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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Iran has stated that its goals for the attack were to strike the Ramon and Nevatim airbases, which have both strategic and symbolic significance as they are the attacks from which the Israeli attack on the consulate was conducted from. They also wished to hit the Israeli Air Force intelligence HQ where the attack was planned. More generally, they wanted to understand and degrade their air defence.
Both the airbases are in the south of Israel. The HQ is in the north of the Golan Heights.
The Intelligence HQ was hit and seemingly levelled. Ramon was "badly hit", Nevatim was hit by over 7 missiles. There is probably more damage to other installations but their distance from civilians who could record them means that the extent of the damage is only something the military commands know via satellite images. In short, Iran was very successful in their strikes.
This attack was historic because it was an attack directly from Iran, but also because it was the most advanced and longest range peer-to-peer exchanges in history, crossing several countries over 1000-2000 kilometers with not only hundreds of drones and missiles, but also hypersonic weapons possibly involved in some capacity. This attack seems to have drawn inspiration from Russia's campaigns in Ukraine, first sending in drones to be shot down and deplete Israeli air defense and then sending in low-flying cruise missiles, and then finally the ballistic missiles - all timed such that they would arrive at the appropriate time to best exploit Israeli defenses.
The US scrambled the combined power of themselves, Israel, the UK, France, and Jordan to try and intercept as many drones and missiles as possible. This seems to have not been successful, with several images online of "intercepted" ballistic missiles actually just being the ejected booster stages of two-stage rockets. There is evidence that the ballistic missiles were largely not shot down and sliced through the dense Israeli defenses like butter. The videos that suggested interceptions were occurring may have in fact been the stage separation of Israel's Arrow missiles. As Iran's ballistic missiles hit their targets, they seem to have been moving at approximately Mach 3.5 to 5.
While Iran has definitely hit the airbases, it's not terribly clear what precisely on those airbases they hit, with satellite images being unclear, though a hangar may have been directly hit. Israel has coped by releasing images and footage that are meant to imply (but don't really show) that the airbase was unharmed; at least one of these videos (of an F-35 landing) is possibly old footage based on reverse searching, and Israel more generally released confirmed old footage (from 7 years ago, even) throughout the attack.
There is controversy about whether the Iranians used hypersonic missiles - there is no definite proof that they did, but there is some speculation for the missile nerds in the piece.
Iran has warned that they will respond to further Israeli attacks in a similar and expanded manner; even 10 times more than the previous level of strikes, which would be about a thousand ballistic missiles at once.
This failure of Western interception demonstrates that the excuses made during the Ukraine War about how Russian strikes were only getting through due to Ukrainian inexperience were false. Iran penetrated several layers of the absolute cutting edge of Western interception technology and made them spend over a billion dollars, with Iran spending ten times less or even less than that. It demonstrates that Iran is indeed perfectly capable of hitting any target they wish in the Middle East, and Iran actually has an advantage that they alone hold in the world. Russia and the US were beholden to the Intermediate Ballistic Missile Treaty until 2019 when Trump withdrew from it (and Russia did in turn), meaning they have less experience in creating the kinds of ballistic missiles that Iran possesses; Russia has instead generally focussed their cutting edge on cruise missiles, which are more expensive and slower.
The main problem that Iran might now experience is accuracy, depending on their technology. They have demonstrated they can get missiles through Israel's defenses, but due to a lack of real evidence (which Israel will obviously never release unless somehow forced), it's hard to say how precise Iran's missiles truly were either way. It's entirely possible that they hit every single target exactly, but it's entirely possible that only a few managed to hit something of value. We simply do not know, beyond vibes. Israel has leaned into that with their propaganda, which is neither here nor there as Israel is a compulsive liar.
Simplicius also brings up the ultimate trump card - Israel's nuclear missiles.
While this is obviously a very, very big problem for Iran, Simplicius gives reasons why Iran's leadership might think the risk is worth it:
First, Israel is at an obvious asymmetry in terms of land area. If Iran decides to hit the Dimona nuclear power plant, this would be a catastrophic, Chernobyl-esque event which would render much of Israel uninhabitable for varying amounts of time depending on the distance from it, but very possibly centuries or millennia. The radiation would also hit Gaza and the West Bank, so it's not a very good solution, but it is a sort of version of MAD. And if we're at the point where Israel is nuking Iran, then I don't see what would stop them from nuking Gaza anyway. Meanwhile, Iran is much larger and its population spread out more, so while a massive nuclear attack on Iran would indeed be the worst catastrophe the world has seen in a long time and would kill millions directly and indirectly, it isn't unrecoverable from in ensuing decades; it also helps that modern nuclear missiles don't release nearly as much radiation as a nuclear power plant being vaporized would.
In addition, Iran could threaten a specter of the Iraq War. Saddam was accused of possessing missiles with chemical, biological, or radioactive warheads inside. Iran could very easily create these dirty bombs if they wanted - they have plenty of uranium for it, and they've just demonstrated that they have the ability to strike Israel if they need to, regardless of how many jets and missile defense systems stand in their way. So, again, the potential for nuclear MAD is there and it's not totally asymmetrical.
If Iran decides to hit the Dimona nuclear power plant, this would be a catastrophic, Chernobyl-esque event which would render much of Israel uninhabitable for varying amounts of time depending on the distance from it, but very possibly centuries or millennia.
Nevermind. Nuclear power is the key to a sustainable energy future. Nothing to see here.
If Iran decides to hit the Dimona nuclear power plant, this would be a catastrophic, Chernobyl-esque event which would render much of Israel uninhabitable for varying amounts of time depending on the distance from it, but very possibly centuries or millennia.
So Israeli's nukes are complete paper tigers because as soon as they launch their nukes, their nuclear plant is going to get vaporized.
The amount of very obvious signs that Resistance intelligence has penetrated the Israeli state makes me think the Iranians likely know if they hit their targets. We might never know, but I suspect Iran knows. They obviously also have some spy satellites, now.
I distinctly remember a story on like Oct 8 or 9, where it was claimed that the Resistance had assets in the IOF and the Israeli security apparatus. It was implied that some of these assets genuinely felt sympathy for the cause and/or disillusionment with the Zionist project. Maybe Hamas had blackmail, too.
Saw that story once in the mega and never heard about it after that, so maybe nothing though.
If Iran decides to hit the Dimona nuclear power plant, this would be a catastrophic, Chernobyl-esque event which would render much of Israel uninhabitable for varying amounts of time depending on the distance from it, but very possibly centuries or millennia.
Nevermind. Nuclear power is the key to a sustainable energy future. Nothing to see here.