Image is of Gazans breaking their fast with the Iftar meal during the ongoing Ramadan.
Due to a request by @miz@hexbear.net, this thread’s COTW is Qatar.
The ceasefire deal broke down early last week after Israel unilaterally changed the terms of the agreement and then blamed Hamas for not meeting them. Violence against civilians has rapidly accelerated to pre-ceasefire levels, with many hundreds dead already, aid once again cut off, and Israeli soldiers once again entering and occupying the attritional labyrinth that is Gaza.
I’m not yet in a position to make any solid predictions or analysis, as the geopolitical situation in and around Israel has changed fairly substantially over the last 6 months; in some ways benefiting Israel, and in other ways not. We know for sure how Hamas and Ansarallah are reacting (thankfully, with open hostility to both Israel and the United States), but the state of Hezbollah has been a giant question mark for months now, and precisely what Iran plans to do (beyond the usual level of supplying weaponry and intelligence to all the allies it can) is unknown. Syria will be almost certainly be a big wildcard, and we’ll have to see if the compradors in Damascus can weather the storm.
Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
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 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.
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.
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.
Update from Ryan Grim on the SECDEF Signals/Groyper Group Chat/Washington WhatsApps:
So the leak was either intentional by the National Security Advisor, or he didn’t realize what he was doing by sharing a Signal group chat with Goldberg. Waltz is a retired colonel who served with the Green Berets. I wonder if parts of the Pentagon are in revolt/trying to reign Trump in. Goldberg is burning a very high placed source by running this story.
Goldberg is a long time establishment journalist, he was one of the first to run the “Iraq has WMDs” stories. So that makes sense. This could also be used now to try get an excuse to remove Waltz. Trump has already sidelined him on Ukraine, so they could use this to get rid of him. Waltz leaking information to a rube like Goldberg might be the end of his presence in the Trump administration.
Also after reading the full article on The Atlantic, it doesn’t seem as if there was much classified information released. Discussions on the strike packages and weapons used, what was hit, and discussing which leaders were killed, is quite an open issue. Open source analysts do that all the time. Obviously Hegseth discussing it on signal just before, during, or after the strikes is a different matter, but it’s not like he just leaked the entire US warplan to the group chat. All the truly top secret stuff was discussed on the “high side”, and not on the signal group chat, according to the article. So Goldberg saying that the war plans were texted to him is pushing it slightly.
rube like Goldberg
RuBe like Goldberg
I didn’t read the article, but according to Ken Klippenstein, Goldberg said he held stuff back that might have “harmed” the US if our “adversaries” gold a hold of it. Basically just enough was released to probably get Waltz dismissed. Could have been a setup/canary trap? Goldberg’s connections to the IDF make this interesting, and again, kind of crazy to burn your source, the National Security Advisor, instead of keeping that info flowing for the next four years. Maybe he just figured someone was going to see his number on the group chat and figure it out eventually?
Yesterday, Israeli forces attempted to advance into the village of Kuwaya, west of Daraa in southern Syria, but were confronted by locals and fighters from the Islamic Resistance Front in Syria, who have previously clashed with Israeli forces
As a result, airstrikes were called in to support the advance of the IDF, leading to the deaths of at least 7 Syrian civilians. Yesterday alone, Israeli military actions led to the forced displacement of hundreds of Syrian families in the south. Earlier, Israeli warplanes attacked the ‘T-4’ Air Base in Palmyra. The IDF also seized multiple weapons and ammunition boxes in southern Syria.
Daily Israeli attacks on Syria have become the norm, often resulting in civilian deaths. Israel continues to not only strengthen and expand its occupation of Syria but also ensure that Syria is fully disarmed, denying it the right to have military equipment, even when Syria poses no threat, militarily or even in rhetoric.
- Telegram
Surely the HTS coalition will crumble if they allow IOF to conquer territory with impunity.
The HTS govt is not propped up by popular support. it is propped up by a monopply of violence bestowed onto it by the Turkish government and its armed forces, which are the 2nd largest in NATO.
