Also a reminder that we pull footage and reports from our sources immediately when possible. So if reports end up being false or videos being old or fake, that’s just what comes with the territory.

The alternative would be to wait a week so that we can post a completely accurate recap with no mistakes. To an audience that is mostly here for fast breaking info….

So relax. They are just posts 🌚

Note the differences

@Slavyangrad

Waiting for the false outrage

Apparently a suicide bomber got the US Erbil base. Working so don’t have time to verify or check if it’s a translation error. So it can just go here for now.

Another cool boom boom vid at the US Erbil base.

Any quick ones I see without time to work out the exact details for an SLG post I’ll just quickly pop on here.

Strong chance they are already on SLG anyway. Admin JA is a total weapon.

Take your pick for a ground invasion of Iran:

Amphibious assault from the south -- through waters mined to fuck, with trillions of missiles aimed at them, followed immediately by a wall of mountains where two battalions can hold off an entire corps at the narrow passes

The Kermanshah corridor from the west, that's how Saddam invaded Iran; he made it a whopping 50 kilometers before getting completely bogged down for 8 years. Again, mountains, the Zargos, then another 500 kilometers to Tehran through mountainous terrain. Plus, you know, Shiites live there, all the pro-Iranian Iraqi militias, and the current Iraqi government would never in a million years allow it

Khuzestan may look promising with how close it is to Kuwait and the Arab minority living there and all that, but, again, you'll run into the Saddam problem

Azerbaijan, from the north. No port infrastructure, no rail link with NATO, few military airfields. And again, damn mountains. A thousand kilometers through mountainous terrain that includes passes over Damavand, the highest mountain in the Middle East. And even then, the Kremlin, liberals as they may be, still wouldn't allow that. Also, Iran can easily go beast mode and destroy the oil infrastructure in Azerbaijan with a few dozen drones, wiping out 2/3 of the Azeri economy

Turkmenistan, the northeast. 1,000km across desert with no supply lines whatsoever. Then more mountains. Also the political problem

Pakistan, the southeast. Fifteen hundred kilometers through a region with zero infrastructure, just desert, fuck-all nothing, and then you run into... yeah you guessed it, mountains. And of course Pakistan would never allow it

The only RELATIVELY viable option in terms of geography and logistics is Turkey, but the Turks aren't idiots either and don't want to get involved with this

Russians with Attitude

So far it’s clear that if the US was going to win at current strength/commitment level, it had to be during the 12 day war. Israel alone was able to do much more damage back then but they ran out of juice too quickly. Iran today is in a much better position and it shows.

So will Trump ultimately pack up and go home? Or will he overcommit to save face (in his mind)? He appears already doomed in the mid terms, and committing US lives to a conflict people voted against would only cement that surely. Or am I giving the American people too much credit?

This could be a translation error so I’m cautious about putting it directly on SLG until we have better confirmation. The translation reads:

The moment of the destruction of the American-Israeli fighter jet north of Tehran.

Will likely just forward it there for now.

Me on Women’s Day

Valid.

I’m seeing claims that US and Israeli casualties are Very high. I’ve been unable to verify them (not that I’ve really tried yet). Lots of random US accounts saying they were either on ground or know people there and that US has lost over 1000 soldiers.

Again, no idea if it’s true or bots etc but also difficult to believe that only a handful of US and Israeli troops have died when their bases are being sent to hell and their agents and higher ups are being precision struck in their gulf hotel rooms.

I think cheerleaders on both sides are being too flippant. Iran is suffering severe attrition to its conventional military forces. It's conventional navy has been wiped out (though it wouldn't have made a difference either way). Its air force is grounded or destroyed and its air defence is being degraded.

There's a good chance the US and Israel could achieve air supremacy in the coming weeks, which would make shortages in stand-off munitions meaningless, as the US could instead dip into its immense stockpiles of cheap-ish gravity bombs and such, and bomb most of Iran at will, in free hunting mode.

The US-Israel coalition could also ramp up attacks against Iranian energy and water infrastructure, potentially leading to large-scale humanitarian catastrophe. Iran is facing a long-term austere war economy situation, and it's hard to tell how long it would be able to weather that.

However.

The Iranians have succeeded at severely degrading US radar installations and missile defence in the region and interceptor stockpiles are running low. They still have deep stockpiles of missiles and drones and they are keeping the Straight of Hormuz closed, sending shockwaves through the entire global economy. The US' vassal states in the Gulf are suffering and may fall into a death spiral soon-ish (unless they push for deescalation via distancing themselves from the US).

US military bases in the area have been devastated. Air supremacy over the entire country has not been established - localized air superiority, sure, but a majority of strikes are still stand-off munitions and the eastern half of Iran remains entirely untouched so far.

The Iranians can respond to escalation by targeting infrastructure in Israel and the Gulf states, having the capability to *also* cause widespread humanitarian catastrophe. Desalination plants, electricity generation, a lot of juicy targets that remain untouched so far.

The Straight of Hormuz is closed. Trump has claimed the US Navy would reopen it, but the IRGC speedboat fleet is mostly untouched so far (the "actual" Iranian Navy you'd expect to play a role in the war) and the Iranians can potentially strike US ships going through the Strait with a variety of weapons.

According to some napkin math, even if Iran's conventional forces are truly defeated from the air, decentralized IRGC forces with localized drone stockpiles and production will retain the ability to lob several Shaheds a day at the Strait of Hormuz pretty much indefinitely.

It's a race against time on both sides with many levels of escalation still open.

Russians with Attitude

Conspiracy time. We can hope 🙏🏻