Tag: donald trump

‘Cuba’s Next,’ Says Lindsey Graham as Illegal Trump-Israel War on Iran Kills Hundreds

As American and Israeli bombs kill hundreds of Iranians – reportedly including at least 180 students and others at a girl’s school in Minab – Sen. Lindsey Graham said Sunday that President Donald Trump is “on a roll” and that Cuba is the next nation in the US regime change crosshairs.

In an interview on Fox News, Graham (R-SC) said prematurely that “Trump finished the job” that former President Ronald Reagan “failed to do,” namely, destroy Iran’s Islamist government after the overthrow of a brutal US-backed monarchy in 1979. “I am a big admirer of Ronald Reagan but I’m here to tell you that Donald Trump, in my opinion, is the gold standard for Republicans, maybe any president, when it comes to foreign policy.”

“Maduro – everybody talked about him, well, Donald Trump’s got him in jail,” Graham said of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who was abducted along with his wife two months by invading US forces.

“Cuba’s next. They’re gonna fall,” Graham said of the revolutionary government in Havana that’s outlasted a dozen American presidents, despite decades of US-led assassination attempts, sabotage, and subversion. “This communist dictatorship in Cuba, their days are numbered.”

The remarks by Graham – who previously berated Trump as a “jackass,” “nut job,” and “loser” unfit to be commander-in-chief – come amid reporting that Trump is feeling buoyed by what he views as successful attacks on Iran and Venezuela.

“The president is feeling like, ‘I’m on a roll,’ like, ‘This is working,’” one unnamed Trump administration official told the Atlantic‘s Vivian Salama over the weekend.

This, from a president who said he deplored regime change and vowed “no new wars” while running for reelection.

A day before launching the US-Israeli war of choice against Iran, Trump floated what he described as a “friendly takeover” of Cuba, prompting vehement condemnation from Havana. Cuba is already suffering under decades of US sanctions that have devastated the socialist nation’s economy and the well-being of its people.

In January, Trump issued an executive order baselessly declaring that Cuba poses “an unusual and extraordinary threat” to US national security and tightening the blockade to further starve the island of fuel.

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South Florida residents react to Trump administration’s decision to sell Venezuelan oil to Cuban private businesses

People across South Florida are reacting to a major shift in U.S. policy toward Cuba, following the federal government’s announcement that it will allow fuel imports for the island’s private sector.

The Trump administration has given the green light for Venezuelan oil to be sold to Cuba’s private businesses, not the Cuban government. Supporters say the policy could help ease severe shortages that have crippled daily life on the island, while critics fear the Cuban government could still benefit indirectly.

Some residents say, in theory, the plan could offer relief to Cuba’s struggling economy. Others question whether the Cuban government can truly be kept out of the process.

“This really tells me that the Trump administration, particularly the president, is more interested in business than he is in regime change,” said Andy S. Gomez, a retired dean of international studies at the University of Miami.

Others believe the move could help everyday Cubans who have been hit hardest by the country’s worsening crisis.

“If he doesn’t do it, I don’t know that anyone else will,” said Armando Parada.

Still, many remain unconvinced.

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Britain, France and Germany Say They Could Join Attacks on Iran Through ‘Necessary and Proportionate Defensive Action’

Britain, France and Germany have said they may be willing to join U.S. military action in Iran.

In a joint statement on Sunday, the three countries pledged to protect their interests and those of their Gulf allies, stating the possible need “defensive action” against Iran if required.

“E3 leaders are appalled by the indiscriminate and disproportionate missile attacks launched by Iran against countries in the region, including those who were not involved in initial US and Israeli military operations,” they wrote.

The statement continued:

Iran’s reckless attacks have targeted our close allies and are threatening our service personnel and our civilians across the region.We call on Iran to stop these reckless attacks immediately.

We will take steps to defend our interests and those of our allies in the region, potentially through enabling necessary and proportionate defensive action to destroy Iran’s capability to fire missiles and drones at their source.

We have agreed to work together with the US and allies in the region on this matter.

France has already deployed its Charles De Gaulle aircraft carrier from the Baltic Sea to the eastern Mediterranean in anticipation of joining the operation.

The joint statement came as the U.S. and Israel continued to pound targets across Iran on Sunday, with U.S. B-2 stealth bombers striking ballistic missile facilities using 2,000-pound bombs.

President Trump announced on social media that nine Iranian warships had been sunk and that Iran’s naval headquarters had been “largely destroyed.”

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U.S. Has Struck Over a Thousand Targets in Iran

United States forces have now struck over a thousand targets in Iran, with Israeli forces hitting a thousand more, as Operation Epic Fury continues its devastating takedown of the current regime in Iran.

