this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2025
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Bulletins and News Discussion from June 23rd to June 29th, 2025 - Iran, Harden Your Deep Military Sites
(hexbear.net)
Now in our second week of the conflict, we have seen continuing damage to both Israel and Iran, as well as direct US intervention which nonetheless seems to have caused limited damage to Fordow and little damage to Iran's nuclear program. Regime change seems more elusive than ever, as even Iranians previously critical of the government now rally around it as they are attacked by two rabid imperialists at once. And Iran's government is tentatively considering a withdrawal, or at minimum a reconsideration, of their membership to the IAEA and the NPT. And, of course, the Strait of Hormuz is still a tool in their arsenal.
A day or so on from the strike on Fordow, we have so far seen basically no change in strategy from the Iranian military as they continue to strike Israel with small barrages of missiles. Military analysts argue furiously - is this a deliberate strategy of steady attrition on Israel, or indicative of immense material constraints on Iran? Are the hits by Israel on real targets, or are they decoys? Does Iran wish to develop a nuke, or are they still hesitating? Will Iran and Yemen strike at US warships and bases in response to the attack, or will they merely continue striking only Israel?
And perhaps most importantly - will this conflict end diplomatically due to a lack of appetite for an extended war (to wit: not a peace but a 20 year armistice) or with Israel forced into major concessions including an end to their genocide? Or even with a total military/societal collapse of either side?
Last week's thread is here. The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
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.
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Then why did the Iranian foreign minister play into an Israeli psyop and confirm the “fake” ceasefire?
someone should shoot him, zarif and pez
I don’t disagree. Notice how Israel never targets these guys in the airstrikes, just the IRGC guys who set up the axis of resistance. They are shaping the Iranian government by shaving away the parts they don’t like
Even if this ceasefire is broken immediately, I don’t know if the reformists realize how demoralizing this type of shit is for their own forces and allies in the region. Telegram channels are seething and coping hard, people in Palestine are despairing. They really are completely out of touch with their own base, listening instead to the “international community” for approval.
They think getting an international law or diplomatic “gotcha” against Israel is more important than rallying their support and base of power under a banner of victory. As if Israel isn’t already breaching a million international and diplomatic laws constantly.
People complain a lot about doomers, but I think we actually have a bit of a bloomer problem. It honestly sounds like the Hexbear version of the Ukrainian tendency to claim Russia has lost because they haven’t nuked Kiev yet. To be frank, it comes off as a strain of “arc of history bends towards justice”-type liberalism. Believing that because your enemy is morally bankrupt, therefore they always act irrationally and are going to lose, is most definitely an idealist way of thinking. There seems to be an incessant need to spin everything bad that happens into a victory somehow. I legitimately don’t see any way you could spin this into an Iranian victory except by working backwards from the conclusion that the US empire is stupid and dumb and loses all the time, and projecting that onto the facts. Being fluent in Chinese lets me access Chinese forums and blogs that discuss everything we do. I can’t think of an adequate intensifier to convey just how fucking delusional the idea of Iran being the victor here sounds to almost anybody outside of this tiny sliver of the Western left.
I think a lot of this stems from the fact that this site is terrible at making predictions. I’ve lost count of the number of times people here have predicted a major regional war, or even WW3, only for the matter at hand to dwindle away into nothing. Now we are in the backpedaling stage where everyone pretends they didn’t mean what they obviously meant, and that when they said “sinking a carrier” they were actually referring to deliberately failing at striking an empty base.
Many people here have always had an extremely optimistic timeline on the collapse of the US empire. I mean, shit, we still line up to watch Putin’s nothingburger speeches like he’s about to declare war on the US despite him saying nothing of substance for, what, the last 25 times? And then we’re surprised when he does it again? Sometimes it feels like we’re trying to manifest the cataclysmic destruction of the US empire into reality.
And I just know someone will respond with “oh so you want millions of Iranians to die in a bloody war with Israel?” Ignoring for a second how “I think this is a defeat for Iran” turns into “die for me, Iranians”, millions will definitely die when Iran gets turned into Syria 2, slice by slice by slice.
In any case, I eagerly await the Chinese MFA’s vague statement about something something world peace.
For what it's worth from a lurker, I completely agree that it seems much more like there's a bloomerism problem than a doomerism problem. From what I can see as I read through nearly every comment in these megathreads is that people are doing their best to do some material analysis with what will always be incomplete information. I appreciate seeing conflicting perspectives because I always end up having my own limited conceptions of the situation challenged. In this case, the conflicting perspective is whether Iran abiding by this ceasefire was a massive misstep or a positive and necessary strategic move. I am afraid it seems a lot more like a mistake to me, even a failure of the resistance, but I could be wrong and I would love it if it turns out I am.
But then I come across these comments complaining about all the "doomerism" and it's like wtf? I don't see "doomerism" I see justifiable frustration, anger, disappointment, even fear about how events are unfolding along with valid criticism of the decisions that these circumstances resulted from. Posting these criticisms is not an act of surrender or total despair to the point of "giving up," and they also don't degrade the discussion, they add to it just as constructively as any optimistic comments, so long as both are rooted in material reality that none of us have the full picture of.
On the other hand when people talk as though we all just need to have faith in Iran, that seems to me the kind of idealism that we should avoid and much more of a potential problem than expressing valid concerns that may sound pessimistic. None of these comments, no matter how critical or frustrated, or how congratulatory and optimistic, have even a grain of material influence on the outcome of what's being discussed. Neither do our predictions, whether they turn out to be correct or not, we just need to reflect on them in any case to try to learn from how those predictions compared to what actually happened.