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Bulletins and News Discussion from January 29th to February 4th, 2024 - Entering Vertically, Leaving Horizontally - COTW: Iran

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.

1.2K comments

  • A good reminder that the UNRWA is a seperate UN entity because Israel wanted it that way, special treatment for the Palestinians in negative terms, is in Jonathon Cook's latest article In waging war on the UN refugee agency, the West is openly siding with Israeli genocide:

    UNRWA is separate from the UN’s main refugee agency, the UNHCR, and deals only with Palestinian refugees. Although Israel does not want you to know it, the reason for there being two UN refugee agencies is because Israel and its western backers insisted on the division back in 1948. Why? Because Israel was afraid of the Palestinians falling under the responsibility of the UNHCR’s forerunner, the International Refugee Organisation. The IRO was established in the immediate wake of the Second World War in large part to cope with the millions of European Jews fleeing Nazi atrocities.

    Israel did not want the two cases treated as comparable, because it was pushing hard for Jewish refugees to be settled on lands from which it had just expelled Palestinians. Part of the IRO’s mission was to seek the repatriation of European Jews. Israel was worried that very principle might be used both to deny it as it wanted to colonise Palestinian land and to force it to allow the Palestinian refugees to return to their former homes. So in a real sense, UNRWA is Israel’s creature: it was set up to keep the Palestinians a case apart, an anomaly.

  • https://archive.is/EdUjW

    A senior BBC employee branded Jewish people “Nazis” and white people “parasites” in a string of social media posts.

    no she didn't, she called zionists nazis, but she does have massive brainworms in other things she said

    Ms Queva, whose location is listed as London on her Linkedin profile, also brands the UK “bigoted” and “genocidal” and claims white Europeans are “melanin-recessive parasites”.

    Absolutely pissing myself laughing at "melanin recessive parasites".

  • Iran, the only more-or-less decent new BRICS+ member.

    Also, UNRWA has announced a possible suspension of humanitarian aid into Palestine is now looming on the horizon. According to liveuamap, it is likely by the end of February. The primary cited reason is funding cuts but even if hypothetically, China, Ireland and South Africa stop pissing about and pick up the slack, there's the matter of military and "civilian" rioters going out of their way to prevent the delivery of food and medicine.

    The

    is of course, celebrating it. There is also no longer any functioning fire engines, with Civil Defense and medical functions all but collapsed. This in an area where the population density may have swelled to at least 20,000/km2.

    Allegedly, the Gaza Civil Registry has also been destroyed. There is no more record of degrees, birth/death certificates, addresses, families, etc. essentially declaring the 2.3 million people nonexistent, save for maybe a refugee in Johannesburg who still has their papers. Of course, the destruction of any legal documents will also throw a spanner in the works for any prospective asylum seekers. If they manage to flee the strip, then what? Hoof it for over 6,000 kilometers across the entire continent to South Africa?

    along with Finland, Italy, Austria, Romania, Netherlands and Estonia have cut funding as of writing this.

  • Conservatives attempting to weaponize the fact that the US soldiers that died were black on twitter is fucking making me want to tear my eyes out.

    Lots of takes like: WElL I gUess TO thE Left bLAcK LIvEs ONly MATteR if TheY arEN’T AmERiCAN hERO SoldieRS

    wHy Are thErE nO pRoTESTs WHEN bLAcK MEN arE mURdeRED bY mUsLiM TerRoRiSTs????

    The level of cynical dipshittery is really something to behold

  • It's always a little surreal entering this thread and reading about what's going on in the world. I don't hear anything about the Middle East conflicts in my everyday life and daily conversations revolve more around the latest game, fight, or celebrity drama.

  • ABC news and others have been adding the phrase "the Hamas-run Palestinian Health Ministry" when running the already slanted AP/Reuters story on the hospital assassinations. Apparently now the West Bank and in particular the Palestinian Authority are also run by Hamas.

  • One wonders if the reason why the rumor that a ceasefire and an all-for-all prisoner exchange had been accepted by both sides when Hamas is still several days away from even fully reviewing it is to a) try and pressure Hamas to accept a subpar deal that wouldn't involve reparations or reconstruction or an end to the siege on Gaza (which Zionism cannot accept, especially now), and b) if that fails, then to portray Hamas as the ones who are unwilling to make peace and thus the unreasonable aggressors here, which could even preempt starting a war with Hezbollah as a "necessity" in the face of the Resistance unwilling to make peace

    and also I suppose c) to try and turn the civilians of Gaza against Hamas; I've heard rumors that some people in Gaza were celebrating the "ceasefire" by taking down their tents

  • 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.