In the wee hours of Saturday morning, U.S. and Israeli forces began the strikes that have now eliminated numerous Iranian leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Chief Mohammad Pakpour. Besides high-profile targets like Khamenei’s residence, there were numerous other terrorist/military targets around Iran.

U.S. Central Command has been bombarding the Iranian regime, with three casualties on the U.S. side and many, many more on the Iranian side. Multiple Israeli and American officials have urged the Persian people to rise up and take back their country, as has exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi. CENTCOM Commander Admiral Brad Cooper lauded his troops, saying: “The President ordered bold action, and our brave Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, Guardians, and Coast Guardsmen are answering the call.”

The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, March 1:

Israel and the U.S. have struck 2,000 targets since the start of their joint military campaign in Iran on Saturday morning, according to two people briefed on the operation. The Israeli military said it has fired thousands of munitions and flown more than 700 sorties in Iran since Saturday morning.

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Congress, Do Your Job and End This Illegal War of Aggression by the US and Israel

Once again, the United States and Israel are illegally attacking Iran, as they did last June. It is already a regional war, which will take a horrible toll on ordinary people in many countries, with reports a girls’ school was bombed, killing at least fifty people.

Unlike the limited strikes in last June’s 12-day war, this is aimed not just at Iran’s nuclear or military facilities, but at regime change in Iran, as President Trump declared, and government targets in Tehran have been hit, with Israel claiming Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed. Predictably, Iran is firing back at Israel and at US military bases in the region.

Just yesterday, the Foreign Minister of Oman, who has been mediating negotiations between the US and Iran, stated prospects were good for a possible agreement. However, according to an Israeli official, the talks were apparently a treacherous ruse, as the US and Israel had planned coordinated attacks on Iran for months.

This crisis lies at the feet of President Trump, who abrogated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in his first term. That multilateral agreement had effectively capped Iran’s nuclear program well short of acquiring The Bomb. Now, once again, two nuclear-weapon states are bombing a non-nuclear-weapon state. Meanwhile, Trump has preposterously called for Iranians to overthrow their government.

The timing of this attack, while perhaps planned for months, came as momentum was building in just the last few days for Congressional War Powers Resolution votes in both the House and the Senate. Democratic leadership in both Houses of Congress had coalesced behind the resolutions, Senate Joint Resolution 104, sponsored by US Senators Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Rand Paul (R-KY), with twelve other co-sponsors, and House Concurrent Resolution 38, sponsored by US Representatives Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA), with over 80 co-sponsors. That resolution may be voted on as soon as Monday, according to Khanna.

Senator Kaine issued a statement asking, “Has President Trump learned nothing from decades of U.S. meddling in Iran and forever wars in the Middle East?”and “Is he too mentally incapacitated to realize that we had a diplomatic agreement with Iran that was keeping its nuclear program in check, until he ripped it up in his first term?,” while calling the war a colossal mistake and “a dangerous, unnecessary and idiotic action.”

US Representative Jim Himes (D-CT), Ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, stated, “Everything I have heard from the Administration before and after these strikes on Iran confirms this is a war of choice with no strategic endgame,” and “It does not appear Donald Trump has learned the lessons of history.”

Congress must assert its Constitutional authority over matters of war and peace against an out-of-control, rogue president and executive branch, and vote in favor of the Iran War Powers Resolutions. Congress should also impeach, convict, and remove the president from office for this illegal act, as politically unlikely as that appears now.

Anti-war protest demonstrations are already being held this weekend in many cities, including Washington, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, Princeton, Norwalk, Greenbelt, Canandaigua and others, reflecting not only the illegality of this war but also its unpopularity, as seventy percent of Americans oppose war with Iran, according to a recent poll. The world urgently needs more diplomacy, not more war.

While this may prove impractical as the war has already begun, and may metastasize in unpredictable ways, we should recall the recent Don’t Give Up the Ship video by six US Senators and Representatives, all veterans of the military or intelligence services, reminding members of those services of not only their right, but their obligation, to refuse to obey illegal orders. I don’t know if this illegal attack on Iran was what they had in mind, but it certainly applies.

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No Mandate, No Peace: America’s War of Choice Against Iran

Early Saturday, the United States joined Israel in launching a major strike on Iran, with President Donald Trump announcing that “major combat operations” were underway. The first thing Americans should notice is not the fireworks on cable news, but the emptiness where a legal and democratic mandate ought to be. This attack was not authorized by the United Nations Security Council, and it was not authorized by Congress. It was sold to the public after the fact, as bombs were already falling.

In his analysis for The Guardian, Julian Borger reported that Trump’s own words point to something far bigger than a limited punitive strike. The president warned Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to surrender or be killed, vowed to smash Iran’s armed forces, and openly invited Iran’s ethnic minorities to rise up and bring the government down. That is not a narrow mission. That is regime change, declared in prime time.

