613

Be wary of miscreant.

[Séamus Malekafzali @Seamus_Malek]

Saw this in my instagram feed and immediately burst out laughing

[State of Palestine @Palestine_UN]

🇵🇸 ❤️💛🇪🇸

[Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @NYCMayor]

Over the past month, New York City has welcomed the world.

From neighborhood watch parties to the stadium, we’ve celebrated the communities that make our city the global capital of the beautiful game.

Today, we close out a historic World Cup, proud of how New Yorkers showed up every step of the way.

[Séamus Malekafzali @Seamus_Malek]

Lindsey Graham's entire career was dedicated to finding new ways to put his feet over the heads of the oppressed, to expedite the destruction of societies, and to annihilate the very idea of peace. His attempts to reshape the world were failures, and he will be forgotten.

[Kayvan @hichmadaan]

Imagine a monarchist waiting in the subway station and this train pulls up.

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

"The Treatment of Iran’s World Cup Team Exposed the West's and FIFA's Double Standards"

Iran’s captain was asked about LGBT rights. So, why then wasn’t the U.S. team captain asked about the U.S. bombing of the girls' school in Minab, asks @fbhutto ?
https://t.co/68qnQgYoTI

[Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @NYCMayor]

HISTORY.

[☀️👀 @zei_squirrel]

one of the most pathetic deranged genres of propaganda on Iran that gets churned out daily in the NYT, Guardian, BBC, CNN, AP, Reuters are these idiotic vox pops: "hi, I spoke to 5 random Iranians on whatsapp, and here is how 90 million people actually feel based on my chats with these randos who are definitely "Iranians" and willingly searched out a scumfuck Zionist gusano Western media class hack to talk to, which is of course totally representative of the entire population".

This isn't journalism. It doesn't even have the pretense of it. It is the most shallow, superficial, simplistic, utterly moronic propaganda slop that would get you fired if you dare suggest it for the US or UK or any other place they consider a real country with real people in it. "Hey I spoke to 5 rando Americans who are my contacts, here is my story on how every American thinks based on a 5 minute whatsapp convo".

[☀️👀 @zei_squirrel]

in this post Bikrum Gill says that the position I expressed is Eurocentric, ignorant of Shia Islam, the strategy of the Axis of Resistance, anti-imperialism generally and also deterrence. He is being enthusiastically retweeted by all the Western pseudo-radical sloganeers. There is just one problem: My position is the same as the one expressed by what are smeared in the West as "hardliners" in Iran, who form the core mass revolutionary base of the Islamic Republic, and have devoted their lives to protecting it.

They were the ones who first began pouring out on the streets when this phase of the war started, and stayed there for 40 days. They were the ones who did the same to smash the CIA-Mossad terrorist operation in January, and all the months and years before. And many of them have been martyred in defense of their nation and the axis of resistance more broadly, and happily so, as they see it as their religious and national duty and honor to fight and die for their people.

They are the ones who have continuously said, all the way back to the JCPOA and before, that the actually Eurocentric Western collaborator Zionist faction in Iranian politics, the "reformists" as represented by Rouhani-Zarif, are traitors who will only bring disaster with their policy of cowardice, weakness, "strategic patience" in response to Israeli-US aggression.

Bikrum Gill and those who are gleefully sharing his deranged actually Eurocentric rant masquerading as serious radical materialist analysis, are erasing the core mass revolutionary base of the Islamic Republic from existence, casting them as idiotic, ignorant, extremist fools who do not even understand their own religion of Shia Islam, let alone the intricacies of deterrence, anti-imperialism and the true meaning of the axis of resistance. They are too stupid. They need Cardiff University's Bikrum Gill to tell them about all this. Yes sure they were mass-murdered and maimed, but Gill, who sits in his ivory tower office calling them ignorant fools, is the one who really knows about the true nature of Shia Islam and resistance.

And by extension, the faction that Gill represents and launders, the "reformists" Rouhani-Zarif. They are the true genius understanders of anti-imperialism and resistance and Shia Islam. Not the dirty idiotic foolish uneducated "hardliners". Ewww. They're gross and stupid. Bikrum Gill told us this, and he is at Cardiff University so he must know.

No, it's actually the "reformists" who are the true revolutionaries in Iran, the ones whose entire existence is based on nothing but economic plunder of the nation and its sabotage to eagerly sell it out to the US-Israeli regime, so they can continue plundering even more.

I understand why those who are in the West and don't know or bother to read anything about Iranian domestic politics find this kind of pseudo-radical larp to be attractive. I get it, you get to mindlessly cheerleader what you think is the official position of the Iranian state and the IRGC, and that's easy and simple and it coheres with your desire for a clear easy binary understanding of geopolitics. This side bad, that side good, and that's it. I don't need to know anything more, just hit retweet on Gill giving me the easy answer.

I'm sorry, I just find that depraved and shameful myself. I'm not going to spout pseudo-radical sloganeering trash that means that I am smearing those very Iranians who are the primary material basis and soul of the Iranian nation, state, the IRGC, as ignorant fools who just need to shut up and listen to what the Bikrum Gills of the world, sitting in their Cardiff University armchairs, tells them is the True Path of Liberation.