Turkey is completely fine with Israel given that Netanyahu allows them to conquer the Northern half of the country, so HTS will be propped up until that can be achieved.
That would make logical sense but this world doesn’t seem to run on logic so they’re just going to keep trucking on with no consequence whatsoever, somehow.
Le Pen and eight MEPs found guilty of embezzlement
Trump: I haven’t heard that term in years. I don’t know anything about it… this country is going to boom. We’re going to have boomtown. We’re going to boom
its going to boom nerds
French court finds far-right leader Marine Le Pen guilty in embezzlement case - NPR
PARIS — A French court found Marine Le Pen guilty on Monday in an embezzlement case but didn’t immediately say what her sentence might be and how it might impact the far-right leader’s political future.
Le Pen, sitting in the front row in the Paris court, showed no immediate reaction as the chief judge declared her guilty. She later repeatedly nodded her head in disagreement as the judge went into greater detail, saying Le Pen’s party had illegally used European Parliament money for its own benefit. “Incredible,” she whispered at one point.
The judge also handed down guilty verdicts to eight other current or former members of her party who, like her, previously served as European Parliament lawmakers. Le Pen and her co-defendants face up to 10 years in prison. They can appeal, which would lead to another trial.
The biggest concern for Le Pen is that the court may declare her ineligible to run for office “with immediate effect” — even if she appeals. That could prevent her from running for president in 2027. She has described such scenario as a “political death.” The verdict was shaping up as a resounding defeat for Le Pen and her party. As well as finding her and eight other former European lawmakers guilty of embezzling public funds, the court also handed down guilty verdicts to 12 other people who served as parliamentary aides for Le Pen and what is now the National Rally party, formerly the National Front.
The chief judge, who read the ruling delivered by her and two other justices, said Le Pen had been at the heart of “a system” that her party used to siphon off EU parliament money. The judge said Le Pen and other co-defendants didn’t enrich themselves personally. But the ruling described the embezzlement as “a democratic bypass” that deceived the parliament and voters.
Le Pen and 24 other officials from the National Rally were accused of having used money intended for European Union parliamentary aides to pay staff who worked for the party between 2004 and 2016, in violation of the 27-nation bloc’s regulations. Le Pen and her co-defendants denied wrongdoing.
Le Pen, 56, was runner-up to President Emmanuel Macron in the 2017 and 2022 presidential elections, and her party’s electoral support has grown in recent years. During the nine-week trial that took place in late 2024, she argued that ineligibility “would have the effect of depriving me of being a presidential candidate” and disenfranchise her supporters.
“There are 11 million people who voted for the movement I represent. So tomorrow, potentially, millions and millions of French people would see themselves deprived of their candidate in the election,” she told the panel of three judges. If Le Pen cannot run in 2027, her seeming natural successor would be Jordan Bardella, Le Pen’s 29-year-old protégé who succeeded her at the helm of the party in 2021.
Le Pen denied accusations she was at the head of the system meant to siphon off EU parliament money to benefit her party, which she led from 2011 to 2021. She argued instead that it was acceptable to adapt the work of the aides paid by the European Parliament to the needs of the lawmakers, including some political work related to the party.
Hearings showed that some EU money was used to pay for Le Pen’s bodyguard — who was once her father’s bodyguard — as well as her personal assistant. Prosecutors requested a two-year prison sentence and a five-year period of ineligibility for Le Pen. Le Pen said she felt they were “only interested” in preventing her from running for president.
Let’s talk Qatar.
I have been always fascinated by Qatar. Their weird contradictory political position, together with their ruthless ambition makes them a genuinely interesting country to observe. I spent a few weeks touring the Middle East before covid and getting married and settling down. Of all the Gulf states, Qatar was the country that gave me the biggest feeling of “living here wouldn’t be bad you know”. The UAE is of course the posterchild of Gulf states, but everything about it felt artificial, but Qatar is authentic in a way that I can’t describe. The Friday sermon in the Doha mosque that I went to talked in detail about a Muslim’s duty to defend other Muslims, while the UAE mosque talked about a Muslim’s duty to honor his leaders. Qatar is in some way committed to what I can only describe as Islamic populism, which doesn’t put the country as a natural enemy to Iran’s Islamic republicanism.