    Once in a great while, things so speak for themselves that there is not much point in going on overmuch. Israel is not winning against Hamas. So it plans to take on a much tougher opponent, Hezbollah, which will be the result of executing on its plan to enter and occupy Lebanon up to the Litani River. This is not the way clear-thinking people operate.

    But as Alastair Crooke explains (more on this soon), the Israelis recognize that they are no longer feared militarily in their ‘hood. Maintaining that fear is fundamental to Israeli citizen’s sense of security. Proof comes via Israel having had to pull its citizens out of the border to Gaza and Lebanon and not having been able to turn things around so they can return. Although I cannot prove a negative, Crooke and some Twitterati maintain that this effective loss of territory very much puts Israel on the back foot, since Israel historically has used buffer zones as an interim step in increasing the area under its control, and understands the risks when that process goes the other way.

    Despite the assumption by many military experts at the start of the Israel campaign in Gaza, that the IDF would prevail given its much greater resources and ease of resupply, here we are, over 100 days in, and Israel is not all that much closer to victory, save in exterminating the Palestinian population in Gaza, as opposed to eliminating or at least crippling Hamas. Israel has not killed any of the leadership of Hamas’ military wing. Israel has not rescued any hostages. It is not clear how many Hamas fighters Israel has killed, but its claim of 10,000 versus the 27,000 dead reported in Gaza seems unreasonably high, particularly given admissions that schemes like flooding the tunnel system have not worked very well. Hamas has been retaking Northern Gaza after Israel claimed to have secured it. And on top of that, as an article in today’s Links pointed out, Israel is having to husband its artillery use in Gaza in light of global shortages. So they plan to take on Hezbollah with less than a full magazine?

    There are signs of dissent within Israel over where to go in the war. More and more family members of hostages have been getting sympathetic coverage in the press and support from some officials for their demand that Israel negotiate with Hamas now to get the hostages back. A new story in Christian Science Monitor recounts a key rupture:

    The cracks in what had been near universal public unity supporting Israel’s war aims in the conflict’s first few months have even reached the five-person wartime Cabinet tasked with prosecuting the campaign against Hamas. In a bombshell television interview on Israel’s Channel 12 this month, Gadi Eisenkot, a centrist politician and former military chief who joined Mr. Netanyahu’s wartime coalition in October, said the welfare of the hostages had to take precedence. The government, he added, needed to stop “selling fantasies” to the public that their release would be achieved through force alone.

    But at this point, with Hamas doing not badly given the givens, it has escalated its demands. Israel meeting its demands for their return would be seen by its citizens as a capitulation:

    Hamas offered to return all its hostages in exchange for an end to occupation and apartheid, a release of the thousands of Palestinian hostages held by Israel, and peace. Israel, which says its "waging war to return all hostages", has rejected the deal. Genocide is the point.

    Netanyahu, who also has his own survival to consider, is fiercely maintaining that defeating Hamas remains the priority, and the release of the hostages will follow from that. Mind you, there are recent reports of negotiations between Israel and Hamas over the release of the hostages. With Tony Blinken involved, I didn’t see much reason to be optimistic (how many deals has Blinken said were imminent, like Egypt accepting Palestinian refugees in bulk, that came to naught?). Alastair Crooke, who has long-standing, high-level contacts all over the Muslim world, didn’t see fit to dignify them in his recent presentations. A new report in the Times of Israel suggests they are not going anywhere. The subhead:

    Terror group appears to pour cold water on mediators’ latest offer after Qatari PM says ‘good progress’ made; Israel said open to lengthy truce but refuses to end war

    On top of that, Israel is telegraphing its intent to go into Lebanon, despite the Anglopshere media not taking much notice. Israel first engaged in the lame pretext of “negotiating” with Lebanon to pull back to the Litani, as in cede a habited area to Lebanon for the benefit of Israeli settlers near the border. Israel is housing these families at what is reported to be non-sustainable cost. The border residents have said they won’t return until they can’t see Lebanese from their homes. Quite the ask, and Israel has said it will deliver. It has promised these border denizens they will return. The initial promise was by the end of January, which is clearly na ga happen. But Israel is signaling it plans to move soon. From the Times of Israel over the weekend:

    The IDF said Saturday it was further increasing its preparedness on the northern border, publishing footage from recent “intensive” training exercises carried out by the 226th Reserve Paratroopers Brigade, as Hezbollah-led forces in Lebanon continue to launch attacks on Israeli communities and military posts along the border… The drill by the health system this week dealt with a variety of potential scenarios involving the operation of hospitals, health maintenance organizations’ community clinics, medical evacuations, and the provision of support to chronically ill people in need of immediate assistance.

