I don’t want to be callous or undermine the tragedy going on in Cuba, but the US blockading, perhaps invading, and attempting to take control of Cuba, while devastating in many ways for Latin American socialism, would have relatively little economic and political impact on the world, so I don’t see how it’s the “only real play” compared to the US empire and Navy being impaled on Iran as they fight over a region where a good third of fossil fuel is produced and exported and the sale of which is one of the fundamental pillars of US hegemony. The Middle East will not “go back to a relatively normal state” even if the war stops one minute from me posting this comment - a prolonged worldwide recession on the scale of, and perhaps exceeding the impact of the coronavirus pandemic is now certain.

Besides, we can (and do) absolutely talk about both, and if/when the US attempts to invade and control it, we’ll see comparable degrees of discussion about it here.

Overall I think it would not be a good idea both theoretically and practically

1. unless Iran supplied them with a truly insane amount of missiles right from the outset, without personnel, production facilities, and hardened underground storage, they would lose too many in attrition and not be able to resupply them or build new ones especially under the total siege that a war would imply
2. what, realistically, would Cuba hit with the kinds of missiles that Iran would provide them that would cause the US to be sufficiently deterred? population centers? the US doesn’t give a shit about its own people. Iran’s missile strategy works because a ton of the bases that threaten them are within range, and because Iran can easily exert control over the Strait of Hormuz and critical fossil fuel infrastructure. Cuba does not have a “if you attack us then the whole world is coming down with us, motherfucker” button
3. Cuba is relatively small and US bases/airports are close, not to mention the Navy having ample places to dock at and resupply, so it’s much harder to quickly fire missiles and then move the launchers back to safety in time before the US finds and hits them
4. as far as I’m aware, Cuba isn’t as “dug in” as the Resistance is, and having extensive underground facilities is something that the West just seems terminally unable to deal with
5. exporting missiles to Cuba would be a massive, massive provocation and just invite the kinds of invasion that they would hope to avoid (i.e. Cuban Missile Crisis, albeit that was with nukes)

I think Cuba’s best bet, based on what its conditions currently are, what it can produce and stockpile, and its geography (especially as an island) would be a more “traditional” guerrilla warfare campaign if the US began an invasion, which would involve predominantly small-arms attritional resistance to soldiers on the ground. I don’t know whether Cuba as a whole is prepared for that possibility, but I sure hope they’ve been studying and making notes on what’s been happening abroad over the last few years, and I’m very sure they’re familiar with the general history of US military interventions in Latin America and how they tend to go.

2025: China creates artificial sun
2026: China donates 5000 solar systems to Cuba

By 2030 China will be creating entire communist galaxies. This is the power of Xi Jinping Thought.

Stunning stuff out of Foreign Affairs today:

Although it was the United States and Israel that instigated attacks on Iran on February 28, leaders in Tehran deserve some of the blame for failing to effectively deter their adversaries.

Not much point reading past this, to be honest. Enough to think about just in the first sentence.

every day I swing between “please god let the US send the marines to try and secure the Strait of Hormuz, it would be so funny” and “oh god, but if a shitload of marines die in a short period, then that might seal in a years-long conflict and/or eventually result in nukes”

I think they were ultimately in a position where they would either side with the US and get bombed by Iran, or side with Iran and get bombed by the US - or, more likely, overthrown and a comprador government installed. In that situation, siding with the hegemon was interpreted as the safer bet.

Realistically, I don’t think there’s any universe where the Zionist entity exists and they don’t end up destroyed eventually, because the contradictions of Zionism have to, one day (i.e. from Oct7 onwards), start violently trying to resolve themselves. It’s possible that they fooled themselves through bad analysis that their destruction could be prolonged until at least the current leadership could retire and die and pass the problem onto their children, or entirely subverted through regime change in Iran, or perhaps the US could get some military technology that made Iranian missiles completely ineffective if they just pumped enough money into the US (we already see inklings of this hope via claims of the usage of anti-drone/missile laser technology).

This doesn’t excuse their actions, though, it’s just to say that our enemies are often as imprisoned by their circumstances as we are, even if we must nonetheless crush them for the sake of global humanity. In this case, their rhetoric and actions really do not inspire any sympathy or pity in me, though.

with this, I think we’re now in the kinds of global historical conditions in which revolutions are forged

likely not the end of imperialism or something as drastic as that, but there’s a lot of governments that I think may collapse before the end of this year

in the middle of the ongoing tragedies of this war that have already occurred and are soon to come, I do at least derive a small measure of comfort when I think about the panoply of deranged Gulf failprince motherfuckers who have been on board with the entity’s every sadistic war crime if it made them another million dollars who are currently freaking the fuck out at their economies being vaporized