Their projects are also more successful than expected. They were the only committed Arab nation to toppling Assad by 2024, and succeeded in that. They managed to stabilise Tripoli in Libya and their areas are way more successful and stable than the UAE-backed warlord government in Benghazi. They weathered the storm from Western media and hosted a successful FIFA World Cup. They built a good metro system that doesn’t just serve the Disney Land style straight line developments like the Dubai Metro. They integrated the sons of immigrants to Qatar in a way that the UAE completely failed in doing, which is why the Qatari football team is now filled with Yemenis, Egyptians and Iraqis fighting for the team and winning cups while the UAE plays Brazilian boomers and gets embarrassed. They overcame the dumbass siege that the UAE and Saudi Arabia put on them in 2017 with an incredible resilience that strengthened their national identity. Their media investments has made Al Jazeera the undisputed number one news channel in the Arab World, BeIN Sports the number one sports network in the world, and almost every good Arab journalist has spent some time in Qatar. Their only big L is perhaps losing the battle with the UAE in Egypt when they failed to protect the MB against the military coup in 2013.
I have some strange admiration for them that is completely illogical and contradictory compared to my political beliefs. They’re in tune with the Arab public in a way that the UAE and Saudi could never achieve. They’ve leveraged their relations with Hamas, Israel, the Taliban, Iran and Hezbollah into something that generated some kind of material benefit unlike the UAE’s disgusting endless cucking for American Republican and Israeli interests. In the end, yeah, they’re an American client state with a massive military base in Al Udaid, but their million sins can perhaps be slightly washed away by the fact that a random Sudanese civilian can wear a Sinwar hoodie on their way to a Friday sermon about the slaughter of civilians in Gaza, while watching Al Jazeera’s coverage of Israel’s bombing of South Lebanon.
I’m just rambling here, so I hope it’s at least semi-coherent.
Thanks for your perspective - Qatar does indeed stand out as a land of contradictions, principally and materially an imperialist client state but culturally on the vanguard.
Over the past year and a half, Al-Jazeera’s coverage of the genocide has been invaluable to me to understand what is going on. Without them, as a westerner who only speaks English, I feel like it would be much harder to be aware of the situation, there’s such a media blackout here. I get the complaints about AJ and when it comes to news regarding Qatar specifically I take with a dose of skepticism. But on the balance they are an incredibly valuable news source.
you need to get on specific telegram channels
Pretty good article. Especially the conclusion.
- Ken Klippenstein’s “Iran War” by Evan Carroll
Spoiler: we’re not at war with Iran, and the empire is doing nothing new… yet anyway
…
I will focus on three articles as a body of work and argue that they create a false sensationalist narrative that can only exist in a vacuum devoid of context.
…
What I see in the above three articles is a desire to conflate being at war, undergoing special preparations for war, and the Empire’s routine bellicose statecraft. This gives readers a near existential-threat which widens the window of acceptable non-war responses, and distracts from other material issues.
…
The goal here isn’t to defend Trump. It’s to refocus liberals that I feel would otherwise run around pretending like they’re hippie pacifists, all while defending a genocide in Palestine. If you don’t want a War with Iran, and you want an explicit and principled anti-war peace ticket, you need to look at least as far left as the Green Party. Rest assured, the GOP’s rhetoric is always going to be threats and chest pounding. The Democratic rhetoric is always going to trail the GOP by a single hair.
This USA is in bed with Israel and Saudi Arabia both of which view Iran as an existential threat. If The Empire continues to exist in its current form, war will never be off the table and there will always be well maintained plans for a nuclear strike on Iran. A strike which will result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands with an invasion that will easily kill a million. At least until a Mullah figures out how to refine enough Uranium to secure the regime.
