Razia

This is actually incredible news. Given their effort to erase every aspect of Palestinian history, heritage, and culture, having these records slip through their fingers is a setback for 'Israel'. Well done to the UNRWA staff involved, they pulled this off under genuine threat of violence and persecution by the zionist entity. This way, these documents remain a potential legal threat-in-being to the apartheid colony.

Lmao, that's very true, a lot of Russian commentators and analysts target the right leaning crowd, so we're left dodging anti-woke bullshit and casual slurs. Some of them are still worth listening to, but it really puts the 'critical' in critical support.

Honestly I can only view modern Russia as a painful reminder that the revolution was ultimately betrayed. I keep wanting to poke it with a stick like "cmon, do something, become the USSR again" sigh

I appreciate that they're helping dismantle western hegemony at least.

Iran's messaging continues to be exceptional throughout the war, and for the first time in a long time it feels like Iranian perspectives are widely known and often appreciated even in the west.

I'm fascinated to see this: "And to those who follow no formal religion but hold deeply to the universal values of peace, justice, and human dignity:"

It aligns with the tolerant, inclusive tone I've been seeing from their official messaging and through non-official channels like Prof. Marandi and others. I've also yet to see any anti-LGBTQ insults from any of these channels, it's been helping people get past their preconceptions about Iran and about Muslims in general to engage with the core messages. They often address the western public too, appreciate the pro-palestine, anti-zionist movements and protests, and draw a distinction between Zionists and Jews.

I'm impressed at how they've shaped all this and I admit, my opinion of the Iranian system as it stands now has gone up although of course I can never fully support a non-socialist theocracy. The Islamic revolution has mellowed out significantly compared to the early years and has shown flexibility and the ability to prioritize the needs of the general public and to make good strategic moves.

That's Hamas, and Iran seems to avoid medical targets too, even military medical facilities.

However, Hezbollah has been directly targeting helicopters engaged in military casualty evacuations throughout this phase of the conflict, there was the recent video of them narrowly missing a blackhawk with an FPV drone due to rotor wash while 20 Israeli terrorists were clustered around loading casualties. I'm fairly sure Hezbollah has mentioned this in earlier lists of operations that they've released as well.

It's admirable that Hamas and Iran don't target medical facilities and vehicles, but apart from the fact that international law is burning in a rotten pile in the corner now thanks to 'Israel' and the US, the laws of war are meant to establish baselines for military conduct for both sides, as a mutual agreement to maintain a baseline of humanity in conflict. Against an enemy like 'Israel' that has demolished healthcare facilities and targeted health and rescue workers directly in Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran to be frank I don't blame Hezbollah for not drawing this line at all especially for military casualties.

The South is facing a genocide, at this point everything must be done to push the terrorists back. I believe a Hezbollah official has even said during an interview with Al-Jazeera that they are prepared to resort to suicide bombing as well. I don't blame them.

You're correct that they haven't stated what type of helicopter this was and what it was doing, but it would be in line with the earlier pattern, that's why I'm making the assumption that it was casualty evacuation.

Confirmed hit on a helicopter? I think that's the first such kill in this phase of the war. Well done to them, so gratifying. Losing their easy path back to medical aid will likely have a morale impact, and a practical one on survival too. Let them drag their casualties back on land while being chased by FPV drones.

PressTV: Two missiles hit US Navy vessel after it ignored Iran's warning: Report

https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2026/05/04/768028/Two-missiles-hit-US-Navy-vessel-after-it-ignored-Iran-s-warning-Report

So this just happened! Looks like this time around they ignored Iran's warnings for just a little bit too long when playing chicken with the Hormuz defences and didn't turn around in time.

CENTCOM is denying this but it's being reported by Fars and Al-Jazeera as well, I imagine we'll have more information soon. I'd love to find out what weapons were used and the circumstances of the strike - I'm assuming that this is an Arleigh Burke. Sending in a ship for this kind of high-risk political signaling must be really unpopular in US military circles, no faster way to tank morale than to take wild and unjustified risks with sailors' lives for media stunts.

This could spark out of control fast unless the US decides to continue denying it to save face and then de-escalates. Let's see.

The real problem isn't rebuilding the ammunition exactly. The reality is that the US is facing two crushing problems from a military angle.

One is that the entire 1980s era doctrine that they've built their military around has been shattered, in the air, at sea, and on land. Nothing they had on hand had an answer for fortified underground facilities, for dispersion as a general strategy, for cost efficient drones, and for an at-scale ballistic missile programme. Their ships can't approach, their planes can't operate freely over dispersed ambush air defences, and their military isn't built for countering fiber-optic FPV drones and one-way drones. Every aircraft will need to be underground or in hardened shelters. Every ship needs covered docking space, if they're operating anywhere in range of an enemy with these capabilities. And they need an actual answer to the issue of being able to penetrate and destroy underground facilities.