    Yes, Hezbollah has been shelling the border area, but in tit for tat attacks. Crooke contends that both sides so far have been somewhat careful, hoping to goad the other side into a disproportionate reaction they can use to justify a larger attack. But reminiscent of the Great Ukraine Counteroffensive, Israel is committed to Doing Something, and is making that awfully clear in advance too.

    Without belaboring the issue, there is no reason to think Israel will win against Hezbollah. It was eventually beaten in 2006. Hezbollah is a much better fighting force than then while Israel is no better and perhaps worse. Among other things, Israel is betting on the US entering the conflict and saving its bacon, when Scott Ritter has warned that recent war game have shown Israel to lose against Hezbollah even when the US saddles up. And those didn’t factor in the Houthis interfering with ship getting to Israel’s ports. On top of that, the US has brought aerial refueling planes after the supposed drone attack on an outpost in Jordan that killed three service members. Many observers claim that means the US feels it needs to keep its jets in the air so as not to have them destroyed on the ground. That would have to complicate air support for Israel in Lebanon.

  • A Nigerian chap at work verbatim told me that "as an Estonian-South African, I shouldn't focus on Middle Eastern politics". This was simply in response to me having a little South African and Palestinian desk flags sticking out of my front pocket (and how another coworker actually grabbed the Palestine flag and kissed it, ngl totally based). Of course I'm not allowed to voice my views/perspectives because I come from an enemy country and know too much.

    Coincidentally, when the Russian-Ukraine War of 2022 kicked off, the company Slack was basically a bukkake of

  • All the iranian recruits I met in Iran were pretty nice, if very dissatisfied by the very low pay, bad food and generally bad conditions in the military. They were quite open about it too.

    Also shoutout to the IRI official having tea with me and roasting my back then liberal ass in regards to my inciherent positions to EU foreign policy. The tea was veey good, and it is a funny memory. Lovely people all in all. The youth all hate the goverment.

  • I know we've all been saying that the situation is on the brink for months now but it really does feel like the next 4-5 days are the brink of the brink, and it's all behind-the-scenes so I genuinely cannot make any predictions. Will the Resistance take a subpar deal under pressures both known and unknown to us, and thereby potentially doom Gaza? Has Israel merely set up this deal predicting that the Resistance will reject it, so as to provide a pretext for further action including against Hezbollah? Will the deal merely involve a lengthy ceasefire and a prisoner exchange leading to the war flaring up again later as neither side wants to give in? Will Iran and its allies meaningfully respond to US strikes or just take it on the chin? Will the US agree to withdraw from Iraq or has it all been a feint? What would Hezbollah do if there was a ceasefire in Gaza? What will Netanyahu do? What will happen to Zionists and Zionism as a whole given that most of the non-Western world now hates them and they failed to destroy Hamas or permanently kill off the Gazans and annex the territory, as well as the settler anxiety at the northern border?

  • Love how in all of the coverage of Neuralink I'm seeing on the news there's no mention of how horribly murdered the monkeys used in its experiments were. I fucking hate this fucking country

  • Guys, New Communist Party just dropped

    A New Party is Born: Founding Announcement of the (New) Communist Party of Canada

    Today, we announce the formation of the (New) Communist Party of Canada (the (N)CPC), the succesful completion of its Founding Congress, and the public release of its Political Program.

    The new Party is announced today, but it was not born today. The (N)CPC was born in clandestinity over two years ago, in 2021, after the protracted Unity-Struggle Process of 2020-21 succeeded in rallying communist revolutionaries from across Canada, old and new, with many veterans of what we have come to calling the “third,” and even some from what we are calling the “second,” communist party-building movements in Canada, alongside a great many newer, younger proletarian revolutionaries who were only too ready to carry forward the torch of proletarian revolution in the world today.

    they appear to be maoist, of which variant im not sure yet, i dont think they are gonzalites since they normaly name drop him alongside marx, lenin and mao

    The Political Program of the (New) Communist Party of Canada

    this is their program on a quick glance it looks fine, a funny line about quebec people in the nations of canada sections, but they seem fine, hopefull they will be an ok communist party since the biggest ML one collapsed after trying to hide SA within its ranks.

  • I'm starting to believe that the rumours of a new Corbyn-led party coming are true. They've been really bubbling up the last few weeks. Feels like something's coming.

  • Comrades, I heard Ben Shapiro's "rap" song. I implore President Xi Jinping to declare Global Jihad against the genocidal entity known as "the United States of America", they must pay for this horrible crime.

1174 comments