If you think Trump is the worst president ever, you’re wrong. George W. Bush ran circles around Trump. I remember George W. Bush. When we’re seriously considering a war with Iran, they’ll bring back Section 9528 of No Child Left Behind (2002) or some similar Obama-era nonsense with a nicer veneer. Then we will again have military recruiters at our high school lunch tables. I remember those days. Iran won’t be a cake walk. If and when we get serious, we’ll give high school kids invitations to the imperial meat grinder.
Good stuff on the rhetoric, nuclear doctrine, etc. in the elided sections. But this summarizes the essence of the message, I think.
How threatening is a B-52, anyway? They were made in 1955. In one operation lasting 11 days in 1972, North Vietnam shot down 15 of them; 34 according to North Vietnam. And then the B-52 was only 17 years old. Now it’s 70 years old.
Yes, the B-52 can carry nukes, but so can the stealth F-35. In fact, the F-35 can carry the B61-12 which has 50 kiloton yield — substantially more than the combined yield of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima (15 kiloton) and Nagasaki (25 kiloton).
That’s not exactly correct. If B-52s are ever going to be deployed against Iran, they will not be entering Iranian airspace. They’ll be lobbing long range cruise missiles at Iran from outside of Iranian airspace (similar to Russian Tu-95M bombers against Ukraine), including those with conventional or electromagnetic/microwave warheads in the CHAMP missile. In the extremely unlikely event that the B-52s would deploy nuclear weapons, these would also be standoff cruise missiles. AGM-158B JASSM-ER cruise missiles (conventional or electromagnetic warheads) have a range of over 600 miles/1000km. AGM-86B cruise missiles (nuclear armed) have a range of over 1 500mi/2 400km. B-52s won’t be getting close to Iranian airspace. The challenge to Iran would be shooting down the cruise missiles, not the B-52 itself. B-52s won’t be carpet bombing Vietnam as they did over half a century ago. Warfare has changed. Bombers like the B-52 or Tu-95 are relegated to the role of “cruise missile trucks” against an opponent with air defence systems.
The B61 is a gravity bomb, the F-35s or B-2 Spirit stealth aircraft carrying them would have to penetrate deeply into Iranian airspace to carry out the these missions. It’s a completely different threat profile to the B-52. A stealth aircraft penetrating deeply into Iranian airspace versus an aircraft lobbing cruise missiles from hundreds of miles away. B61 yield can also be dialled down to as low as 0.3 kilotons. It’s these lower yield options that make nuclear war more likely, not the higher yield settings.
In the extremely unlikely event that a nuclear first strike is launched against Iran, it would come from the submarine vector, in the form of Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBMs) like the Trident-II D5. No one knows where the submarines are, they could launch from literally anywhere on the earth’s oceans, including right next to Iran itself. It’s different to bombers or aircraft parked in Saudi Arabia or Diego Garcia. Iran would get minutes of warning, if that, from their over the horizon early warning radars, provided that they’re not suppressed or destroyed simultaneously. The velocity at the start of re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere for a Trident MIRV is Mach 24, 24 times the speed of sound, and each Trident missile has 12 MIRVs. There is no intercepting that. This makes it a very inviting option for a nuclear first strike, compared to lobbing cruise missiles or entering Iranian airspace with stealth aircraft.