Regime change is not self-defense. Under the United Nations Charter, the use of force is broadly prohibited, and the main exception is the inherent right of self-defense “if an armed attack occurs,” as spelled out in Article 51. If Washington wants to claim that exception, it has to show an actual armed attack or a truly imminent one. “Iran is bad” is not a legal argument; it is a bumper sticker. Yet the public case from the White House has leaned heavily on sweeping characterizations and contested claims about Iran’s capabilities rather than a concrete, imminent threat, as even Reuters noted in its review of Trump’s assertions.

The domestic legal picture is just as bleak. The Constitution gives Congress – not the president—the power “to declare War.” You can read that authority in Article I, Section 8. Modern presidents have tried to stretch their commander-in-chief role into a blank check, but the point of the system was to make war hard to start. After Vietnam, Congress tried to claw back some of that authority through the War Powers Resolution, which requires consultation “in every possible instance” and rapid reporting once hostilities begin. Whatever one thinks of the War Powers Resolution’s enforcement, the spirit is clear: the president is not supposed to take the country into war first and explain later.

What makes this moment even more alarming is the timing. According to Borger, the strikes were launched while diplomatic efforts were still underway to limit Iran’s uranium enrichment, with talks continuing just days before the bombs. That pattern – negotiations on one track, military escalation on the other – turns diplomacy into theater. It suggests the “deal” was never meant to be a deal at all, but an ultimatum backed by a “beautiful armada” assembled in the region.

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Trump’s Contrasting Regime-Change Strategies in Iran and Venezuela

President Donald Trump has made it clear that the new U.S.-Israeli air war against Iran is aimed at nothing less than the overthrow of the country’s clerical regime. Such an ambitious objective should not come as a surprise. Both the powerful Israel lobby and most of the conservative movement in the United States have endorsed the goal of forcible regime change in Tehran since the Islamic revolution overthrew the Shah in 1979. Even a sizable percentage of anti-war liberals have tended to make an exception with respect to policy toward Iran.

The ostensible goal embraced by nearly all of Tehran’s critics has always been to oust the mullahs and bring a secular democratic government to power. In December 2025, prominent conservative organizations, media outlets, and individuals in the United States and Europe voiced emphatic support for anti-regime protests that had erupted in Iranian cities. On January 15, 2026, Trump himself openly threatened to intervene militarily if Iranian security personnel continued to crack down on demonstrators.

Tehran’s adversaries in the United States and other Western countries insist that they want to see a secular, fully democratic government emerge in Iran. Trump’s rhetoric during the initial phases of his new war is consistent with that objective. The administration’s supposed embrace of an ambitious regime-change agenda for democracy in Iran, though, stands in dramatic contrast to Washington’s much more pragmatic conduct in Venezuela. Such a substantive difference raises justifiable uncertainty about the nature and extent of U.S. regime-change goals in Iran, even if the current war proves to be successful militarily.

Although the Trump administration ousted Venezuela’s left-wing dictator Nicolas Maduro in early January 2026, Trump allowed Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, and most other members of the regime to remain in power. That restraint infuriated libertarians and many conservatives in the United States. Most of them wanted to see Washington install in office opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and an outspoken advocate of free markets. Indeed, Machado is the darling of prominent libertarian organizations, especially the Cato Institute.

However, Trump and his policy team seemed perfectly content with continuing an authoritarian socialist regime in Caracas, as long as the leaders were willing to do Washington’s bidding. Policy concessions from Rodriguez’s government with respect to the treatment of the U.S. oil industry and a willingness to display less receptivity to China’s economic penetration of South America came quickly, and the White House appeared to be placated.

The cynical pragmatism of U.S. policy in Venezuela should make U.S. crusaders for Iranian democracy wonder about the sincerity of the Trump administration’s commitment to that value in Iran. There also are major elements in the internal movement opposing the clerical regime who appear to be more than a little unsavory and might be willing to play a role similar to Delcy Rodriguez’s adopted role in her country.

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Trump Lied About Being for Peace – Just Like Every President Before Him

Three years ago, Donald Trump referred to himself as “the candidate who delivers peace.” This weekend, his administration bombed Iran. While it may seem unusual, the historical record suggests otherwise, clearly demonstrating that Trump follows a long line of American politicians who spent a lot of time talking about being against wars only to wage them once elected president.

During the 2000 presidential debates, George W. Bush claimed he wanted a “humble” foreign policy, adding that he doesn’t think US troops “ought to be used for what’s called nation-building.”

