Bulletins and News Discussion from June 16th to June 22nd, 2025 - Iran, Harden Your Heart

Image is of destruction and damage inside Israel, sourced from this article.

Iran and Israel have struck each other many times over the last few days. There has been a general focus on military facilities and headquarters by both sides, though Israel has also struck oil facilities, civilian structures and hospitals, and in return for this, Iran has struck major scientific centers and the Haifa oil facilities.

Israel appears to have three main aims. First, to collapse the Iranian state, either through shock and breakdown by killing enough senior officials, or via some sort of internal military coup. Second, to try and destroy Iranian nuclear sites and underground missile cities, or at least to paralyze them long enough to achieve the first and third goals. And third, to bring the US into a direct conflict with Iran. This is because the US better equipped to fight them than Israel is (though victory would still not be guaranteed depending on what Iran chooses to do).

Iranian nuclear facilities are hidden deep underground (800 meters), far beyond the depth range of even the most powerful bunker busters (~70 meters or so), and built such that the visible ground entrances are horizontally far away in an unknown direction from the actual underground chambers. Only an extremely competent full-scale American bombing force all simultaneously using multiple of the most powerful conventional (perhaps even nuclear) bunker busters could even hypothetically hope to breach them (and we have seen how, in practice, American bunker busters have largely failed to impair or deter Ansarallah). There are several analysts on both sides who have concluded that it is entirely impossible to physically prevent Iran from building nukes.

I fully expect the US to join the war. I believe the current ambiguity is a deliberate invention of the US while they work to move their military assets into position, and as soon as they are ready, the US will start bombing Iran. After that, Iran's leadership must - if they haven't already - harden their hearts, and strike back with no fear, or risk following the path of Libya, Syria, and Iraq, either into either surrender, occupation, or annihilation. Every day where they do not possess a nuke is a day where lives are being lost and cities are being bombed.

