Trump has thanked China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin for being “neutral” during the US-Israel war on Iran.
“I just want to thank them because they made it a lot better,” Trump said, adding that China was “terrific” and made efforts to help settle the conflict.
In an interview with Middle East Eye‘s Expert Witness podcast in Oslo, four months into the devastating war, Andreas Kravik said the war on Iran, launched on 28 February, had no basis in law.
„In our interpretation of the law, it is not a legal operation,“ Kravik said. „We think that is a violation of the UN Charter, and we have said so in no unclear terms.“
Kravik, a public international lawyer and the foreign ministry‘s former chief of legal affairs, said a state could lawfully use force against another only with authorisation from the UN Security Council, in self-defence against an immediate threat, or with the consent of the state concerned. None applied in Iran‘s case.
„There is no authorisation here from the UN Security Council… and there was no consent from Iranian authorities,“ he said. Norway had carried out its own legal assessment, he added.
(05.03.2020)
Das Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz arbeitet im „Berner Club“ mit den Auslandsgeheimdiensten Mossad und CIA zusammen. Mit weiteren Behörden tauscht der deutsche Inlandsgeheimdienst Informationen zu „nicht-islamistischem Terrorismus“ sowie „Rechts- und Linksextremismus“. Wegen des „Staatswohls“ hielt die Bundesregierung diese Details bislang geheim.
(May 27, 2026)
Yet proposals that skirt the edges of international law didn’t come out of nowhere. The U.S. under George W. Bush created legal mechanisms following the September 11th attacks to torture hundreds of people in CIA black sites and then at Guantanamo Bay. The Obama administration’s targeted drone strikes were assassinations by another name. The Biden administration further eroded international norms and subverted its own policies by financing Israel’s genocide in Gaza, in violation of the Leahy Law, which prohibits foreign military assistance to nations that violate human rights.
“Seems like Miller is sort of taking what he was already willing to do during the first term and then combining that with what Israel has been doing in the way it has just been completely ignoring any kind of international law, Geneva Conventions, any of it in its conduct in Gaza and Lebanon, to then influence U.S. foreign policy,” Annelle Sheline, a research fellow in the Middle East program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said in an interview.
In other words, Miller and the Trump administration have been able to steamroll what was left of international law; they just had to figure out how to do it.
He’s launched strikes in seven countries so far this term — Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen — after also attacking some of those countries in his first term. That doesn’t even count the strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, which have targeted nearly 60 vessels and killed more than 190 people.
He has also threatened or left open the possibility of strikes against seven others this term: Canada, Colombia, Cuba, Greenland (which is part of Denmark), Mexico, Panama and now Oman. He also threatened Mexico and North Korea in his first term.
In a special appeal, FM Rodríguez addressed U.S. citizens, particularly their youth, invoking their human values and pacifist sentiments. He urged them to seek the truth and resist manipulation by what he described as an “elitist, corrupted and powerful clique in Miami.” According to the Cuban diplomat, this faction does not represent the U.S. people nor the majority of Cubans residing in the United States, many of whom reportedly oppose the “barbarity of war and the blockade.”
“This new aggression has united us more and elevated the honor, dignity, and anti-imperialist spirit of a people already recognized around the world for their brave resistance to any form of subordination to the empire,” Díaz-Canel said.
Cuban legislator Mariela Castro, Raúl’s granddaughter, told rallygoers that “we are prepared for combat.”
“No one is going to kidnap him. I can assure you of that,” she said, alluding to the US invasion and abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on dubious narco-terrorism charges earlier this year. “Neither him nor anyone else.”
There had been rumblings that Gabbard would split with Trump after the president‘s decision to strike Iran, which caused some division within his administration. Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, announced his resignation in March, saying he „cannot in good conscience“ back the war.
Gabbard, a veteran and former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, built her political name on her opposition to foreign wars. This put her in an awkward position when the U.S. joined Israel in launching attacks on Iran on Feb. 28.
In what appears to be a carefully calibrated show of force, the U.S deployed the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz and its accompanying strike group into Caribbean waters this week, a move that coincided with the unsealing of murder charges against former Cuban leader Raúl Castro on Wednesday and an intensifying pressure campaign by the Trump administration against Havana.
And reports indicate that the number of U.S. military surveillance flights taking place near the island have skyrocketed in recent weeks, raising fears of an impending operation.
(…)
Trump’s recent threats to “take” Cuba, however, coupled with the recent loss of energy supplies from Venezuela and the Castro indictment, may mark the most serious threat to the country’s independence since its 1959 revolution.
(January 16, 2026)
CIA director John Ratcliffe met with Venezuela‘s interim President Delcy Rodríguez for two hours Thursday in Venezuela‘s capital, Caracas, to „deliver the message that the United States looks forward to an improved working relationship,“ a U.S. official told CBS News Friday.
The official described the trip as historic, noting that Ratcliffe was the first Cabinet-level official to visit Venezuela since the U.S. military operation to remove the country‘s autocratic leader Nicolás Maduro nearly two weeks ago.
