A reminder that as the US continues to threaten countries around the world, fedposting is to be very much avoided (even with qualifiers like “in Minecraft”) and comments containing it will be removed.

Image is of Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi (below) and Iranian Speaker of Parliament Ghalibaf (above, right) in the Iranian parliament in 2024. These two figures have played a major role in the war so far.

My summary of the situation as I understand it is in spoiler tags below.

summary

After many long weeks, Iran and the US have agreed that they’re going to begin negotiations on certain topics in a process lasting at least 60 days. Due to America’s perfidy during previous negotiations, trust has broken down so far that Iran demanded $12 billion of their frozen funds and several other promises, such as the end to the naval blockade, to even return to the table, which seems perfectly reasonable to me. Iran also demanded that negotiations take place in two stages, and that nuclear issues will only be discussed in the second stage, which will be several weeks from now if everything goes as planned.

The terms of the MoU have themselves been a big source of confusion and suspicion, for me and many other pro-Iranian spectators. Getting the wording exactly correct is important, because the US really is like the devil - leave room for any possible interpretation in the contract that favors them more, and they’ll insist that this was the only interpretation up for discussion. Additionally, the US might be historically bad at winning wars, but they’re very, very good at winning peaces: they set up the post-WW2 order to best suit them by playing the European powers off each other; the DPRK might have survived the Korean War politically intact but existed for nearly the next hundred years as a sanctioned pariah; Vietnam was soon forced to economically engage with the country that had dropped triple of all the bomb tonnage of WW2 on them; and so on. It is no exaggeration when I say that the negotiation phase will be the most dangerous part of this war and it could lead to the most death and destruction without a single missile impacting Iran.

However, there’s one little genocidal colony in the region that could stop this whole process from even beginning, as the US appears to have promised Iran that the Zionists will stop the war against Lebanon (and perhaps Gaza too? I’m a little unclear) and even withdraw entirely from southern Lebanon, including all bases set up since this broader conflict began. Apparently, the US promised this in return for Iran not striking the Zionists in return for their most recent strike on Beirut on June 14th. Now, the issue with this whole situation is that the US greenlit the Zionist strike on Beirut, and they knew that Iran would respond to it because they did in response to an earlier strike. If the US made such major concessions to Iran in return for this response strike not occurring, then why authorize the Beirut strike at all? Why make their position worse? Right now, I can think of two reasons. First is that they attempted to create one final embarrassment for Iran, under the assumption that Iran was so desperate for a deal that they wouldn’t risk responding. Second is that this is all one big ruse or misdirection; the US does not intend to follow through with the MoU and subsequent negotiations anyway, and so the terms they’re “agreeing” to don’t really matter.

With the MoU signing apparently set for June 19th, we’ll know for sure soon.

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

If you have evidence of Zionist crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.

  • Bearlifter [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    48·
    5 days ago

    🇮🇷| ❗️Full story behind betraying Iran’s leader, as narrated by Khanalizadeh

    According to Khanalizadeh, a prominent Iranian journalist, after the Leader’s martyrdom, the US quickly asked for a ceasefire, which Iran naturally rejected.

    After the new Leader was chosen, Iranian officials prepared a 5-point plan for talks with the US, but the Leader rejected it.

    After several rounds of revision, a 10-point framework was produced, which became the basis of the first SNSC statement. The Leader also added 8 extra conditions to that framework, including that there should be no nuclear negotiations at all.

    He says the US initially accepted those 10 points as the basis because it needed a ceasefire, but once the Iranian team reached Islamabad, the Americans refused to negotiate on that basis.

    Despite the Leader’s written instruction, the Iranian side reportedly discussed the nuclear file.

    This made the Americans conclude that Iran did not really want to continue the war, and that if they pushed hard, they could extract concessions.

    After Islamabad, the negotiating team sent reports to the Leader.

    The Leader reacted negatively and objected, saying they had acted against religious/legal duty by discussing the nuclear issue and by failing to impose the 10 conditions.

    Some SNSC members then wrote to him, arguing that talks could not happen without the nuclear issue and warned about continued war and attacks on infrastructure.

    The Leader replied that “these negotiations would benefit neither their worldly affairs nor their afterlife,” and would not prevent Iran’s infrastructure from being hit.

    After that, the negotiating team restarted message exchanges, completely set aside the 10-point framework, and pursued a new 14-point plan initiated by the Foreign Ministry, which became the Islamabad MoU.

    The SNSC approved it and sent it to the Leader, but he gave no answer for about 2 weeks.

    SNSC officials then considered treating his silence as approval, but at that meeting a letter from the Leader arrived with questions for each SNSC member.

    Each member answered, and officials gave written commitments explaining how the clauses would be interpreted and implemented.

    One example given is that the “non-interference” clause (US not interfering in Iran’s affairs( would mean shutting down some hostile anti-propaganda media outlets (such as Iran International, ManotoTV, …).

    Only after these written commitments did the Leader authorize the MoU.

    Khanealizadeh says this is the context behind the Leader’s phrase: “I had a different view.”

    The Leader was not merely opposed to parts of the final MoU; he was against the whole post-Islamabad negotiation path once it moved away from the original 10-point framework.

    The process, according to him, went forward because of pressure and insistence from the SNSC.

    @FotrosResistancee

    Src: https://t.me/FotrosResistancee/22338 (video included in link)

    I do not feel good about this. I feel like it’s so joever for this chapter, Amerikka wins again just like it always does. I’m begging for something to happen, something to prove me wrong.

    • AlHouthi4President@lemmy.mlEnglish
      51·
      5 days ago

      I believe that the US-israel agreed to the MOU under the pretext that it would not respect any of the agreements but that the agreement, the charade around it, and the subsequent disrespect of the very first condition would provoke a crisis within the Iranian political establishment.

      This is why I emphasize that the US-israel move in lockstep. The US-israel are not seperate entities from a military perspective. The recent IRGC statement affirms that they hold the US responsible for breaching the commitments.

      It is distinctly possible that whatever occurs will provoke the much-needed cultural revolution (which follows an initial revolution) that was delayed in Iran due to the previous war in the 80’s. Remember that Saeed Jalili, a revolutionary and “Principleist” was endorsed by every labor Union in Iran and officially pro-worker, pro-nationalization, anti-market liberalism in the last election. This is why the oligarchy political machine mobilized behind Pezeshkian. Such is the vulnerability of being a revolutionary state with a democratically elected government.

      If a crisis ensues, the liberal secularist oligarchy will find itself without popular support and without a military to carry out a coup. The military and the IRGC are loyal to the Leader, his eminance Sayed Mujtaba Khamenei. Thank God. Therefore, I do not believe that the doomerism is founded.

      Personally, I have complete confidence in the revolutionary masses in Iran.

      “Remember how the Unbelievers plotted against thee, to keep thee in bonds, or slay thee, or get thee out (of thy home). They plot and plan, and Allah too plans; but the best of planners is Allah.” - Surah al Anfal

      We shall see what happens.