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Malaysia’s current geopolitical trajectory
Sitting at one of the most important waterways in the world - the strait of Melaka, the country hosts the 2nd largest Chinese diaspora, 3rd largest Indian diaspora and largest Indonesian, Bangladeshi and Nepali diaspora. One thing to know is that Malaysian foreign policy never strays too far from home.
It has now been a few years since the 2022 General Election, where a lot of the foreign alternative media was highlighting US influence in the opposition coalition and a potential westward turn. But unfortunately to them, lacking in dialectical materialism and influenced by Eurocentrism, they never actually understood the material and historical contexts that shape Malaysian politics.
- This is already being countered by Trump’s global tariffs, and if China does not come to a deal with the US soon, the Southeast Asian exporters will have to compete with China dumping cheap goods into their countries.
  (Not so) fun fact: Scott Bessent current leads the Trump trade war.
  Who is Scott Bessent and what does he have to do with Anwar (Malaysia’s current Prime Minister) and ASEAN (+3)?
  In 1990, Mahathir (the former Prime Minister of Malaysia) proposed the formation of East Asian Economic Caucus (EAEC), a regional bloc that will comprise the 10 Southeast Asian countries and the East Asian economies (Japan, South Korea and China). This will eventually turn into the neutered form of ASEAN +3 but we’ll get there.
  The EAEC immediately set off the US nerve, being a direct counterpart to Clinton’s APEC, the US Asia-Pacific economic strategy that started a year prior in 1989. EAEC would be entirely regional, independent and without American involvement.
  At the time, Thailand’s economy was flourishing being a huge manufacturing country that had benefited greatly from its “basket of currency” strategy, tying its currency to the US dollar among others. This will turn out to be its ultimate weakness. Remember, this was in the 1980-90s before China joined the WTO and ultimately became the world’s factory.
  To neutralize the EAEC proposal, George Soros was activated to destroy the Southeast Asian economy.
  For those who don’t know, Scott Bessent, who currently leads Trump’s trade war, was the chief architect and protege of Soros that engineered the Black Wednesday attack against the HM Treasury in Britain, and caused the 1992 sterling crisis. He was only 29 at the time.
  By 1997, he was part of the core Soros team that engineered the Asian Financial Crisis that begun with a speculative attack against Thai baht. Due to the Thai baht being pegged to US dollars, the exchange rate immediately suffered. This would eventually crash the Southeast Asian and South Korea’s economies, leading to large scale IMF bailouts. The EAEC proposal was as good as dead.
  Anwar (the current Malaysian PM) was the deputy PM at the time, under Mahathir. A fervent neoliberal, Anwar advocated for receiving IMF bailout, and led to the infamous “sodomy charge” by Mahathir and being prosecuted as a political prisoner. (Malaysia was and is a socially conservative country so a sodomy charge of a high ranking official is a big deal).
  Malaysia eventually escaped the IMF trap but understand that Mahathir is no angel. He is a far right Malay supremacist with anti-Semitic views (believing that the US is an agent of the Jewish cabal) and his suspicion of IMF arose because of that view. He was also responsible for purging many of the left wing trade unions in the 1980s in Malaysia and killed off the vestiges of left wing movement in the country, while instituting neoliberal mass privatizations to benefit his own cronies.
  Anwar would turn opposition during his “reform” phase as a political prisoner, and decades later, led the opposition coalition to electoral victory. But make no mistake, Anwar has always been a neoliberal and will always be loyal to the IMF export led growth strategy. Don’t expect Malaysia to turn socialist any time soon.
  What came out of this was a battered Southeast Asian economy that already posed no threat to the US empire, and eventually the ASEAN +3 (China, Japan, South Korea) was formed, but in a much neutered form. The Asian Financial Crisis would eventually spread abroad, and directly precipitated in Russia’s default in 1998, when Russian ruble hit 6000 RUB / USD and a reset button had to be pushed. A year later, Vladimir Putin would become leader and began a decade of slowly clawing back what Russia had lost.
  Back to Scott Bessent, having killed off Thailand and South Korea, the Soros team set their eyes on China and engaged in a fierce skirmish at the Battle of Hong Kong. It was here that China made a firm stand and eventually repelled the American financial attacks, though not without huge sacrifices with a heavy cost. For the Americans, their goals of harvesting the Southeast Asian economy and killing off the APEC competitor were already accomplished, so the loss at Hong Long was a set back but not a total failure.
  In Chinese media, Bessent is rightfully feared and has been painted as someone who wanted to seek vengeance after the defeat in Hong Kong decades earlier.
  It is very interesting that Bessent is now back on the forefront leading Trump’s trade war. I have no doubt that the Americans know perfectly well what their global tariffs are doing, and my guess is that they want to use China’s industrial capacity to kill off the surrounding exporting countries such that American finance capital can come and in harvest the region once again.
  
  Agreed with practically everything you said. The AFC was definitely an engineered attack against SEA to disrupt EA-SEA integration, but interestingly enough I would say lead to the rise of labour organization and consciousness in Indonesia, with the presidentship of the progressive Abdurrahman Wahid, before his prompt ousting of course but that’s a different story.
  Although there are small details I’d contest.
  while instituting neoliberal mass privatizations to benefit his own cronies.
  He had quite a flip-floppy industrial policy but in his first couple terms he did pursue import-substitution industrialization, especially for transportation. Only in the later years did he then ran on a neoliberal platform (which lead to the rise of the current opposition party of PAS).
  socially conservative
  I don’t agree with the use of this phrase to describe Malaysian or Asian social beliefs because it mischaracterises the class positions and historical-cultural reasons for why populations in the Global South would seem “backward” compared to bourgeois-liberals in the West. (A lot of it is just Western chauvinism aswell).
  
  Agreed and with your last point as well. I was just pointing out that Anwar was literally charged because of sodomy and many in the public fully bought into it and saw it as sufficient cause for imprisonment. Of course, this is not aimed at any specific culture and I’m sure many religious conservatives in the West would cheer for this kind of persecutions of people they see as heretics as well.
  I do note that Mahathir leaned heavily into playing up religious conservatism and Malay ethnic supremacy to consolidate his power within the country.
  
