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.
US military officials stressed the joint action with the former US rival in statements after President Trump shared video of the “swift and lethal” strike that took out Guerrero.
“We extend our gratitude to the Venezuelan security forces for their support to the successful joint operation against a Tren de Aragua compound that resulted in the death of the narco-terrorist organization’s leader,” said Gen. Francis L. Donovan, head of US Southern Command.
(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 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.
(May 14, 2026)
Twice this week, U.S. President Donald Trump has expressed interest in turning Venezuela into his country’s 51st state. The latest came via a Truth Social post Tuesday with a map showing the South American country filled with the U.S. flag.
Previous statements doubting Venezuela’s sovereignty over the past 25 years have been met with immediate derision from senior government officials, including the president.
(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.
Strikes
57
Killed
192
(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.“
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.
(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.
(April 16, 2026)
As with the 50 previous attacks on boats in the Pacific and the Caribbean Sea, the military did not publicize any evidence that the boat was carrying drugs or that its passengers were “narco-terrorists.”
(April 11, 2026)
The latest strike brings the death toll to 175 since the operations began in early September. The U.S. Coast Guard has suspended the search for one survivor from an attack Saturday.
U.S. Southern Command posted aerial video on social media Tuesday showing a vessel bobbing in the water before being struck by a projectile and exploding. The military earlier said it struck two boats on Saturday and a third on Monday.
In an exclusive interview with Meet the Press after her visit to Cuba, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) says the Cuban people are being collectively punished by the U.S. oil blockade, and says she would like to see formal negotiations between the two countries.
(March 3, 2026)
In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks, President George W Bush launched what he called a “war on terror”, a global military campaign that reshaped US foreign policy and triggered wars, invasions and air strikes across numerous countries.
According to an analysis by Brown University’s Watson Institute of International & Public Affairs, US-led wars since 2001 have directly caused the deaths of about 940,000 people across Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and other conflict zones
(March 11, 2026)
Miller’s very being evokes the cold mechanization of a machine, a body turned against itself, moving without rhythm, empathy, or grace. His presence feels engineered: cold, scarred, and hollowed out, the body made into an instrument of command. It is as if a war within himself has long since been lost, a war against vulnerability, imagination, and the capacity to feel. What remains is a man armored against life itself.
(January 7, 2026)
Trump has described Miller as sitting “at the top of the totem pole” inside the White House.
“He oversees every policy the administration touches,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told us. “I can’t tell you the number of times a policy matter is discussed in the Oval and Trump will say, ‘Where’s Stephen? Tell him to get that done.’”
To critics, Miller is the smirking embodiment of everything they view as dangerous and authoritarian about the Trump administration. He has been called a Nazi, a neo-Nazi, a white supremacist, a kapo, and Lord Voldemort. Posters of Miller—pursed lips, furrowed brow—have been plastered around the nation’s capital, stamped with CREEP and FASCISM AIN’T PRETTY. His own uncle has denounced him, writing at one point that if Miller’s immigration policies had been implemented a century ago, their family—which fled anti-Jewish pogroms in Europe—“would have been wiped out.”
(February 9, 2026)
„By what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland?“ Miller asked. „Nobody is going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland.“
He went on to assert that there are „iron laws of the world“.
„We live in a world, in the real world… that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,“ he said.
It was heady stuff coming on the heels of America‘s surgically precise use of military force in Venezuela. And, for a president who a few days later would tell the New York Times that the only limit on his global powers are „my own morality“ and „my own mind“, it may have been warmly received.