I do wonder if the West’s fetishization of decapitation strikes is projection for how their own leaders and generals feel like they’re indispensable and have an intense fear of death

that’s not to say that decapitation has zero effects, but even if you’re analyzing things right now with total sociopathy where the number of people suffering or dead has zero bearing on your decision-making, I find it hard to form the conclusion that assassinating the leaders of your enemies has been beneficial to you and negative for them in the current geopolitical situation, and it seems like strikes on different targets would have had greater overall value in achieving your goals if you’re a Zionist. like, assassinating Sinwar did not end Hamas, assassinating Nasrallah has not resulted in a weakening of Hezbollah (if anything the opposite may be true), assassinating Khamenei resulted in Iranians deepening their loyalty to the government and the Iranian military becoming much more willing to strike you in particular (and not just your disposable proxies like the UAE), etc.

although now that I’m thinking about it, perhaps they have a hyperfocus on decapitation because they can’t really do anything else because they either don’t know where Resistance military targets are or because they cannot actually damage them with their current weapons, like Iran’s missile cities, and they’re just hoping that eventually killing officials has military results because they have a sunk cost fallacy

edit: I will also say though that Iran has to have the world record ratio of “Officials killed on the surface in their houses in the middle of wars where they have been explicitly told that they have been targeted” vs “Square footage of hardened underground locations where their officials would be safe”, so it’s not as if the Zionists are exactly scoring million-to-one hits against bunkers with super advanced weaponry here.

I understand that this is at least partially a religious factor though, and that maybe it might be worse for government stability if all their officials are seen to be hiding underground while the citizens above suffer, so I’m not accusing anybody in Iran’s government or military of negligence.

nevertheless, it does sometimes feel like “for sale: Tehran bunker, never used”

well, me and my buddy have been passing a suitcase full of money back and forth, so within a few days we’ll have generated the GDP to help my country order one of the oil tankers that unreliable China-corrupted satellite photos dishonestly claim are on fire in the Strait of Hormuz (they logically cannot be on fire because Iran’s military has been destroyed)

no need to thank me

your wish is my command

Is there the willingness and capacity in terms of things like small-arm weaponry for Cubans to resist an attempted occupation, or would the population (either by choice or by force), for lack of a better phrase, “go with it”?

I can’t imagine we’re talking about Iranian or even Venezuelan levels of war readiness, the US will invade the island if they so wish and if they really want to destroy Cuba then they can just carpet bomb it and we all know that there will no military aid on the way like that which Iran has received; I just wonder, after they presumably capture or kill their leader and as many officials as they can, to what extent the military and population would be 1) willing to and 2) able to frustrate or attrit an American occupation force presumably stationed in Havana in order to defend the revolution.

Would we see Hamas-esque activity? I’d hope the Cubans have been studying their tactics used against the Zionists, even if they might not have the tunnel networks (as far as I know?)

increasing the costs of transportation and reducing production by blocking Hormuz followed by increasing the distances travelled by shipping by forcing them around South Africa is a real double whammy

I align very closely to Hudson’s and Desai’s interpretations of geopolitical economy and have read their books, but on this I disagree. every conflict could be said to be “about China” because China is, for all intents and purposes, the most powerful economy on the planet right now, so they have a shitload of links all over the world and are influenced by all global events

so I understand the point trying to be made, and I’m sure there’s some people in the administration who are trying to shift events and analysis to be more about the US’s archenemy out of a distaste for getting even more bogged down in the Middle East, but framing the Iran War as secretly a war against China in particular (as opposed to anti-imperialist forces in general) seems like the incorrect framing to me. just like how the Ukraine War could be framed as ultimately a war against China because if Russia is pacified by NATO then that’s obviously quite bad for China in numerous ways, but the West would actually just want Russia to be defeated regardless of whether it would then benefit them vis a vis China

and besides, burning all this military equipment in Russia and Iran, and giving those countries + China (and some others like the DPRK) an opportunity to test their weapons and strategies against NATO equipment, seems like it would be disadvantageous given the staggering difference in military production between anti-imperialist forces and the West in almost every field, not least drones. China has undoubtably been intensely studying the Russians and now Iranians, and where the US has succeeded and failed in each theater, and making their own theories and strategies and military developments accordingly; meanwhile, the US military power only seems to be on the decline since at least the Iraq War in the early 2000s, which by itself wasn’t exactly a stunning victory

so basically if it is all about China in the end then they’re doing things that are consistently counterproductive to that goal, and I usually stand by Stafford Beer’s heuristic that the purpose of a system is what it does, not what it consistently fails to do

what I gather from this is that the US might still be able to call upon the Dutch and form the most powerful naval coalition the world has ever known

while the US bombards Iran as cover, the Dutch can use their uncanny abilities at land reclamation to turn so much of the sea off Iran’s shores into land such that their ability to deploy speedboats and mines into it will be made impossible

truly a force to be reckoned with

It appears that Iranian air defenses in western Iran have been neutralized.

