perestroika

My advise to Kallas: don't start personally drinking, but organize credible and systematic drinking.

Find an expert drinker, the EU equivalent of Dmitry Medvedyev. He or she should preferably be a former head of state or PM from a large country. Health checks should be done, since we can't afford this negotiator passing out too often.

This person should visit the Chinese embassy when sober, then get regularly drunk (observing the behaviour of Elon Mush, microdosing of ketamine might also help). Either way, this person should regularly enter "god mode" and taunt Trump with progress reports about European countries withdrawing from the Non-Prolilferation Agreement, buying nuclear powered space laser technology from China and perspectives for a new trans-Eurasian defense alliance that is coming very soon (and which will allegedly stop the Russian invasion of Ukraine "in 24 hours").

(On days of high alcohol intake, promises to build a space elevator and climate control station on Greenland might be appropriate to include.)

Economically, yes.

Diplomatically, China is gaining a treasure from Trump's agressive and unprincipled behaviour.

The US has been a preferred ally to cooperate with for many countries, and a safe haven for investing money for many decades - because the US was reliable, had independent courts and an independent central bank, and was considered a stable democracy despite the problems it had.

It was possible to rationally predict a US reaction to certain problems. The state seemed to have principles, and government seemed to listen to experts.

Now the choice is between a distant country unlikely to invade anywhere except its proximity (China), even if highly authoritarian - and an unstable democracy where experts are ignored and independent institutions subverted, whose foreign policy is overtly agressive and follows no principles.

...as for economy...

From an Eastern European perspective, what could the US offer to me? Microsoft, Netflix, Tesla, Starlink... all except Starlink are needless expenses, and Starlink can be replaced. What does China offer? Batteries, electric motors, combustion motors, generators, motor controllers, 3D printing eqipment, sensors, cameras, radio electronics, optics and fiber optics... the list is long. The only (and massive) downside to China is their intent of invading Taiwan - from where everyone, including China, get their most advanced processors and memory.

Here and now, the title link works for me. :)

Kurds live there on both sides of the border - if Iranian Kurds get in trouble, it is only logical for Iraqi Kurds to hatch a plan to assist them.

The only thing that was wrong was over-eagerness by Turkish intelligence services, who reported the plan to Iran, preventing the border crossing and turning it into a battle.

I hope other border crossings succeeded.

If people cannot cross, drones can be used to send goods - and drones can be used to carry more drones, FPV headsets and remotes.

Weather balloons can be used - they might want to copy a page from the textbook of Belarusian cigarette smugglers. Balloons travel so high that shooting from small arms doesn't work, and if Iran shoots a smuggling balloon with missiles, they're wasting 100000 euros to bring down 1000 euros.

P.S. As for what they are doing (aside from improving air defense) - Ukraine is attempting to buy several really small (around 60 MW) co-generation power stations for installation in / near Kyiv. They hope to get them by March. Because small installatioons are less attractive targets, and if one is destroyed, you still have several working.

They are trading strikes. Ukraine prefers burning down Russian oil refineries, since those give the Russian army its fuel and also give Russia income.

In winter, Russia prefers hammering Ukraine's heating and electrical infrastructure.

District heating and electrical grids are difficult to defend if one attacks them with hundreds of drones. So, unfortunately, they will get damaged and there will be blackouts to fix stuff.

Ukraine cannot effectively defend their electrical grid, just like Russia cannot defend its refineries and pipelines.

As drone production becomes more efficient, swarms grow bigger and drones become cheaper, the list of things which cannot be defended will likely only grow.

The only countries which need not worry about their grid, are warm countries with lots of wind and solar power. But even that must be backed up by lots of small battery banks and small power stations. Big ones are just very expensive targets, unless you build them underground.

It did, and the US considered the outcome so concerning that they requested to lease the submarine (but not install a crew - Swedish sailors would operate it in the US navy). Since those were different times, with only mild insanity among US presidents, Sweden granted the request.

Wikipedia tells us:

Secondment to United States Navy

In 2004, the Swedish government received a request from the United States to lease HSwMS Gotland – Swedish-flagged, commanded and crewed, for one year for use in antisubmarine warfare exercises. The Swedish government granted this request in October 2004, with both navies signing a memorandum of understanding on 21 March 2005.[5][6] The lease was extended for another 12 months in 2006.[7][8][9] In July 2007, HSwMS Gotland departed San Diego for Sweden.[10]

His support numbers are certainly somewhat pushed up.

However, on Reddit (on the subreddit r/newiran, which I must note is disproportionately pro-Pahlavi) someone proposed a method of verifying how much of his support genuinely came from Iran.

They measured the drop in viewership of his videos at the beginning of the Internet blackout. They concluded that most viewers were from Iran, since traffic dropped several times with the blackout.

Sadly, Russia no longer depends much (they might depend a little) on Iranian drones - they bought the design, set up mass manufacturing, made improvements (better antennas, bigger warheads, faster engines) and now crank them out entirely independently.

I wish I could tell otherwise.

Regarding politics, uncensored...

...since the US always maintains strike plans for Iran, passivity on part of Trump leads me to conclude that when promising to assist protesters if killing starts, he lied - he had no intent or plan of assisting them. That's pretty bad.

The naked truth is that Iranian people need weapons, explosives and communication devices. Some amount can be provided by militant underground groups, but those are mostly working in the countryside and mountainous places - outside the Persian speaking central regions. I trust that ordinary smugglers are already working at tenfold speed. A foreign state could do much to help in the short term, but so far, foreign states have been letting the Islamic Republic of Iran uncontrolledly kill its people for 5 days in a row. :(

CBS is (correction: apparently, was) a reputable news outlet. If you want higher levels of independence, read the Guardian. They lag behind timewise since they take extra time to verify information.

Iran signals quick trials and executions for protesters in defiance of US warnings

The death toll in Iran has soared as authorities have carried out a brutal crackdown, with 2,571 people killed and more than 18,100 people arrested, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRNA). Already, the death toll from the two-week protest movement dwarfs any other in Iran since its 1979 revolution.

Protesters said there was a heavy security force on Wednesday as authorities prepared for a mass funeral of 300 security forces and civilians killed in demonstrations.

So, 2571 confirmed deaths, one mass funeral of 300 people in one city.

Hundreds of gunshot eye injuries found in one Iranian hospital amid brutal crackdown on protests

An ophthalmologist in Tehran has documented more than 400 eye injuries from gunshots in a single hospital, as overwhelmed medical staff struggle to cope with the toll of an increasingly violent crackdown on nationwide protests by Iranian authorities.

That's 400 gunshot eye injuries per one hospital, counted by an eye doctor. Those who got hit in other body parts likely aren't included. Assuming 5 hospitals per city, that's 2000 gunshot eye injuries per city. Assuming 180 cities and towns (likely leads to overestimation due to a large number of small towns), we would get 360 000 gunshot eye injuries per Iran. Being cautious, let's divide it by 10. A cautious estimate of 36 000 gunshot eye injuries per Iran could be warranted.