I just think that's vile and disgusting, to dishonor the memory of these people who have been martyred so I can larp as a radical online for likes and retweets.

So I'm not going to do that. What I will do instead is what I've been doing all along, and expressing the view of what again are disgustingly smeared as "hardliners" in Iran, who are actually the most astute, intelligent, brilliant and devout people you can find anywhere on earth. I respect them. Unlike Bikrum Gill who hates and despises them and erases them from existence because he is a disgusting depraved hack, I venerate them.

And they have been proven right about everything they have said for decades. They knew the JCPOA was a betrayal and would lead to disaster, while Zarif lied and said that actually it would save Iran and there was no way the US would not abide by it, and even was not able to if it wanted. They knew the war that was coming to their own land as the Gaza genocide commenced and they began targeting and bombing Iranians in Syria and Lebanon, and expanding the war further to Lebanon. And they gave analyses and proscriptions of what was to be done that if it had been followed, a lot of bloodshed and destruction would have been avoided.

So I listen to them not just because they are the Iranians who represent the actual mass base of the Revolution, because that just leads you down the path of liberal standpoint epistemology of the variety employed by the Gills of the world, who are too lazy and stupid to engage in actual analysis. No, I listen to them because they are also correct. They have been vindicated.

If you don't like that and you just want to the easy ra ra ra sloganeering shit, that's what you get from the Gills. They just do that. They don't do any actual analysis, they don't expose any propaganda, they don't do any actual meaningful work on anything, they just spout slogans and preen on podcasts that 10 people watch about how radical they really are.

[Bikrum Gill @bikrumsinghgill]

This analysis deeply misunderstands how deterrence works on the strategic scale, and deeply misunderstands the necessary, if painful, logic of anti-imperialist war.

Squirrel is trapped within a Eurocentric frame, and ignores how Iran and the axis have, informed by the Shia tradition, wrestled the signification of death away from the zionist-imperialist bloc. And forgets the lessons of Ho Chi Minh and Basel al-Araj, that the revolutionary intellectual should never compare casualties between colonizer and colonized, imperialist and anti-imperialist, for they will always be skewed. What matters is how the resistant society demonstrates the capacity to reproduce itself while absorbing these costs (or what Amal Saad might call "deterrence by regeneration")

More fundamentally, Squirrel seems to only be capable of apprehending deterrence on a very narrow tactical scale - in terms of counting casualties on each side. In this sense, it is true that the US-Zionist bloc killed more people and visited more destruction upon Iran and Lebanon. And, yes, it retains the ability to strike Iran at will without experiencing a commensurate counter-response.

However, the zionist-imperialist bloc has not been able to translate their tactical strikes into strategic gains, which is the scale at which Iran has sought to establish deterrence.

For example, the US-zionist assassinations did not lead to institutional fracturing, as was the strategic aim of the attackers, but instead was responded to with institutional and governance continuity and coherence.

The attacks on civilian infrastructure and civilian life did not lead to social fracturing, as was the strategic expectation, but rather was responded to with national and social cohesion, a renewal of the popular sovereign basis of the Republic.

The attacks on core economic infrastructure did not succeed in de-industrializing Iran, as it instead responded with rapid repair and replenishment where necessary in the short term, and preserving of capabilities so restoration could happen in the medium term. And, most significant, Iran responded to the tactical blows, as a whole, by establishing permanent escalation dominance through its demonstration of its sovereignty over the strait of Hormuz.

Iran's "escalation dominance", or its moving of deterrence to the strategic scale, had the effect of demonstrating that while the enemy could inflict casualties and destruction, it would fail to achieve any strategic advance. In fact, it would experience strategic reversals - rising costs in the form of revenue drain (US was spending 2 billion/day), munitions attrition, and an internal social fracturing (growing opposition to war in US). The US has permanently lost its standing as a security guarantor for the GCC.

Perhaps, most significant, when Trump and Hegseth threaten Iran with death, the response they receive is: "we do not fear death, we choose dignity over humiliation." This has the impact of disarming the imperialist power - it can spend billions inflicting death, but it achieves nothing strategically.

Now, see where we find ourselves. It is no longer up to the US to either uphold or undermine the ceasefire - the initiative is in the hands of Iran. The strait of Hormuz is a counter-sanctions enforcement mechanism, this is a reality the US must now accept. Iran has further demonstrated that the US can spend 65 billion dollars per month and achieve no strategic gains, and lose strategically in the sense that the Gulf no longer has a security guarantor.

Certainly, war can break out again, but what has been revealed is that it is the US, not Iran, that is increasingly moving out of weakness and panic, and a realization that its projection of power in the region is in irreversible decline at the strategic scale.

[☀️👀 @zei_squirrel]

the US and Israel killed Ali Khamenei the Supreme Leader along with many other leading political and military leaders, and at least 3500 babies, children, women and men. In return Iran appears to have killed around 50 irrelevant Israelis and Americans. Even if you assume they are hiding many losses, it's likely not more than 100 or so irrelevants. In terms of the material damage there is a similar imbalance especially considering the place Iran started from given the decades of economic terror siege, and the closing of the Strait was at the point of beginning to inflict major damage.