thankfully not, as we can see that American planes are still being equipped with missiles with JASSMs and not glide bombs, which would indicate a downgrade in Iranian air defense such that bombers felt free enough to start true bombing raids instead of mass missile launches. this is the main signal I’m using of the state of Iranian air defense, as well as shoot-downs of Western drones and things like that

Chabahar is also in southern Iran, on the coast, so unless another Chabahar is being referred to and assuming the footage is confirmed, my suspicion is that pretty much all manned US aircraft are being confined to outside Iran and a relatively narrow zone inside until the air defense can be dealt with. perhaps some particularly adventurous pilots have infiltrated further inside, but I’ve seen nothing that indicates that the West has superiority over Iranian airspace. it’s 100% being contested, and it could well be overtaken within weeks or perhaps even days, but we aren’t there yet. things will get significantly worse if/when (likely “when”) it is, though.

Western drones are being a little troublesome for Iran, it must be admitted, as the US has hundreds of them (not that they would use literally all of them), but fundamentally the attrition math doesn’t work out. in a competition between Iran producing decoys and trucks and bulldozers and the West producing abnormally expensive drones, I know which side will cry uncle first

yet another example of the power of Juche

yeah, sometimes you gotta get a little Dengist with it, bunker down, make deals even if they’re unfavourable, etc. especially because Latin America will likely be the final continent in which US hegemony collapses as the frontier retreats

guerrilla wars are very hard to do, you need a ton of national social cohesion and quite a self-sufficient economy capable of making weapons and food internally to wage one for any length of time, and I don’t blame Venezuela (or Cuba, if the US comes knocking) for not going for it unless and until there is literally no other option to preserve the state

the socialist project is still intact as long as revolutionary forces maintain power, there’s still mass participation of some kind, and some genuine communist teleology

There was an article from the US deployment against the AnsarAllah (Houthis), where some high-ranking US official said that his soldiers were traumatized because they never expected anyone to shoot back at them. Does anyone have a link to that article?

Yes, it’s from AP News. The line is taken a little out of context from the whole statement delivered, but is still pretty funny:

U.S. Navy sailors have seen incoming Houthi-launched missiles seconds before they are destroyed by their ship’s defensive systems. Officials in the Pentagon have been talking about how to care for the sailors when they return home, including counseling and treatment for possible post-traumatic stress.

Cmdr. Benjamin Orloff, a Navy pilot, told reporters in Virginia Beach on Friday that most of the sailors, including him, weren’t used to being fired on given the nation’s previous military engagements in recent decades. “It was incredibly different,” Orloff said. “And I’ll be honest, it was a little traumatizing for the group. It’s something that we don’t think about a lot until you’re presented with it.”

But at the same time, Orloff said sailors responded with grit and resilience. “What’s impressive is how all those sailors turned right around —- and given the threat, given that stress —- continued to do their jobs beyond reproach,” Orloff said, adding that it was “one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.”

Given that Trump adores the feeling that he’s deceived his enemies (see: the beginning of the Twelve Days War last year, and the Venezuela raid) even if they actually haven’t been deceived at all, my prediction is that they aren’t going to use the Marines to try and take Kharg (they may try and use them elsewhere) but instead they’ll go “We are very smart and savvy operators; those stupid Iranians are distracted by the MEU ship, but what we’re ACTUALLY gonna do is parachute a bunch of troops onto the island!” and try and take the island within the next couple days with that airdropped force. given that the US did not destroy the oil infrastructure on it, and that Iran made a point of saying that their air defenses on the island were stashed away during the strikes and then reactivated shortly after, I think this indicates that Iran knows that this is the plan.

for a period of, let’s say 3 to 12 hours, the narrative and headlines will be “Critical Iranian territory successfully taken and held by US forces; Iranian regime caught unawares by intelligence ruse” and Trump will do one of his truthsocial diatribes saying that if the Iranians make peace accept their overwhelming defeat now, the US will graciously give back Kharg (as part of the whole “Make Iran Great Again” narrative thing). the oil infrastructure is not being destroyed precisely so it retains its ability to be used as a bargaining chip - otherwise, Iran would have little reason to want to make peace and regain it.

then the drones and short range missiles and artillery will start hitting, it’ll be a bloodbath for a while but covered up with “3 dead and 5 wounded today on Kharg island in another unsuccessful Iranian attempt to retake Kharg” (the actual numbers will be at least 10x this) and then eventually Iran will effectively regain control but the whole thing will be memory holed by another dozen major events that took place during that time period and Trump will never mention it again

his key weakness vis a vis these sorts of deception plots is that he’s unable to stop talking about the object of his desire. he’s like somebody vagueposting on social media about something that happened to them - they keep dancing around the point without quite mentioning it in the hopes that somebody will ask them about it, to the point where you can infer what the plan is just from what he both is talking about and explicitly isn’t talking about, like celestial objects orbiting an invisible black hole. if he and Hegseth etc just shut the fuck up about Kharg and never talked about it then it could maybe (but still very improbably) work