Image is of Ansarallah military spokesman Yahya Saree delivering a statement/speech.
The ceasefire appears to be at least temporarily over, with an exchange of fire between (what appears to be) predominantly Iran and the entity, though as always I expect we’ll find increasing evidence of direct US involvement.
The chain of events was as follows, in spoilers below for those who haven’t been keeping up:
chain of events summary
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A while ago, Iran warned the occupation entity that if they strike Beirut (with particular emphasis on its southern suburbs, which is an area where Hezbollah officials/structures are concentrated as I understand it) then they will directly strike the north of Occupied Palestine, turning the area into a military zone, and encouraged settlers to leave to avoid civilian casualties.
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This warning was grudging accepted by the entity, who ordinarily has a policy called the Daniyeh Doctrine, in which they murder civilians en masse by bombing apartment buildings and houses in enemy cities in order to pressure the military forces they are battling to give into conditions they ordinarily would not be obliged to accept, because the Zionist ground campaigns are usually fairly ineffective at achieving goals on medium to long timescales. While removing their ability to bomb Beirut didn’t halt the Daniyeh Doctrine entirely (they could and did hit other places), their distinct inability to strike the capital when they ordinarily could do that freely was a big source of discontentment in both the civilian population and the military.
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As Hezbollah increasingly attrited the Zionist offensive forces, the attractiveness of bombing Beirut in retaliation increased regardless of the consequences, and of course the Zionists do still want to do anything they can to attack and weaken Iran directly and are much worse at hiding this than even the US. This resentment culminated on June 7th, where the Zionists conducted an airstrike on Beirut on a Hezbollah HQ.
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Iran immediately said that this constituted a break in the ceasefire, and Khamenei put Iran back on a full war footing. Within 6 hours of the strike on Beirut, Iranian missiles were flying towards the northern occupied territories, in what they regarded as merely a warning shot. Western media was obviously fairly dismissive of this; 182% interception rates and all that jazz, but we have several videos of missiles hitting targets.
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Trump publicly warned the Zionists to not respond, which many sensible people immediately diagnosed as kayfabe, and Iran obviously remained on guard against a counterattack. This came a few hours later from Zionist drones and stand-off strikes from aircraft likely in Iraqi airspace, just like in the initial phase of the war months ago. These hit sites in western and central Iran, including a petrochemical facility, but also with some interceptions.
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Iran then responded to this counterattack with a yet bigger warning shot into the occupied territories. Ansarallah also joined in with strikes on the Zionists, and they additionally announced that the Red Sea is now closed to all vessels linked directly to the entity. Certain accounts have said that the Bab el Mandab is now actually under full blockade, but this is not clearly substantiated as of me writing this at about 2pm BST, June 8th. There’s been a lot of “considering closing” and “threatening to close” and “moving to close” the Red Sea over the ceasefire period that hasn’t materialized, so I don’t want to get out over my skis.
Worth noting that according to Yves over at Naked Capitalism (a fairly reliable and left-leaning, but not communist, website), we’re now about a month or so away from reaching “tank bottom”. This is largely because commercial demand destruction has not sufficiently occurred due to oil price market manipulations keeping it low, and also because there have been basically no government policies in the US like widespread work-from-home orders. So, soon the shortages will be of the literal oil molecules not being available and not just the price signal. So there’s an increasing anxiety in the US to get this conflict over before the economy really starts to crash in the latter half of the year, one way or another. As a deal seems only increasingly unlikely given US stubborness and inability to accept battlefield realities, a return to military strikes as we’ve seen appears the only way forward, despite almost catastrophic munitions shortages.
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.
The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on the Zionists’ 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.
Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.
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.
https://www.mehrnews.com/x3cjcs
This is from Firefox’s translate:
According to Mehr News Agency, the new details of the draft memorandum of understanding between Iran and the United States were published by a source close to the Iranian negotiating team.
The details of this draft are as follows:
۱- Permanent and immediate stoppage of war on all fronts, including Lebanon
۲- The US commitment to non-interference in Iran’s internal affairs and respect for the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
۳- Complete lifting of the sea blockade within thirty days
۴- US commitment to withdraw its forces from Iran
۵- Opening the Strait of Hormuz within thirty days with Iranian arrangements
۶- Suspension of sanctions on the sale of oil, petrochemical products and derivatives and Iran’s full access to its financial resources.
۷- The need to present Iran’s reconstruction plans for at least $300 billion by the United States and its allies
۸٫ ۶۰ Days of negotiations to reach a final agreement based on nuclear issues and the complete lifting of the initial, secondary U.S. and UN Security Council resolutions and the IAEA Board of Governors
۹- Repeating Iran’s commitment to the NPT to not produce nuclear weapons
۱۰- During the period of negotiations, the United States has pledged not to add to its forces in the region and will not impose new sanctions.
۱۱- The release of ۲۴ billion dollars of Iran’s frozen money in the sixty-day period of final negotiations. Half of this amount must be made available to Iran before the negotiations begin.
۱۲- Formation of a monitoring mechanism to implement the agreement.
۱۳- The final agreement is approved by the UN Security Council resolution.
