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.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
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.
Protests happening in Iran against the proposed “memorandum of understanding.”
I would like to point out two important things.
She wrote:
For those still reading: The Islamic Republic of Iran is a democracy and the revolution is ongoing. Its time to retire this orientalist myth of “authoritarian dictatorship” that infects the international subconscious and discourse on Iran
I would like every single person who reads this to get this into your head: There are many revolutionary women in Iran. And the revolutionary women in Iran are overwhelmingly Pious Believing Muslims.
These women are playing a major role in shaping the past present and future of the Islamic Republic and therefore the region (and the planet.)
And that hijab, and especially Chador, are inseparable from the anti-imperialist orientation of the Islamic Revolution.
Those left/liberals who continue to espouse their Islamophobic tendencies against “Iranian theocracy” and against hijab are positioning themselves in the camp of zionism. End of story.
People triage if this or that global south country is a dictatorship or not, while the populace in those places can actual affect policies. In the west the governments are basically untouchable and just do whatever they like, only falling from internal factions.
from https://redsails.org/china-has-billionaires/
It is almost as if they are practicing “scientific socialism” or something.
I won’t soon forget the image of the brave women of Iran standing firm in the square and continuing to chant while being actively bombed. I think that’s when we all knew that the spirit of Iran would not be broken
And the pathetic attempts to make these women look weak with AI videos (a post I made earlier).
This one?
https://xcancel.com/MiddleEastEye/status/2033312026559152253
That link was broken for me.
I think there might have been a few instances but one that was especially vivid there was like an announcer guy with a microphone and the interesting thing to me was he seemed to get scared at first but then the courage of the crowd made him keep going
Yeah I think the announcer guy youre talking about is Hussein Taheri. I saw this video as well. Tried looking but couldn’t find it.
Hexbear really isn’t a Marxist website huh, lol
Just a reminder, that when talking about religion, it’s important to distinguish between three things:
As Marxist we:
Religious institutions can fulfill various roles, hegemonic and counter-hegemonic:
Leaning on Lenin, there are situations, where supporting pro-capitalist, patriarchal, hegemonic religious institutions might be a legitimate intermediate strategy: in colonized or semi-colonized nations, where national liberation has to come before communist liberation and in the case of a united front with national burgoise-democratic capitalist forces to break the grip of imperialism and international capital.
The Iranian Islamic revolution, while strongly anti-imperialist and (in a narrow, capitalist way) democratic, is also clearly burgoise, capitalist, liberal, idealist and patriarchal. Critical support is still necessary in the current historical moment and on the anti-imperialist front, but not for it’s class character.
Hexbear’s roots are still indelibly within the soil of western Marxist thought, which has, more often than not, drifted into all directions of reformist, utopian and ultra-left, without ever actually producing anything, which means that we have absolutely no idea what it feels like to be in a successful, radical, revolutionary moment, and what that means for your relationship to the state.
You’re saying that as if Iran has some kind of significant Marxist movement at all. It is a successful revolution, but not a communist or even leftist one.
I don’t really want kick off a big argument; any anti-US and anti-Israel movement should be supported and Iran is the best example of that in the world right now. Essentially all of the anti-Islamic sentiment from the west is racist and it isn’t productive to add to that. It’s just that seeing explicitly pro-religion takes on Hexbear is a pretty blunt reminder that this website isn’t even pretending to be communist.
People so broken by the perceived failure of Secular communism they’re back to converting to the faith of whatever army has the current initiative.
It’s not worth engaging with I’ve found, best to just bracket it and move on. I appreciate our religious comrades’ analysis from another point of view, but there are those who are religious first and Marxist whenever that happens to align, and their engagement with the news mega is varying parts proselytizing and information exchange. They of course can’t read this critique because they blocked me for making one (1) joke a little too queer for their delicate sensitivities, but it is what it is. I accept the good with the bad instead of frothing in moral outrage. The other side is not so tolerant or open.
The replies to this post are just erasure of the accomplishments of secular AES. People critique the failures and regressive policies of the USSR and China, why should Iran be any different? It’s like half the people here just forgot what critical support is.
I haven’t seen anyone saying you can’t critique Iran, the OP of this thread is just refuting common imperialist narratives about Iran and showing that the material reality within Iran is different from how it is commonly portrayed
‘Jabril the Reasonable’ back at it again
Militant atheism is something that current AES left behind decades ago. That’s how you get Vietnamese state media celebrating Lord Buddha’s birthday.