The second problem that they have is that they have to solve these massive problems and pivot their entire military establishment around the solutions they find, using a deeply corrupt and monopolistic military-industrial complex that exercises deep political influence both in government and in the military bureaucracy. This entity has already proven increasingly incapable of delivering next generation equipment across all domains. There is a reason that the US is operating ageing 80s equipment. The Zumwalt programme failed. The mobile artillery programme failed. The light tank programme failed. The LCS programme failed. They have failed to develop effective and practical hypersonics. They have yet to introduce a truly current-gen ship-to-ship missile. The constellation programme failed. Their 6th gen aircraft programme is limping along, massively behind the curve. Ukraine has generally found their drones to be impractical and ineffective. The next generation naval fighter was entirely cancelled. Both the F-22 and F-35 programmes have massive issues around cost, maintenance, availability, and more. On top of that, the US is continuing to suffer from a significant decline in industry, education, and research.

Given all this, the reality is that the US is not equipped to face any country wielding these next generation warfighting capabilities - they've gone from asymmetrical responses to the future of warfare.

So they can slowly rebuild their tomahawk inventory by hand over the next 5 years to bomb more schoolchildren if they like, it doesn't change the fact that their complete inability to fight Iran, China, or Russia has been exposed.

That sort of blockade would definitely not work for the reasons provided. What they could do however, is hunt down ships shipping oil from Iran and shipping items to Iran from further away than Iranian drones and missiles can target.

The problem with this is that it will further exacerbate the global energy crisis and piss off multiple countries benefiting from Iran's exports. Iran can also respond to this kind of blockade with strikes on US and US allies assets elsewhere to inflict harm, while continuing to keep hormuz closed. That's assuming China, Russia or another country doesn't apply pressure or send its own ships to help transport Iranian oil and trade, which the US could not target without it being an act of war it can't afford.

So this is really not a good option from multiple angles.

I despise our illegitimate fauji (army) government with all my heart and everyone in it, with a fiery passion, but I have to admit Khwaja Asif's drunk tweeting has produced some absolute bangers. People call him unprofessional, and he is, but everyone knows that under army rule the defence minister is powerless anyway, it's all a farce, and it's nice to see him treating it that way.

Brian Berletic has been delivering good solid analysis on the US empire's behaviour and intentions towards its rivals and towards the global south for quite a while now and I have to say he is very often proven correct - I'd recommend his articles, interviews, and videos to anyone interested in exploring these topics.

It's absolutely wild seeing Iran make these claims directly on Presstv (which has had remarkably honest and reasonable reporting throughout the war and has pretty excellent writing and reporting in general, keeping their biases and loyalties in mind) because hitting the Tripoli and Lincoln with drones and missiles and confirming damage (they misspelled it as CVN-74, which is the Stennis which is not deployed, but they almost certainly mean CVN-72, the Lincoln) and forcing them to retreat to the Indian Ocean is a huge deal. The headlines are so busy with the ceasefire buzz that they haven't yet caught up to what Iran is saying about wave 100 of Operation True Promise 4. They've hit around 10 large refineries, drone plants, IT targets, Israeli facilities, US bases, many targets strongly.

It's pretty clear that this is a message from Iran - either the US must reign in Israel or there is no ceasefire of any kind and Iran is able and willing to continue.

The thing is, airstrips are really hard to disable fully in the same way that a port is hard to disable. The key infrastructure is huge expanses of concrete and asphalt and that's really easy to repair and hard to appreciably damage. It's a poor target for drones and even big ballistic missiles. You can take out supporting infrastructure, like maintenance halls, barracks, command and control, fuel, a dozen other things, but the US (and by extension Israel) have a huge supply chain behind that and massive transport capacity, and can continue flying planes over to airbases, dispersing them and putting them in shelters, and supplying them even after Iran has pounded the base to dust.

It's why Iran hasn't focused all its efforts to totally disabling the airbases, and goes for more vulnerable and cost effective targets while hitting only carefully chosen things like the capabilities I mentioned above. It's about making air operations harder, more expensive, less secure, and harder on the airframes, and eventually that combined with casualties and a loss of radars and air defence makes bases too vulnerable to use and the US withdraws.

So, Iran's waves are definitely having an impact, but it's not something that can be disabled with a couple of painful strikes, it is an extended effort and while Iran is winning that contest it takes time.