Bulletins and News Discussion from April 8th to April 14th, 2024 - First Iran-Israel War Megathread
Bulletins and News Discussion from April 8th to April 14th, 2024 - First Iran-Israel War Megathread
Iran has struck Israel.
previous preamble
The continuing fall of the remains of the British Empire is pretty entertaining from the outside: an archaic royal family that is seemingly being smote with disease by God itself for their past crimes; a navy that virtually no longer functions, ramming into foreign ports and under constant repair; and an economy that cannot seem to stop sputtering, fucked whether they're in the EU or outside it. Watching the impacts on people from the inside is a little more worrying, though.
A fifth of the population is in poverty, including nearly a third of all children. These figures have barely shifted since the Labour government in the early 2000s, aside from a decreasing poverty rate for pensioners. Actually, poverty hasn't substantially shifted since Margaret Thatcher. Before her, the poverty rate was around 14%, but her catastrophic policies caused a major increase, and poverty levels since then are still 50% higher than over 50 years ago, because neoliberal economic policy since then has not fundamentally changed. Parties and corporations have impoverished the usual vulnerable groups, such as large families, minority ethnic groups (including half of Pakistani and Bangladeshi households!) and disabled people. These differences are also regional, with the North more impoverished than the richer Southeast (but some of the poorest boroughs are in London, so it's a complex pattern).
With Corbyn's defeat in 2019 mere months before the pandemic began, the Labour Party shifted back towards the right, with left-wingers purged from the party if they did not kowtow to Keir Starmer. This leaves us with a situation where the only substantial difference between the two parties would be on social policy, but it goes without saying that economic policy is the overwhelming factor that determines if minorities can have a decent life. Worker-oriented movements since then have been largely not under the umbrella of major party leaderships, such as the Don't Pay movement in late 2022 that arose in the wake of dramatically rising energy prices where 3 million people vowed to not pay them (which did lead to results).
Most notably recently is the major upset in the constituency of Rochdale - the victory of George Galloway - who is the leader of the Workers Party of Britain, which describes itself as both socialist and socially conservative. This took place both in the context of aforementioned economic troubles, as well as anger over Israel's genocide of Gaza in the British population, especially in British Muslims. It remains to be seen how much of this is an isolated event, especially as Corbyn has, understandably, refused to collaborate with Galloway due to his socially conservative stances. The UK general election will be held at some point within the next 9 months or so, and might well be a shitshow depending on what happens domestically and geopolitically before then; parallels to the current American electoral shitshow with increasing anger over Biden are pretty apparent. The Conservatives are quite likely to lose given 14 years of uninspired rule if current polling is correct, but it truly is a race to the bottom.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The Country of the Week is the United Kingdom! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel's 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
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.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
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.
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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https://twitter.com/fadiquran/status/1779426300760850642
"On Iran’s strike:
At Stanford, I attended a masterclass on military strategy led by a person with decades of experience, including serving at the highest levels in the military and government.
One lesson he thought that I always remember was this:
He asked us:
“Say the US decided to attack Iraq with a new stealth jet it hadn’t used before that evaded all radars? The attack was a success. Was it strategic?”
Many in the class raised their hands to say “yes, it achieved its goal”. But the professor said: “It may not have been”.
Why?
“Because now your adversaries know your capabilities and it’s a matter of time before they find ways around them. If this attack could be done with conventional weapons, it’s better to keep your top weapons until you need them. Using them creates a disadvantage.”
My analysis is that the scale of Iran’s attack, the diversity of locations it targeted, and weapons it used, forced Israel to uncover the majority of anti-missile technologies the US and it have across the region.
The Iranians did not use any weapons Israel didn’t know it had, it just used a lot of them. But the Iranians likely now have almost a full map of what Israel’s missile defence system looks like, as well as where in Jordan and the Gulf the US has installations. It also knows how long it takes to prepare them, how Israeli society responds…etc
This is a huge strategic cost to Israel, while Arab regimes now are being blasted by their peoples, particularly the Jordanian monarchy, for not doing anything to protect Gazans but then going all out to protect Israel.