Building on that, the point Klippstien was making is that the Trident-II SLBMs have access to a new tactical nuclear warhead, one that did not exist previously. Previously the lowest yield warhead available to the Trident-II was the W-76 Mod 1, at 90 kilotons yeild each. This meant that a tactical use of this weapon was not possible, the yeild was too high. So tactical nuclear strikes were limited to cruise missiles and gravity bombs. Now there’s a new warhead for the Trident-II, the W-76 Mod 2, with a yield as low as 5 kilotons each. Again, each Trident-II SLBM can be armed with 12 of these warheads simultaneously. The 45 times lower yield per warhead makes the option of using this vector for a nuclear attack much more palatable to generals and politicians. It’s a new tactical nuclear vector that was only fully incorporated under Biden’s administration, in the new warplans, and not available previously. Now the Trident-II SLBM can be used tactically, with all the advantages the MIRV capable SLBM vector has over cruise missiles and gravity bombs. Where Klippstien goes wrong is assuming that Biden or Trump makes a difference here, this is the evolution of warfare and US government policy. If any politician is to blame it’s probably Obama for pushing for the modernisation of the US tactical nuclear arsenal.
Don’t get me wrong I still think that Klippstien is being extremely sensationalist and that a nuclear strike on Iran is extremely unlikely, and trying to act as if Trump is some unique actor here is an incorrect conclusion. But it’s important to get the facts right on exactly what kind of threat Iran faces, and why tactical nuclear strikes are seen as more palatable due to the development of new low yield weapons from new attack vectors. The new weapons are a significant military development.
Sorry if this comes across as harsh, but when Carrol calls his substack the “Scientific Journal of Objective Truths and Proof”, and gets the objective truths and proofs wrong, I feel the need to correct it.
Son of former president faces possible treason charges for working with US politicians to attack Brazil’s judiciary.
Article
Brazilian Liberal Party lawmaker Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of indicted former President Jair Bolsonaro and South American representative for CPAC, took a leave of absence from Congress today and announced he will remain in the United States to escape “political persecution” and pressure U.S. officials to impose sanctions against Alexandre de Moraes—one of Brazil’s 11 Supreme Court Ministers—in an attempt to keep his father out of jail.
It is no secret that Eduardo Bolsonaro has been close to Steve Bannon and other key figures in Donald Trump’s circle since 2018. Similarities in billionaire-funded social media tactics used by Trump and the Bolsonaros are living testament to this, and the closeness that Eduardo has to leaders of the American far right is also demonstrated by his presence at the January 5, 2021, “war council” meeting in Washington, hosted by Mike Lindell on the eve of the U.S. Capitol invasion.
Eduardo Bolsonaro immediately swung into action, contacting friends in the Republican Party and private sector alike. The next day, Rumble and Truth Social filed a frivolous lawsuit against Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who was in charge of the investigation against his father. On February 24, Republican Congressman Rich McCormick released a public letter to President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in which he called for punitive actions against Moraes, including “Magnitsky sanctions, immediate visa bans, and economic penalties.”
On February 27, Workers’ Party Congressmen Lindbergh Farias and Rogério Correia filed a criminal complaint with the Attorney General’s Office against Eduardo Bolsonaro for conspiring against Brazil with members of a foreign government.
“The individual in question, completely disconnected from reality and acting against Brazil’s national interests, is encouraging a foreign government to impose retaliatory measures against his own country and one of the justices of the Supreme Federal Court,” reads a section of the complaint. Judging him a probable flight risk due to his network of connections in the American far right, they requested that the Federal Police confiscate his passport. Time has proven them correct, but the police did not act quickly enough.
On March 13, the net began to tighten around Jair Bolsonaro as the Attorney General’s Office officially upheld the indictment against Bolsonaro and his cronies, after a procedural period in which they were allowed to present their defense arguments. The Supreme Court then set March 25 as the date for the final review of evidence before formally setting a trial date.
This put Eduardo Bolsonaro in a quandary. With a complaint already filed against him for illegally abusing the power of his office to lobby for intervention in Brazil’s internal affairs by a foreign government—a crime so serious that, in theory, it could result in charges of treason—he had to choose between keeping his position as Congressman and complying with national security laws, or renouncing and moving to Florida, like so many right-wing Latin American politicians before him.