If religion is good enough for the Communist Party of Vietnam, then religion is good enough for the news mega.
State atheism was good enough for Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, among many other revolutionaries, and it’s good enough for me. That said, every communist party will have different priorities depending on the material conditions of their country, and I think Vietnam (and China) have many more pressing issues than Buddhism to deal with currently.
Look at China’s new democracy movement as the precursor to their socialist movement and understand that the motion of history isn’t a straight line. The material conditions dictate what form the movement takes, and the question is “is there a more progressive force that could reasonably be in charge right now?” If all the opposition with any organic mass support are less progressive than the current ruling party, than there are no current alternatives in the real, material world. Unfortunately the Marxists were more or less destroyed before the Islamic revolution, and have continued to be repressed after the revolution due to a lot of historical and cultural conditions which make them more or less non existent in the eyes of the masses. As you said, Iran should be supported anyway because of the position they are in, so what’s the harm in pointing out the islamophobic and misogynistic narratives levied against Iran are not only baseless but missing out on the reality that Iran in its current form is democratic, revolutionary, and anti-imperialist even if it isn’t explicitly socialist?
You say Iran ‘should be supported’ because it’s anti-US and anti-zionist. Then go on imply it’s somehow embarrassing for communists to cheer for a Muslim revolution.
Either you recognize that the Islamic Revolution is the most successful ongoing anti-imperialist project in the region, or you retreat to the sidelines waiting for a revolution fantasy rather than real-existing revolutions today…a very convenient mindset that allows for sitting back and waiting for the second coming of the soviet union.
The ‘pro-religion takes’ aren’t a deviation from dialectical materialism, but a reminder that the global south doesn’t need your permission to resist, and that Muslim Iranian women in chador have done more to weaken the zionist entity than most of the planet, including western leftists, ever will.
You admit I support Iran in the first sentence of your reply and then spend the rest of it acting as if I don’t. I have been nothing but supportive of Iran in the six years I’ve been posting on this website. But pretending that Iran’s success is reliant on Islam, that Iran can only resist because it is Islamic, should be deeply embarrassing to hear from a communist. It is insulting to these women to claim that their anti-imperialism is inexorably tied to their Chador.
Nothing on this website has any significant bearing on the real world. I’d just like to imagine that the people I’m chatting with are more than just anti-American Reddit refugees.
Islam is an observable, defining characteristic of the Iranian Revolution and its strength. I’m not embarrassed to be a Muslim hijabi communist, and I’m not embarrassed to read history and news from the IRI as it actually exists.
You must have never spoken to a real basiji woman in your life. Every one I’ve ever met loves her hijab. You clearly know very little about the Islamic Revolution and the role of Shia Islam.
Six years of “support” yet here we are having this conversation where you are appointing yourself secular defender of Iranian women because I posted about how the revolutionaries are primarily hijabis.
Convenient to declare that none of this matters. Convenient.
Surely nobody here could be an actual refugee from yankee child-killing. No, everyone is a white ‘reddit refugee.’
Thank you Parzivus for your six years of support. Have an ally cookie.
No, it is to recognize that the primary contradiction right now is one of imperialism. If a nation doesn’t have any sovereignty at all, then historically no Marxist movement can ever be developed, it will be strangled in the cradle. We are that fucked right now, as the international proletariat. That does not mean that Iran did not experience a national revolutionary moment and movement within two generations. Their relationship to the state is incredibly different than those of us who are living (literally) 250 years away from our state’s revolutionary moment.
Religion is the opiate of the masses, and right now Iran is high as fucking balls. Maybe in the future that won’t be true, but with everything left mostly in retreat across the globe, it is unsurprising that this is the way it is.
That said, there is nothing actionable that I can do here, right now. If you are in a more actionable position, go right ahead. But I cannot be a party of one. That is not scientific socialism.
And who knows? Iran could still ‘sell out’. I mean, if the USSR were still here, they would be 100% encouraging the Iranians to settle (or they would be paying one set of the government while the Chinese pay another faction and they would fighting, at least they are supporting the same faction), if their history in the Middle East and Africa is any indication.
deleted by creator
Of course not. The tag line even says that everyone except me is a liberal. Can you not clearly see that?
What do you mean?