۱۴- Final negotiations will not begin before the release of half of Iran’s frozen money, the suspension of Iran’s oil sanctions and the lifting of the maritime blockade, and the final agreement is only on the issue of the fate of enriched materials and enrichment, the lifting of sanctions, the reconstruction of the Iranian economy, and the discussion about Iran’s missile program and the support of resistance groups has been definitively removed from the agenda.
As the spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced, this text still needs to be reviewed and finalized in the relevant institutions in Iran.
This is probably meant to be “the vicinity of Iran” and the auto translate missed it.
“Iranian arrangements” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
While I would love to see Iran go for more, it is pretty striking to see the US get nothing out of it. The Iranian concessions are just returning to where they were at before the conflict. Of course, whether any of this will be honored is an entirely different can of worms, but it is pretty wild to see where we’re at right now.
Less. “Iranian arrangements” smells like a way to agree that they will be doing tolls without putting the word toll in the agreement.
The fact that there is no commitment NOT to do tolls is striking.
At $2million per ship and 140 ships per day, they will make $300billion in 1000 days. Which is the entire reparations demand recovered in under 3 years, so in the incredibly over optimistic idea that this deal sticks (Israel though) they’ve come out very much in the positive.
“Iranian arrangements” is likely code for “toll fees unless we like you” so they’re getting a lot out of the deal. They’re not just returning to where they were before the conflict. Their influence over the region is going to grow and I wouldn’t be surprised if the surrounding countries decide to strengthen their ties with Iran and give America the boot. If Iran continues to insist on withdrawal from Lebanon they’ll establish themselves as an ally that can be trusted, unlike the US.
The “deal” is probably gonna fall through though.
Wasn’t there a report sometime this week that the previous drafts released where just short summaries and one of the Iranian leaders was pointing out some shortcomings of the full text was that it included a “no toll” provision, but they could charge for things like insurance, environmental costs, etc. Which could just mean “you can toll, but you can’t call it a toll” issue because Trump wants to save face? Can’t find the thread now though. I know that was an older draft, but I don’t think that the summary changed at all.
That is also the way international lawals (specifically, the collection of which Iran has implemented) requires outside of wartime. So this is just Iran saying “we will go to peacetime, lawful tolling instead of the vague tolling we started with” and changes little materially.
Why do people keep on saying this? If you have a neighbor you don’t like, who you have religious and other disagreements with and they’re getting stronger do you hop in bed with them so they can dominate and influence you? Or do you get some big outside power on your side in your court to counterweight their influence?
One can look at how Asian countries work with the US to try and counter China’s power because they fear China’s power and would prefer either the US or at least a counterbalance of the US lessening China’s influence on them.
But that’s not even an adequate comparison. The gulf monarchies are even by capitalist standards incredibly corrupt and incredibly unpopular domestically with their own people. I think it’s safe to say they only exist as they do because the British and now the US more recently have benefited from their existence and propped them up. So the second they leave that western arrangement is the second the clock starts ticking on them potentially being overthrown and the US themselves might even help with that if they can overthrow them with relatively pliant and more popular religious extremists which can help create a nurturing cradle for creating terrorists to throw at China or even Russia.
You have to remember these rulers look at Iran with incredible fear because Iran projects power regionally using local groups, populist groups, religious groups, militias. If they wanted to organize overthrowing them they have some expertise and on the ground resources in doing just that and those things are harder to spot or counter than a regional power with a big navy and air force who would never dare to try to overtly overthrow your government using those.
They might kiss Iran’s ass a bit, they might even make a show of spitting on the US now and again if it gets them cheaper or no transit fees. But they’re not about to kick the US out and lose their counterweight to Iranian influence. At best maybe they’d curtail some of the more displeasurable (to Iran) aspects of US involvement such as limiting sizes or amount of troops and equipment in US military bases, pledging not to allow the use of those bases against Iran (but that says nothing about their use against Iranian militias in Iraq or Hezbollah or Ansarallah of Yemen) and so on.
Besides Abraham accords are still in effect and unlikely to be torn up which means they make peace and stick close to the zionist entity which is just a US outpost.
The material interests of the rulers of these countries have long been served by existing and serving the US/western led order. Iran would need to become an economic power as well to even tempt them to do more than pay lip service for cheaper transit fees.
Iran’s increasing strength means the gulf states need the US more, but the US is also less capable and less reliable than ever. So how do they navigate that? Do they hedge their bets somehow? But how? Or do they just double down and hope if they bet wrong they at least get a nice retirement in Miami or whatever?
This is the correct analysis. I had expected someone to poke holes in the above comment (things like “iran doesn’t project power through groups, it has shared religious characteristics with groups already existing and supports them materially”) which are sort of correct, but miss the much bigger point that the US power practice is failing miserably, so those states will, through only self-interest, shift to less aggressive and more accepting positions.
Israel isn’t going to comply. They will simply keep hitting Lebanon.
this is an old article i (stretching the definition of i) translated before: https://hexbear.net/comment/7231925
there has been reporting of last minute small changes that the US agreed to in exchange for iran to not respond to the lastest beurit attack. imo that’s a bad sign actually that it’s just perfidy but then again who is surprised?