Crucially, Iran can now reverse engineer all the intel gathered from this attack to make a much more deadly one credible. While the US and Israel will have to re-design away from their current model which has been compromised. Its success in stopping this choreographed attack is thus still very costly.
Moreover, with the threat of a regional war that neither the US nor the Arab regimes want feeling nearer, it’s likely their pressure on Israel to back down will increase, making a ceasefire more feasible.
Anyone assuming this is just theatrics is missing the context of how militaries assess strategy versus tactics. Theatre is an important factor, but gathering intelligence of the “enemy’s” posture is more valuable, especially if one believes they’re in a long war of attrition.
Netanyahu and the Israel government prefer a quick hot and urgent war where they can pull in America. The Iranians prefer a longer war of attrition that bleeds Israel of its deterrence capabilities and makes it an ally for Arabs and the US that’s too costly to have.
Lastly, if you are a person who hates war, if you want peace, the best and only way to get there in the region is to support the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and dignity.
There is no sustainable peace possible as long as Palestinians live under an oppressive system of apartheid."
The zionist cope in the replies
"Israel will retaliate with a precision strike that will bring Iran to its knees!"
Absolutely detached from reality
Bang on. The intelligence aspect of what's been going on since the Russian SMO has been the most interesting aspect to analyze. How did Palestinian resistance fighters mount such a successful offensive AND such a successful defensive and how did the IOF fail to breach so many positions? How did the Russian SMO go from absolutely going to happen (USA) to not going to happen at all (Ukraine) to happening earlier than anyone expected? How did Russia do it with old gear, cheap gear, not revealing much in terms of significant tech, and knowing enough not to overextend to the degree that it has a larger military than before the SMO? How is Yemen successfully shutting down international shipping through the straight and how can the USA not stop it? When multiple very local conflicts emerged post Russian SMO, how did they get resolved so quickly, including the Wagner situation? How did the Niger situation emerge when it did, how did the French get surprised by it, how did the Palestinian resistance emerge so soon after that? Where are the supply chains and how is it the USA hasn't shut them down or even seemingly disrupted them?
The intelligence angle is THE angle in my opinion. It reveals a long history that I think most analysts have been missing. Chinese spy hunting seems to be a recent development. KGB spy hunting, however, was absolutely famous and incredibly effective. Militaries, especially intelligence groups, maintain communication lines between nation-states even when those nation-states don't have formal ties. Did the Sino-Soviet split disrupt intelligence ties, or only formal ties? Did the die-hard communists in the KGB feed China spy hunting capabilities? Is Putin, KGB trained, the only known head of state trained as a spy hunter against the West? Does that play into this?
We have to look at the intelligence angle. Sun Tzu wrote about it 1600 years ago. WW2 was the emergence of computerized intelligence in warfare. We'd be foolish not to be analyzing contemporary events through the lens of who knows what when, who knows who knows, and who knows who knows who knows.
I had not considered that angle at all, that is a very good point. I understand why people are saying material damage isn't necessarily the most important part of this attack.
Over the next few days/weeks, any Iranian/allied observers will take careful note of any new supply lines coming into the interceptor sites too. Future attacks might spend some ordinance cratering some roads or warehouses that might have been storing interceptor missiles and maintenance supplies stored well away from the launchers themselves.
I’m curious as to whether Iran was able to deploy any ELINT capability last night. Obviously it’s too far from Iranian airspace, but could have they deployed an ELINT capable drone amongst the Shahed drone waves?
I ask, as there is the (admittedly unlikely) possibility for Elon to have enabled the funniest situation, given Starlink usage by Ukrainian drones:
Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command in the Middle East, has stated that Starlink was used to connect unmanned aircraft, vessels and underwater vehicles operated by allied forces in a NATO exercise in Portugal. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/space/2023/02/14/musks-starlink-satellites-accelerating-development-of-drone-warfare/
Its most sophisticated drones are connected using Starlink, a system donated by Elon Musk that uses satellites in a low orbit to enable “high data rate” activities. “We use Starlink equipment and connect the drone team with our artillery team,” the officer said. https://archive.is/Hzftx
And….
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If you know the enemy, and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles - Sun Tzu
He might have been a psycho but he knew his shit.