A U.S. delegation led by CIA director John Ratcliffe met with his counterpart at Cuba‘s Interior Ministry in Havana on Thursday, the Cuban government said in a statement, as tensions worsen over a U.S. fuel blockade that has starved the island of fuel and power generation.
(August 7, 2021)
Because they want to.
In a post on X, Diaz-Canel urged the United States to instead lift its blockade.
„The damage could be eased in a much simpler and faster way by lifting or relaxing the blockade, since it is known that the humanitarian situation is coldly calculated and induced,“ he said.
But, if Washington showed „true willingness“ to provide aid, he added, „it will encounter no obstacles or ingratitude from Cuba.“
To Muslims, Jews, Christians, Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists, and all others of faith,
And to those who follow no formal religion but hold deeply to the universal values of peace, justice, and human dignity:
The U.S. – Israel launched this war of aggression on 28 February 2026, for a second time in less than a year, while Iran-U.S. were engaged in diplomatic negotiations.
This is not merely a war over land, resources, or geopolitics. This is a war that will determine the very meaning of ‚good‘ and ‚evil‘ in our time and for future.
What has been unleashed upon our peace-loving nation is not just another conflict. On one side stand those who delight in violating every law of war and basic human decency—those who murder for sport, who slaughter children to torment their families, who fire newest missiles at women’s sports halls simply to test their destructive power.
This is a war between those who boast of torpedoing unarmed vessels “for more fun,” and those who go to extraordinary lengths to protect innocent lives.
This is a war between professional liars who fabricate justifications for atrocity, and a proud people who defend their homeland and human dignity relying solely on their own strength and resolve.
This is a war between those whose decisions are shadowed by moral compromise, and those who act with a clear conscience.
This is a defining struggle for the future of humankind. It will decide whether civilization’s hard-won achievements—human rights, the rule of law, and basic morality—will survive or be swept away.
We must choose:
Do we accept a world ruled by modern slave masters—arrogant, domineering, and unaccountable—who govern through coercion, lies, and extortion?
Or do we stand for a world grounded in respect, justice, peace, and human dignity?
Humanity’s conscience is not yet dead. But in times like these, silence is complicity with evil.
If you reject the path of barbarism and domination, then find the moral courage to speak, to act, and to stand on the right side of history—before the world descends into an abyss of lawlessness and subjugation.
The choice is yours.
And history will remember.
(search entries)
President Donald Trump said Friday during remarks in Florida that the United States would take over Cuba “almost immediately,” suggesting an aircraft carrier could be positioned offshore after the conflict in Iran.
The comments came the same day Trump signed an executive order significantly expanding U.S. sanctions on the Cuban government and its affiliates.
(search entries)
(April 28, 2026)
The emerging discussions mark the clearest sign yet that Democrats, repeatedly blocked in their attempts to restrain the war through floor votes, are searching for new ways to force a constitutional reckoning over who decides when America goes to war.
(…)
While it’s unclear how Republicans will ultimately vote, Schiff urged caution about relying on the courts. “The Supreme Court has been very selective about offering Congress standing to any litigation,” he says. “It‘s not a strategy I would want to rely on…
(search entries)
(April 21, 2026)
The exchange was conducted „respectfully and professionally,“ he said, adding that the U.S. delegation did not issue any threats or deadlines as has been reported in some U.S. media.
„The elimination of the energy embargo against the country was a top priority for our delegation,“ García del Toro said. „This act of economic coercion is an unjustified punishment of the entire Cuban population.“
(April 20, 2026)
When President Trump took office in 2017, he reinstated the travel ban, upped sanctions and closed the U.S. Embassy in Havana that Obama had opened.
President Biden left most of Trump’s restrictions in place. When Trump returned to office last year, he began what the White House has described as a “maximum pressure campaign” to force political and economic change in Cuba, including a near-total blockade on oil shipments that has sparked fuel shortages, price increases and prolonged blackouts on the island.
A future Democratic-controlled Congress should take up the job that Obama and the party’s old guard abandoned: put strict limits on the use of drones that won’t simply be alternately loosened and tightened by whichever president comes to power, explicitly outlawing “targeted killing” and any other attempt at finding a loophole for the already existing ban on assassinations; finally repeal the 2001 Authorization of the Use of Military Force that has been serially abused by presidents to fight often secret wars all over the world; end mass surveillance, whether in the form of the National Security Agency’s warrantless backdoor searches that Democrats actually expanded under Joe Biden, or in the warrantless spying that the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies now do through private data brokers; close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp that Trump is now trying to send migrants to; and embark on a twenty-first-century version of the Church Committee to investigate and lay bare national security abuses.
As a result, Cuba’s share of solar in total electricity generation has risen from 5.8 per cent a year ago to over 20 per cent today.
(…)
Battery storage–currently in place at only four of Cuba’s 55 solar parks–will need to be expanded significantly to address the evening peak demand. Wind energy will also make a growing contribution, with 19 wind farms totaling 415 MW currently being built, again with Chinese support. But the pace of the solar buildout, measured against where Cuba was just months ago, is already extraordinary.