If you think this was enough to establish deterrence and prevent the war from being restarted again soon, just ask yourself the very simple question: Would any rational person not happily take that exchange ratio over and over and over again?

You kill a few dozen pedophile rape-settlers, and in exchange I kill your Supreme leader and thousands of others? They will always take that exchange without a moment's hesitation.

[Soureh 🟩☫🟥 @Soureh_design2]

@araghchi All those sacrifices for nothing.. the minimum of your demand should have been the complete expulsion of the US from our region

Another siffin, another Uhud..

[Mohammad @MargBarAmerica]

with some relief now that there may be a permanent end to the war, i can say: my god we are such a corny people. i love it. god bless every iranian. our displays are genuine, our passion for life and all its beauties are real no matter how corny to the irony poisoned western mind

[kev joon @never_oppressed]

I don’t feel good about any of this. Naturally I am glad that we can all breathe a sigh of relief tonight, especially our families back home, but we’ve been here many times before and I see no evidence that this time it will be different. That’s just the brutal, bitter truth.

[Trita Parsi @tparsi]

I cannot emphasize this enough.

A new dynamic will be at play when the US and Iran meet in Islamabad to negotiate a final deal based on Iran's 10-point plan:

Trump's failed war has eliminated the potency of American military threats in US-Iran diplomacy.

The US can still issue threats, but everyone will know that they no longer carry much weight.

Essentially, war with Iran was tried and failed.

As a result, negotiations will have to be based on genuine compromises from both sides, rather than coercion from either side.

[Mirza Shahzad Akbar @ShazadAkbar]

The world should bookmark and remember this moment, a statement from the US Secretary of State openly acknowledging the punishment of two adult women, not for who they are or for any wrongdoing of their own, but simply because of who they are related to.
This alone exposes the hypocrisy and double standards at play. It raises serious questions about how firmly the US truly stands by its stated principles on women’s rights and individual accountability

[Reza Nasri @RezaNasri1]

For over a decade, we Iranians watched Western countries, Arab regimes, and their Israeli enablers stand by as our economy was deliberately crushed under the weight of America’s illegal sanctions and maximum pressure campaign.

We watched them eagerly comply with policies designed to destroy our nation, shatter our lives, crush our dreams, bankrupt our businesses, rot our infrastructure, devalue our currency, and cut us off from normal trade and economic relations with the world.

We watched European leaders pathetically nod in satisfaction and offer pathetic lip service as Trump declared the JCPOA a “bad deal,” using it as cover for the most brutal campaign against our people—fully aware that scrapping the deal was nothing more than his sick, twisted obsession with erasing his predecessor’s legacy.

We watched U.S. officials and their Israel lobby handlers proudly parade before Congress, armed with figures and statistics, boasting how their vicious policies had tanked our currency, spiked unemployment, sent inflation soaring, and inflicted trillions of dollars in damage on our already strained economy.

We watched them cheer these results and laugh at the shattered lives of millions of human beings.

We watched them dutifully support the first Trump administration’s sadistic policies—even during the COVID pandemic—when his criminal Secretary of State moved heaven and earth to block Iran from securing even a meager $5 billion IMF loan, while their own governments freely spent hundreds of billions to protect their populations from the same virus.

We watched them shamelessly endorse Israel’s attacks on our territory under the obscene slogan “Israel has the right to defend itself,” while branding Iran’s legitimate self-defense as “recklessness” and demanding that our government refrain from “escalation.”

We watched them applaud the assassination of our war veterans and heroes, our scientists, and our brightest minds - all in the name of “non-proliferation” - while they kept their mouths tightly shut about Israel’s nuclear arsenal and expansionist agenda.

We watched them, openly or in private, urging more pressure, more destruction, more assassinations, and more war.

All of it justified by the ludicrous and baseless claim that Iran seeks nuclear weapons—a lie they knew was false. They were fully aware that the enrichment levels and constraints Iran had accepted under the JCPOA, and during subsequent negotiations for a new deal, made militarization impossible.

They invented excuse after excuse to engineer our destruction, and they laughed while ensuring the pain was ours alone.

But things have changed. Iran will no longer stand by and watch its own destruction while others nod, cheer and laugh. They will not be laughing anymore.

This time, we will not be the only ones who feel pain. We will no longer tolerate unilateral sanctions and destruction.

We may die standing—but this time, we will all be in same boat.

[Esmaeil Baqaei @IRIMFA_SPOX]

Heartbreaking, cruel, despicable, and utterly outrageous: the American-Israeli aggressors have attacked the Pasteur Institute of Iran — the oldest and most prestigious research and public health center in Iran and the entire Middle East, founded in 1920 through an agreement between the Pasteur Institute of Paris and the Iranian government.
This is not merely another war crime committed as part of an illegal war; it is a barbaric assault on basic human core values.

[kev joon @never_oppressed]

The President of the United States is openly bragging about war crimes. We are living through one of the most insane, inhumane periods in history.