Bulletins and News Discussion from July 7th to July 13th, 2025 - Sanctions on Russia: The Sequel

Image is of the Power of Siberia natural gas pipeline, which transports gas from Russia to China. This isn't an oil pipeline (such as the ESPO) but I thought it looked cool. Source here.

Trump has recently proposed a 500% tariff on goods from countries that trade with Russia, including India and China (who buy ~70% of Russia's oil output), as well as a 10% additional tariff on goods from countries that "align themselves with BRICS." Considering that China is the largest trading partner of most of the countries on the planet at this point, and India and Brazil are reasonably strong regional players, I'm not sure what exactly "alignment" means, but it could be pretty bad.

Sanctions and tariffs on Russian products have been difficult to achieve in practice. It's easy to write an order to sanction Russia, but much harder to actually enforce these sorts of things because of, for example, the Russian shadow oil fleet, or countries like Kazakhstan acting as covert middlemen (well, as covert as a very sudden oil export boom can be).

Considering that China was pretty soundly victorious last time around, I'm cautiously optimistic, especially because China and India just outright cutting off their supply of energy and fuel would be catastrophic to them (and if Iran and Israel go to war again any time in the near future, it'll only be more disastrous). Barring China and India kowtowing to Trump and copying Europe vis-a-vis Nordstream 2 (which isn't impossible, I suppose), the question is whether China and India will appear to accede to these commands while secretly continuing trade with Russia through middlemen, or if they will be more defiant in the face of American pressure.

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During the Iranian attack on the US military base in Qatar just before the "end" of the Israeli-US war against Iran, the one ballistic missile that was not intercepted ("set free" according to Trump) hit a radome at the US base, as revealed by new satellite imagery. Likely the most accurate Iranian ballistic missile strike of the entire war. I'd guess a Hormuz missile, a Fateh-110 or even potentially 313 ballistic missile with an anti radiation seeker. The much shorter range compared to targeting Israel, plus the anti radiation seeker locking on to the largest emission source of electromagnetic radiation, would explain the high accuracy.
Source, with satellite imagery and before and after video
- Likely the most accurate Iranian ballistic missile strike of the entire war.
  ???? There is lots of things that Iran could have done differently during the 12 day war but this is such a bizarre and unnecessary thing to say.
  
  Do you see that tiny mosque right next to the israeli ministry of the interior building that is being blown up in Haifa?
  The Istiqlal Mosque is the very same place where Sheikh Izzedine al Qassam used to preach revolutionary lessons against Zionism and imperialism 100 years ago. Yes the namesake of Al Qassam.
  That missile had a massive warhead but the historic mosque is untouched.
  
  Anyways I am very glad to see US radar domes blown up. Thanks for the video
  
  Unfortunately, that's not true and the claim came from some telegram channels and twitter accounts that did sloppy geolocation work, and ignored other angles (Menchosint in particular). Lots of Iranian and resistance aligned sources did this as they were desperate for something.
  The headquarters of the ministry of the interior is in Jerusalem, not Haifa.
  The missile did not hit or directly impact the tall skyscraper building that's labeled as the ministry of the interior building on Google maps. It hit a mixed use commerical building around 50-100m away, next to a parking lot. If the target was the tall building, the missile missed by over 50m. (Corrected, initially stated distances in ft)
  
  Geolocation and multiple angles here, highly recommend ignoring political commentary and replies
  The mosque did take minimal damage from the shockwaves, mainly debris and blown out windows.
  
  So they didn't blow up the ugly nazi tower? Unfortunate indeed. Its still a legendary image and strike though.
  The mosque thay they are showing in that thread is a different mosque than the Independence (Istiqlal) mosque that I pointed out. I did a little digging and I speculate that they built these government municipal buildings in the early 21st century right next to three historic mosques to deter Hezbollah from striking them...
  The "rocket building" is less than 20 meters away from another mosque. Red marks are two of the mosques (Zahir Umar and Jurayneh) and the yellow circle is where the missile hit.
  
  Istiqlal Mosque is like 200 meters from the building.
  
  Even if its not the exact building hit, I still stand by my initial statement. It seems Tasnim news lied about the F-35's which is very unfortunate and it seems the Iranian air defenses were caught completely by surprise on June 13 (basically equivalent to the pager operation) and a few other concerning things... but the narrative that "Iran's missiles arent actually precision" is something I have seen in too many Emirati and Zionist rags and I am going to have a knee-jerk reaction against it.
  (We all saw multiple videos of hypersonic missiles threading the needle between residential buildings to strike air defenses and other incredible feats.)
  Thanks for investigating more, it gave me the chance to learn something new.
  
  Bottom left corner of the photo it has a green dome.
  
  This is really funny. The nazi government office that was struck... apparently they call it the "rocket building" 🤣
  
  That building should have been blown up regardless of what was in it. Fuckin eyesore

912 comments