Bolsonaro is claiming his leave will be temporary, but going on leave of absence will not shield him from criminal prosecution for abuse of authority, crimes against the judiciary, and violation of national security laws. Like all Members of Congress, he enjoys a certain level of parliamentary immunity, but can still be investigated and tried by the same Supreme Court that he has been publicly attacking for the past five years. So if, as he announced on his social media today, his plan is to stay in the U.S. to find some way to “punish Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes,” he will probably have to stay there for a long time. The question is, how much damage can he do to Brazil’s national sovereignty while he’s up there?
Iran might get nuked tonight or tomorrow … there are 5-7 B2 on diego garcia and Russia has send the strategic coperation Agreement to the Parlament for Approval . So the Timewindow for a Act like this is closing fast.
I can’t imagine a world where the US carries out a preemptive nuclear strike on a non-nuclear nation.
If Iran sunk a carrier fleet that might happen though.
that literally allready happend and it had splendid results for the perpetrator
True, but that was when the US was the only nuclear nation. No chance for anyone to respond because… they couldn’t.
I don’t think the US is beyond proliferation of nuclear warfare nowadays, but in terms of technology the US doesnt have the monopoly like it did in 1945.
No, it didn’t. The US was at war with Japan and had already invaded Japanese territories. The nuclear strikes we not pre-emptive.
And back then the horrific nature of nuclear war was not yet fully understood. People were still thinking of nukes as just being really big bombs.
Ignorant nothing ever happens Lurker here, can you explain why this tweet is an indication of nukes being dropped on Iran? Seems like that won’t be very good and would result in a lot of things happening
I dont think AmeriKKKa would be so stupid to do that but I could be convinced otherwise. They might do a strike on Isfahan or something (and tbf using something like a MOAB isn’t far off a tactical nuke in yield).
Even if the nuke was effective in its target, Iran would immediately flatten Israel with the rest of its missile silos (the US would have to expend a lot of its stockpile to disable Iranian missile bases that number hundreds), and they still might have nuclear capabilities within a short time period with almost everyone in Iranian politics begging Khameini to lift his fatwa against Nuclear armament (he’d likely change face if the US nuked them).
The B-2s are probably going to do something really stupid and aggressive against the houthis. Maybe even fly over Iran on the way to Yemen just to prove they can penetrate Iranian AA networks. But even for Trump and Hesgeth the crown jewel of nuking Iran without consequence is far from reality, and likely will never occur (without consequence) since the pact is due to be signed as you said.
I really don’t think a MOAB would be used against Iran, for the reasons listed in the below comment. Most likely bomb to be used would be the MOP from the B-2.
It’s not an indication of nukes being dropped on Iran, but it is an indication that the assets which would be used to attack Iran (B-2 Spirit stealth bombers in Diego Garcia, 12 F-35As in Saudi Arabia) are being put in place to attack Iran. Such an attack would most likely be conventional, if it happens.
Thank you for the information
In the unlikely (but becoming more likely) event that the US attacks Iran, and in the extremely unlikely event that it goes nuclear, the nuclear option would most likely come from submarines, in the form of submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). No one knows where the submarines are, and Iran would get minutes of warning, if that, from their over the horizon Ghadir early warning radars
deleted by creator
Do you happen to have a sense of how far Iran could be from having a nuke that could credibly hit Tel Aviv? Enough to let the US know there’s a reasonable chance that a nuclear attack on Iran will likely destroy the Zionist entity?
Iran has the delivery method (ballistic missiles that can penetrate Israeli air defences), but no nuclear devices/warheads, and not enough enriched uranium to make them. The problem for Iran is not a technical issue, they have the capability to make a nuclear weapon. The problem is that as soon as they start enrichment to the required levels and the USA becomes aware of it, it’s basically a massive sign saying “please attack Iran now”. So to create a nuclear weapon without being attacked, Iran essentially needs a “conventional form of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction)” before making nuclear weapons, to prevent attacks on Iran itself while making nuclear weapons. North Korea had this in artillery aimed at Seoul. Or they need to secretly make hundreds of nuclear warheads without US and Israeli intelligence assets becoming aware of it. Both are huge challenges.