By 2003, the Bush administration was at war in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

According to researchers at Brown University, the Iraq War directly caused at least 190,000 deaths and is projected to cost US taxpayers roughly $2.2 trillion when long-term veteran care and related expenses are included.

Bush also oversaw a brutal torture program that included waterboarding, sensory deprivation, auditory overload, and “rectal rehydration”.

In February 2007, Barack Obama told an Illinois crowd that they came to see him speak “because you believe in what this country can be. In the face of war, you believe there can be peace. In the face of despair, you believe there can be hope.” In 2008, he said that events in Iraq “have reminded America of the need to use diplomacy and build international consensus to resolve our problems whenever possible.”

Obama received a Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

Three days after his inauguration, Obama ordered the CIA’s first Pakistani drone strike, killing at least nine civilians. During his first term, Obama outpaced Bush in the number of drone strikes he authorized, blew up weddings and funerals, bombed Libya, launched cyber attacks and imposed crushing economic sanctions against Iran, while also openly targeting US citizens in Yemen.

In 2013, Obama boasted that “after a decade of grinding war, our brave men and women in uniform are coming home.” And yet, by the time he left office in January 2017, US troops remained in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, Bush-era CIA torture was brushed under the carpet, and the US had bombed at least seven different countries.

In 2016, Donald Trump claimed if he became president, “the era of nation-building will be brought to a very swift and decisive end.”

Less than a week into his first term, Trump oversaw a commando raid in Yemen that resulted in the death of an 8-year-old girl.

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US-Israel war on Iran ‘decided ⁠weeks ago’ under cover of nuclear talks: Report

The unprovoked US-Israeli war against Iran launched on 28 February had “been planned for months, and the ⁠launch date ⁠decided ⁠weeks ago,” even as the US and Iran carried out indirect nuclear negotiations, an Israeli defense official told Reuters.

Washington and Tel Aviv renewed negotiations in February over Iran’s nuclear program. President Trump was under pressure from Israel force Iran to give up uranium enrichment, as well as its ballistic missile program and support for regional resistance forces.

Amid the negotiations, Trump sent an “armada” of US naval ships and warplanes to the region, threatening to launch an attack if officials in Tehran refused to make a deal.

After the latest round of talks on Thursday, a senior US official told Axios the talks were “positive.”

Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi, who mediated the talks, said the talks had shown “significant progress.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also expressed optimism, saying both sides had shown a “clear seriousness” about getting a deal.

However, the US and Israel launched large-scale attacks against Iranian targets early Saturday, suggesting the negotiations had never been serious.

In the wake of the attacks, Omani Foreign Minister Albusaidi said that the negotiations he mediated had been “deliberately undermined.”

Mehran Kamrava, director of the Iranian studies unit at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies and professor at Georgetown University in Qatar, stated that Israel “appears to have launched an attack designed to derail the negotiations.”

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Going to War, Again, for Israel

Once again, America is going to war for Israel. Once again, many will die for the Zionist state, including American service members. Once again, we will stumble blindly into a military fiasco. Once again, we will do the bidding of a foreign power whose interests are not our interests, but whose lobbyists have bought up our political class, including Donald Trump. Once again, we will violate the U.N. charter by attacking a country that does not pose an imminent threat.

This is not our war. This is part of Israel’s demented vision of Greater Israel, of dominating the Middle East. But Israel needs our military, our taxpayer dollars, our weapons to do it. And we have handed them the keys to our formidable arsenal.

The architects of the war with Iran, which the administration feels no need to justify to the American public or the international community, admit it will not be quick.

Sen. Tom Cotton, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told CBS News on Saturday that the goal is not only to curb Iran’s nuclear program, but “dismantle their terror support network.”

“To do all that is going to take longer than the strikes on their nuclear program last summer,” Cotton said. “We’re probably looking at weeks, not days, of joint efforts by the United States, Israel and our Arab partners, who have also been attacked this morning.”

Israel’s lackeys in the political class, along with their courtiers in the media, including former American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) employee Wolf Blitzer, as well as academia, are shining examples of Israel’s transparent and often illegal meddling in the American political system. Forget Russia. Forget China. No foreign government comes close to exerting Israel’s influence.

Democratic Party leaders are not opposed to attacking Iran — they are opposed to attacking Iran without being consulted. Two dozen Democrats lept to their feet and applauded every time Trump threatened Iran, or lauded Israel, in his State of the Union address. The Biden administration and Democratic Party leadership made no effort to reinstate Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear agreement. It focused instead on sustaining the genocide in Gaza. It cheered Israel’s decapitation of Iranian proxies in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. Kamala Harris in her feckless and tone deaf presidential campaign promised to continue funding the genocide, which alienated many voters, and labeled Iran our most dangerous enemy.

Endless war is a bipartisan project.

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