Title is a reference to Resistance imagery about how Israeli soldiers will enter Gaza alive but leave it in coffins - the same is true for American soldiers in the Middle East if the regional war expands.
The image is of the Fattah-1 Iranian hypersonic ballistic missile, which its creators boast can overcome any missile defense system on the planet, has a range of 1400 kilometers (and thus Iran can strike Israel), and has a terminal impact velocity of Mach 13.
Dozens of American soldiers have been injured and 3 have been killed on a base in the Middle East. There has been confused reports about whether the attack was on Syrian territory or Jordan's - the Al-Tanf base is in Syria, but Tower-22 in Jordan is another base that helps supply Al-Tanf, and Tower-22 is the one that is alleged to have been hit. These is the first confirmed deaths of American troops since the conflict began, though it's not likely that this is actually the first deaths after hundreds of drone/missile strikes throughout the region on American bases, unless you think American soldiers are having extremely timely heart attacks just after a missile hits.
The attack is certainly impactful, though it does also have considerably symbolism. Courtesy of John Helmer:
The operational success of the strike for the attackers is strategic. Tower-22 is a logistics, supply, and rear guard post for the Al-Tanf base which US troops are operating thirty kilometres north across the border in Syria. The attack demonstrates that both Tower-22 and Al-Tanf, Jordan and Syria, are newly vulnerable to weapons which the US forces have failed to detect and neutralize. Just as significantly, the massive US airbase called Muwaffaq Salti, 230 kilometres west across Jordan, is also vulnerable now.
It indicates that Iran now possesses Russian expertise in countering American equipment:
“This is a significant accomplishment,” one of the sources said. “Was the bypassing of the US air defence system at Tower-22 pulled off with Russian assistance? US bases generally rely on the C-RAM [Counter Rocket, Artillery and Mortar] system. It was sent to Ukraine last year where the Russians have been learning to defeat it. What now of American EW [electronic warfare]? They’ve been doing a fair job of knocking drones down up to now. It seems a ‘coincidence’ that, not a week after the meetings in Moscow with Arabs and Iranians, we see this success. It’s a success the circumstances of which, we can be sure, Biden and Austin are not keen to advertise.”
I am putting my take on the table right now: I am 99% certain that the US won't attack Iran directly. I think we are still quite a while away from that being a possibility. Much more likely is that Iranian officials in Iraq or Syria will be hit by a retaliatory strike, as Israel has done recently. It is a significant escalation nonetheless. And it comes as Israel seems to be gearing up for a suicidal war with Hezbollah.
The Country of the Week is Iran! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Updates continue to be AWOL - but I am cooking something. Hopefully.
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.
Most targeted sites completely evacuated before aggression
Deeply silly stuff from the US here. Like most military actions nowadays, the narrative is seen as more important than the actual impact. No fucking shit that warning groups days ahead of a strike would lead to them moving equipment around. Announcing your targets before you strike them is Ukraine-level dipshittery.
"Yeah, I don't think these groups that have been bombed for the last couple decades will have developed any countermeasures to being bombed yet." Every day, I am thankful for American military incompetence.
Eh. I'm not going to complain. The U.S. gets to parade around like they've made some kind of devastating blow (and it does allow them to destroy infrastructure, so it's not like it makes the move useless to them unfortunately), but it reduces or eliminates the actual people they might have murdered.
I'm sure they didn't do it to be nice. TBH they're probably not looking to make a bunch more martyrs and likely invite shit-loads more attacks on their own bases in the area, because they know they can't adequately defend those bases. So they get to appease the neocons at home a bit while—they hope—not building a situation fraught with tons of future embarrassment.
Or that's my thinking, anyway. I'm no expert on this shit. But I'm glad the U.S. didn't slaughter boatloads of people this time around. Small blessings.
Making deals with the Great Satan. There's no win-win.
Or the U.S. offering one, in any case. At least that's my thinking. Something like, "We've got to do some damage to save face. When we murder people and make martyrs, we know that tends to rile people up, so how about we just destroy a little military infrastructure instead? We good?"
Whether or not the people on the receiving end of that "offer" take the "deal" or not...remains to be seen, I guess.
It might also not be the "offer" I'm hoping it is, in that the U.S. could have also just kept covering up the casualties and could have quietly withdrawn from those bases. Are they trying to buy time so they can move troops and supplies in, or trying to destroy enough infrastructure that locals become, "dependent upon the U.S. for their security" (eyeroll), or...?
There are videos on X/twitter of ammo storage facilities blowing up with secondary explosions, but that's it really. Everything else was probably removed. The only people that were killed were probably the poor rear guard that stayed behind to protect the base. Everyone else would've evacuated. The US even warned the Iraqi government beforehand about the strikes. As predicted, there was probably a lot of back channel discussions between the US and Iran, Iraq and Syria, which led to the evacuation of these bases. Honestly this seems like a move for Joe Biden's re-election campaign so he doesn't seem "weak".
Though there are more US airstrikes incoming over the coming weeks. The situation with the ships in the Red Sea is untenable for the US though, either the Navy ships leave, or one of them will be hit. I don't think airstrikes will remove Yemen's capability to strike ships. As you said, these groups have countermeasures to minimise damage from airstrikes, especially the Houthis in Yemen which were subjected to the Saudi air campaign for close to a decade. So that could be one reason why ceasefire negotiations are going on. If a ceasefire is called, the US hopes that Yemen will cease it's naval blockade.
Biden making the same mistakes as Obama and Clinton before him. Being a "tough guy" will never keep the Republicans from seeing you as soft no matter what you do. You can bomb Belgrade and drone strike children. Doesn't matter. They'll still call you a pussy.
clinton and obama got called pussies and they also got reelected. literally no Dem is under the impression that they will appease the GOP base, which made up of lunatic freaks. they are under the (correct) impression they can appease and impress the small margin of normal white, suburban voters, who think its important to save face, but also arent crazy enough to call for a world war.