired and production of new stuff is far too slow to replace planes at the same rate they’re being retired (https://hexbear.net/comment/7097518), there’s not enough pilots (https://hexbear.net/comment/7176253), not enough trainers (https://hexbear.net/comment/7297099). And as the airforce is being forced to fly planes long past their intended retirement (https://hexbear.net/comment/6710346), the readiness issues are only going to get worse, and the risk of accidents is only going to increase.

    The F-35 in particular has dreadful readiness rates for how new of a plane it is (https://hexbear.net/comment/6468713). These deep reserves aren’t relevant if all the planes start falling apart in a decade.

    So, in the end - if you simply have no understanding whatsoever of how military equipment or logistics work, it does indeed seem like the empire is unbeatable and will just be able to go on forever. But uh… no.

    Sorry if I’m being too harsh, but we’ve been having this argument over and over, and you don’t seem to take anything in, it’s just the same 5D chess argumentation over and over again, which is just not backed up by anything. You complain about others not being materialist enough, and yet when actual materialist arguments about the state of American military capabilities are presented to you, you seem to not consider them at all, and just keep going with your original point and completely refuse to acknowledge that all these imperial misadventures have substantial costs to the war machine.

    I would like to be presented with an actual well-thought-out argument for how the empire can keep this up, one that acknowledges readiness issues, slow production, deindustrialization, corruption within the industry that’s left, etc. Not vague statements of “they just can, okay?”. I would like to see an argument for how the US is going to fix its rare earths problem, not “this can be developed or bought with enough money and time”.