This week’s summary of the situation is in spoiler tags below:
preamble
Diplomacy between Iran and the US has begun in… perhaps not earnest, but it’s certainly started. Iran’s very reasonable requirement that the Zionist occupation stop ethnically cleansing Lebanon and withdraw has caused a great deal of consternation throughout their population, and several analysts have suggested that Netanyahu being forced to accept Trump’s (and therefore Iran’s) demands spells the end of his leadership in the coming elections; then, the occupation is expected to “mellow out” and the conflicts and genocides slow and stop. This view is only really impactful if you believe that, rather than the US and Zionists being in a strongly mutually beneficial relationship based on geopolitical, financial, and clandestine goals, that instead Netanyahu is a devious mastermind bending any and all in the US to his whims. I don’t believe this; and, if anything, the events of at least the last three years prove that he’s really quite stupid, with “Israel” being in its worst position in decades under his rule.
Nonetheless, Iran has made the issue of Lebanon a not-quite-red-line (an orange line?). It hasn’t stopped them from going to Switzerland and beginning negotiations, but they still want to strongly express their discontent by harnessing the newfound superweapon that is Hormuz. Similarly, threats by Trump and others to restart the war if Iran doesn’t bend to their whims have been met with formal stoppages of negotiations, but it appears technical teams are still talking to each other and working things out. Trump’s threats are fairly idle at this point because most in the US military must know that there’s essentially zero effective military actions left to them with their current munition stockpiles.
Trump let slip that the US has about 3-4 weeks of oil reserves left, which aligns moderately well with the projections of analysts like Yves at Naked Capitalism (it’s now expected in late July rather than early July as was originally forecasted months ago). This means that even if the negotiation process goes off without a hitch, that there’s going to be a period of at least a few weeks where the US is out of reserves but is waiting for new shipments of oil to physically traverse the distance between Hormuz and the US continent. And many analysts have pointed out that it’s going to be a long time - at least a few months, and perhaps more like 9 to 12 - before Hormuz flows pick up to pre-war levels, due to logistics companies and insurance companies wanting to be sure that their property isn’t going to be blown up mid-transit. Regardless, the fact that the timetable is now so tight could indicate that the Trump admin has finally realized that it cannot outbluff and outwait Iran, and will give them a good deal out of necessity, even if this means forcing their unsinkable aircraft carrier to stop bombing children for five consecutive minutes.
However, there is a palpable anxiety throughout Iran right now, especially due to controversy over the degree to which Khamenei actually agreed with the current course of events. This does seem to be confirmed by his wording (to paraphrase): “In principle, I took a different view, but allowed the President to proceed.” Many inside Iran now have more fear that their politicians will not push hard enough for a good deal than that they’ll return to war, with all that may imply. This isn’t an unfounded fear, especially given how suddenly the 12 Day War ended despite Iran’s strengths being medium-and-long-term attrition (now confirmed by this latest war). This is one of those events that reveals how the Supreme Leader in fact doesn’t have complete dictatorial power unlike how he’s conceived of in much of the West, and that even during existential wars, major concessions have to be made to democratically elected leaders. Though, this could also be a clever move to shift blame explicitly onto the Reformist elements if the deal collapses.
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.


🚨BREAKING: US CENTCOM Announces A Wave Of Strikes On Southern Iran
The Memorandum of Understanding has no impact whatsoever.
In Lebanon a US-backed agreement was signed with the Lebanese government recognising Israel & ensuring that the Israelis will remain occupying the south.
Now the US is actually bombing Iran directly again.
In other words, the US couldn’t honour clause one of the agreement, an end to hostilities on all fronts.
Wakey wakey, Iran. You are getting salami-sliced
the empire can have a little salam as a treat :(
[Yes]
I knew it was a good idea to top off my gas this morning…
Was a waste of time going forward with the whole thing in the first place.
Well it’s not like the material conditions have changed all that much. It gave Iran breathing room and established the terms of Western surrender when it comes time
And whilst the plausibility of a comprador element in Iran remains… non-zero, they alone cannot redirect the material conditions towards a lasting peace, at least with their current political will. This war continues even if Iran and Israel are both shit scared of fighting again.
Hey! I bet the US built a whole 2 missiles during the lull!
Wow! Trump really did double US manufacturing!
I’m just really puzzling about how this whole situation ends as the west really seems uninterested in being moved to Iran’s terms, even if Trump in public begged for it Congress would shoot him down, prevent the sanctions from being lifted, prevent the US from leaving and vote for another $500 billion for the zionist entity and giving the top zionist generals command authority over US forces in the region in case of war to boot. Bluffing for manipulating markets is all well and good and fun but there should be more panic if things are as bad as we suppose in terms of oil supply in a way that would actually hurt the bourgeoisie and corporations and the empire.
Then again the US didn’t collapse after the OPEC embargo of the 1970s and maybe Trump thinks if anything the crisis that causes will enable him to establish a harsher police state with less resistance as well as re-establish US domestic support and European support for American empire to fix the problem. It would certainly allow sweeping away any lingering environmental regulations in the US and polluting as much as you want after that which is a long-term goal of the bourgeoisie in the US among others. And it would probably help usher in the looming in the wings wave of anti-immigrant reactionary parties in EU politics because the feckless neoliberals wouldn’t do anything to help which would really help tamp down EU independence and weld the EU and US into a more solid imperialist bloc. So increasingly I think the US may be just fine with it going over the edge and taking that and going to Iran and saying “see we don’t need you, you’re hurting Africans and poor people south of the US but we can take it, we’ll wait you out” and thinking they can use that to get better terms and if the global south starts suffering worse than the US Iran may very well buckle (China may pressure them to do just that) because it may be seen that it’s just advantaging the US in that situation. I really don’t know. The bourgeoisie are really solid with the zionist entity or maybe it’s blackmailing them: zionist programmers can activate a global samson option to crash and destroy the economy, the military, water, electricity far worse than an oil problem and they’re threatening to do that if the US doesn’t back them and so this is seen as the lesser evil. Really a lot we cannot see or know from here but there seem to be moving parts and elements in the calculation which are not immediately obvious.