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.
![](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/e650844a-a036-49cd-baf0-4bb1abc3dfc8.jpeg)
Israel Plans to Attack Lebanon Because Israel Is Not Winning Against Hamas
By Naked Capitalism on January 30th, 2024.
TLDR: An Israeli attack on Hezbollah is probably inevitable despite it presenting a truly existential threat to Israel. The failure of the Israeli military in Gaza, and the movement of Israeli settlers away from border areas, is producing a mass psychosis inside the Israeli population that is difficult to analyze currently. Needless to say, Israel is attempting to substitute victory via genocide of civilians for victory via the military defeat of Hamas. A keystone of Israel's strategy has always been to create deterrence and fear in the region - this deterrence has been largely destroyed at this point, and actually reversed, such that Hezbollah and friends are now asserting deterrence on Israel. The introduction of US refueling planes suggests that the US and Israel greatly fears the potential of having their jets destroyed on airfields, which is probably a very justified fear and speaks to the dire situation they are in. Hezbollah has grown exponentially in strength since their victory in 2006, while Israel has more-or-less stagnated, and we've all seen the footage of their godawful fighting abilities within the Gaza Strip, so they might actually be a worse army than they were in 2006. All of this is compounded by the threat of siege by Yemen, Hezbollah, and Iraqi/Syrian groups.
They are so delusional if they think they can actually pull this off. Even if they were to completely pull out of gaza to try and further increase their odds in the north they would have to deal with the resistance harrasing them from gaza, and also risk an uprising in the west bank, wtf are they doing???
This must mean Israeli Jews and not Jewish people world wide.
Good article. It would be a little bloodthirsty to look forward to an Israeli war with Hezbollah, but what better way is there to end the Israeli state?
We do obviously risk
but like, the only way to avert that with relatively certainty is to wait/engineer an internal collapse of Israel which would have to be, importantly, political and not (just) economic. Akin to the USSR -> Russia transformation, basically. How would one do that without changing the political environment in which Israel resides? How would one do that without entering into conflict with Israel, given that Israel's entire program for the last century has been "support leaders and countries who are pro-Zionist, and destroy those that are unwilling to be shifted"? Maybe in 50 years the state would be sufficiently atrophied and opposing regional powers would have strengthened, but the Palestinians might well not exist in 50 years even if October 7th never happened. I can't blame an ethnic group for saying "No, sorry, we aren't willing to endure pain and torture and possibly extinction just because there's a chance that if we rise up and try and overthrow our captors, they might start dropping nukes everywhere."
Ah, yes. The testosterone alter demands, once again, that all the big, bad nation-states swing their man-bones around some more so that no one "looks weak". Fun, fun.
I have to wonder if the strategy here is for the Zionist Entity to intentionally put themselves into an existential threat in order to “force” the US to respond with sufficient force. Like, the Israelis have to suspect a war with Hezbollah in itself won’t necessarily draw the US in to fully commit. But if Hezbollah is so successful that it appears the Zionist Entity could collapse? They probably think if it gets to that point the US military will fully commit with thousands of troops, aircraft carriers, etc.
It’s not completely irrational either, if that’s their plan. I mean, that’s precisely how I would expect Biden or Trump to react. Biden especially, there is nothing he will not sacrifice for the Zionist cause, it seems.
Then again, it seems to me the Axis of Dependence (Israel, Taiwan, Ukraine) all seem to have this sense of self-importance, that the US will do whatever it must to preserve them as allies. And I really think that’s not something any of them should bank on.
This line has so much
baked in to it