We remain at a precipice in the Middle East, with the return of US strikes expected just after the midterm elections finish on November 3rd - perhaps even as soon as November 4th. With American military might substantially diminished from earlier in the year, there’s been a ton of speculation in various corners of the internet about what they could possibly be planning that would produce results worth the sacrifice of Iran’s massive retaliation expected in response. These theories, once limited to MOABs and another attempt at a broad assassination campaign against IRGC officials, now include the possibility of outright nuclear strikes on Iran, in order to try and penetrate Iranian underground facilities which have proved impervious to conventional weaponry (and are also very probably impervious to nuclear weaponry from what I’ve read, though I am far from an expert), and also to try and degrade the up-to-this-point steadfast resistance that the Iranians have put up since the war began.

Efforts by some in the Trump administration to engage in diplomacy are embarrassingly transparent; both the US and Iran know (and know that the other knows) that it’s just meaningless theater in preparation for further conflict. If a nuclear strike on Iran is indeed carried out - which I currently think is quite unlikely, but still the likeliest it’s been since February - then the reactions of other nuclear-armed countries around the world to the breaking of the nuclear taboo are difficult to predict; as is whether the US would receive meaningful economic/political/diplomatic consequences from countries with the power to deliver those consequences, most notably China and Russia.

My personal expectation is that the US will start hitting some Iranian refineries and power stations and conduct impressive-but-ineffectual strikes on Pickaxe Mountain. Iran, meanwhile, has planned to strike US and Zionist economic interests across the whole region, military bases outside of the region (namely, those in eastern Europe), and even suggested that they’ll cut the undersea cables feeding into the Persian Gulf. A preemptive strike by Iran now also seems to be a strong possibility, as they have hopefully gotten over their anxiety of being seen as an aggressor in the court of international opinion. The West’s ability to repel these potential strikes is now a shadow of even its limited ability in February, with many radars destroyed and interceptor stockpiles unable to be restored quickly due to American industrial bottlenecks. Iran’s leverage is now the highest it’s ever been as global oil and LNG buffers are very much drained. Pakistan, Turkiye, and Saudi Arabia recently sent various officials to Iran to discuss regional security (image above), a telling indication of the growing recognition that the future of West Asia relies on a security arrangement outside of the West’s dictum, but it seems unlikely to be a significant event in the short-term.

The protests continue throughout Europe, with every major country seeing a share of riot police facing down people angry at the economic hardship and the lack of even a gesture towards conditions changing; the neoliberal rot has set in far, far too deep for even the most tepid of reforms at this stage. Poland has been the latest political battleground - I won’t pretend to fully understand the situation after just some cursory reading, but it’s essentially an battle between pro-EU liberals and not-so-pro-EU conservatives calling each other totalitarian dictators after the former started off a constitutional crisis by remaking the Constitutional Tribunal.

Over in the US, tech stocks (most notably Intel’s) faced carnage mostly due to the ongoing lack of profitability of AI and the enormous amounts of debt that is accumulating to support the ever-increasing lack of revenue. This market plunge follows the one earlier in October in Asian (especially South Korean) markets; Michael Roberts has had great coverage of these dynamics over the last year, so I won’t go too far into it here. There’s also been a variety of interesting contingencies and warnings, such as that the electrical grid may be critically vulnerable and that US military bases should be able to last for at least 90 days off the grid in the event of war. The combination of the fact that NATO ran a nuclear exercise period in mid-October and all the myriad internet PHP vulnerabilities that are being discovered and hurriedly patched explains a great deal of the ominous warnings and preparations that we’ve been seeing, but there’s been some intriguing speculation whether Iran has figured out some major vulnerabilities in the US and might exploit them if the US strikes their own power grid.

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.

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.