Iran essentially needs a “conventional form of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction)” before making nuclear weapons, to prevent attacks on Iran itself while making nuclear weapons.
Their MAD can be “we’ll launch ballistic missiles at every single Israeli desalination plant if we get nuked.” Israeli desalination plants account for >75% of Israeli domestic water consumption. And most of the desalination comes from 5 facilities. That webpage is hyping up their desalination tech, but I’ve seen similar numbers from other sources.
I don’t think destroying every single plant would completely cut off their ability to have drinkable water since most of the water is going towards agriculture and they can always go back to pumping freshwater from the Sea of Galilee, but it will completely cripple the Zionist entity’s ability to grow crops.
North Korea had this in artillery aimed at Seoul
Does Iran not have the same in artillery aimed at Tel Aviv?
first!
I’m going to use this to quickly update about the Atlas:
- Currently working on UX improvements, adding AI Slop, and more Overpass layers
- Renamed it redAtlas. Check out the live progress here https://redatlas.app/
- I made it selfhostable (if you prefer not going to the netlify hosted one redatlas.app) more here: https://codeberg.org/hex_atlas/redAtlas
- You can share parts of the state via linking the URL e.g https://redatlas.app/information/nexus/prolewiki?country=Germany&id="1599"
- It’s still buggy and I’ll make a proper update once I feel like it’s an alpha-version
Why is it so quiet in here? I’m the second comment and this thread is at least 30 minutes old.
Edit. I got it now.
I think because the old news thread is still pinned and this one isn’t.
im burned out
To be fair it’s always bad news. As if my personal life isn’t already miserable.
If Democrats bend over to appease Republicans being upset about Jasmine Crockett making fun of Greg Abbott (using nickname that Texans have called him for years) they honestly should just pack it up.
Jasmine Crockett
That’s the new face that the Dems have been trying to push big time, from the little I’ve seen of her, apparently she’s full neocon towards Russia. Maybe she flew too close to the sun for the Dem establishment now? “Governor Hot Wheels” is probably not going to go over well on a wider level.
The only people really complaining about the “hot wheels” joke are conservatives who would be laughing if it were Trump calling some Democrat it. Go to Twitter and search her name or hot wheels, and it’s just a who’s who of the mist insufferable chuds crying about it.
Crockett is whatever politically, she’s vaguely “progressive” but has also been clearly been singled out as a “rising star” by the establishment because she comes from very safe seat and is good at getting headlines.
Removed by mod
I read it on the Atlantic earlier, not super detailed but still quite stupid to put this on a signal group chat. Goldberg, as expected, exaggerated what was being discussed. At most I can see Trump using this to get rid of Waltz (which it seems as if he’s been wanting to do anyways) and maybe Hegseth if they need another fall guy.
Most surprising thing here is Hegseth seeming to have the best strategic brain (correctly predicted that the Gaza ceasefire would collapse and the US should take the initiative to take action on their own terms), and Vance 100% just focusing on domestic politics and being completely out of his depth on international geopolitics. Everything else, (lack of European Naval capabilities, US military and Navy buildup in preparation to attack Yemen, Houthi/Ansarallah advanced missile capabilities) you could have got from open sources online, including the hexbear news megathread! In fact, I’ve even done breakdowns on the munitions used, which is more information than is present on these texts. This isn’t some super secret information like Goldberg was implying. The most egregious thing is Hegseth texting out the timing of the attack waves as they happened or at most two hours before the first bombs dropped, but even then it was as it happened (first text is less than half an hour before the F-18s take off) and there isn’t any detail on exact targets (co-ordinates/location, names of the leadership that were being targeted). It’s not like Iran or Yemen are a bunch of idiots that had no idea an attack was coming. Yemeni air defences would have been on high alert as soon as the USS Harry Truman entered the Red Sea on March 2nd.
The 6 lunch beers got his strategic mind ACTIVATED