  On your last point, 100%.
  He still continues to this day, nearing 100 years old, I wish he’d just call it quit lol.
  I don’t know whybut many Asian media news sites continues to quote his words like he has any relevance.
  
  I think if your position is only anti-American/Western imperialism, then Mahathir’s words do often seem to fit that bill.
  For example, in the strategy to promote national industries (e.g. Proton the national car), he looked to the East (Japan) instead of the West. He promoted regional independence instead of being fully open up to Western capital, though much of his view seems informed by a belief that “the US works for Jewish capital, that’s why I don’t trust them”.
  He was also unfortunately right about not taking the IMF bailout (for the same twisted reason above), as Malaysia would have suffered even worse fate in the wake of the Asian Financial Crisis like its neighbors that took the IMF deals.
  Having said that, his decades of rule was also characterized by deep corruption, cronyism, mass privatization, assault on labor movements on top of stoking religious and ethnic tensions against minority Chinese and Indians that very much placed him on the right, if not borderline far right.
  
  Mahathir is indeed unique in Malaysian politics, because he was the first Prime Minister to not be of royal origin and being born from peasants. As part of the up and coming Malay-Muslim bourgeoisie within UMNO, against the traditional British-aligned feudal bureaucrats back in the 60s and 70s, his firebrand speeches does seem quite anti-imperialist for those unaware. However, Malaysian foreign policy had already shifted east-ward and maintained this position since Tun Abdul Razak, where Mahathir was really just riding the coat tails of.
  I also do think generally his anti-semitism is usually overstated especially in Western media. It plays only a small role in the grand scheme of things.
  As for his Malay-Muslim supremacy, that’s a big one because for a lot of those on the left, the creation of the comprador Malaysian nation-state was already as right-wing as you can get, especially with the secession of Singapore. I have written before about the class forces that led to this secession, and so I won’t focus too much on it here but the reason I bring it up is that a lot of Malaysian liberals of any racial background, have this false idea that Mahathir was the main progenitor of racialism (racism), and that prior to his premiership there were little-to-no racial tension. This was definitely not the case.
  I’d say the key contributor to rising racial tension was the failure of left-wing parties and organizations to consolidate and gain power, and of course there is a ton of reasons for this, but just to name one example, Barisan Sosialis in the 60s and 70s were the premier left-wing party that was composed of a unity between Malay-Muslim farmers and Chinese labourers. Their fall lead to a resurgence and continuation of racial-baiting in the political scene and myopic race-based party decision-making.
  Furthermore, now to mention the liberals, they too had facilitated racialism within the country despite their pretentiousness and claims of being anti-racist. This is because of their misunderstanding of racialism and the causes of it within Malaysia - which has always been because of unequal land distribution, colonial-era relations of production and British-origin ideological divide and conquer.
  Now the liberals have built up quite a large propaganda machine that over-exaggerates racial difference and racial tensions to practically scare voters into voting for them. It’s two sides of the same coin.
  And so to call Mahathir right-wing because of his Malay-Muslim supremacism is really meaningless to those on the left here. A lot of the modern-day Malaysian political establishment and the many-many parties are right-wing by that definition, for none actually seek to reorganize the relations of production and actually end the root causes of racialism.
  
  'conservative' might be the wrong word but there is a dominant anti-queer attitude in the country. One of my good friends is Han-Malaysian national and describes gay life in even Kuala Lumpur as reminiscent of USA 1970s, but with the upper-class of the gay scene adopting the attitudes and lack of activism of rich, assimilated gays of the contemporary US. In particular, he raised the widespread crackdown against gay men's spaces over the last year.
  However, he notes that there is more tacit acceptance of proletarian/peasant homosexuality that does not match the western image of gay people.

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Malaysia’s current geopolitical trajectory