2026 March 20 « nuclear-news

Debunking Nuclear ‘Hopium’ – Dr. GordonEdwards

March 20, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | spinbuster, USA | Leave a comment

As Trump Talks of Taking Cuba, Havana Promises “Impregnable Resistance”

March 18, 2026, Joshua Scheer, https://scheerpost.com/2026/03/18/as-trump-talks-of-taking-cuba-havana-promises-impregnable-resistance/

As Miguel Díaz-Canel denounced escalating threats from Donald Trump, Havana made clear that any U.S. attempt to impose regime change by force would not go unanswered.

“The United States threatens Cuba publicly, almost daily, with overthrowing the constitutional order by force,” Díaz-Canel wrote, accusing Washington of manufacturing crisis conditions through an economic siege that has targeted the island for more than sixty years.

He argued that the same powers tightening sanctions and restricting fuel are now presenting Cuba’s hardship as justification for intervention — a pattern familiar across decades of U.S. policy toward governments unwilling to submit to Washington’s demands.

“They announce plans to seize the country, its resources, its property, even the economy they themselves are trying to suffocate,” Díaz-Canel said, warning that collective punishment of the Cuban people is being openly paired with renewed language of occupation. “Any external aggressor will collide with impregnable resistance.”

The warning came after Trump declared from the White House that he believed he would have “the honor of taking Cuba,” speaking as if sovereignty itself were negotiable.

The remark landed amid intensifying pressure on the island, where fuel shortages and blackout conditions have deepened under a tightening oil embargo imposed after the U.S. confrontation with Nicolás Maduro.

According to recent reporting, officials inside the administration are treating Díaz-Canel’s removal as a condition for any future talks, reviving a familiar regime-change formula dressed up as diplomacy.

Marco Rubio, long one of Washington’s most aggressive voices on Cuba, reinforced that message by saying the island “has to get new people in charge,” a statement widely read in Havana as confirmation that coercion — not negotiation — remains U.S. policy.

Yet public support inside the United States for another foreign intervention appears thin. Recent polling shows more Americans oppose than support the embargo, while only a small minority back military action against Cuba.

Meanwhile, the economic war continues to hit ordinary Cubans hardest: prolonged blackouts, fuel shortages, and collapsing infrastructure remain the immediate consequences of sanctions that Washington insists are aimed at the government.

Against that backdrop, the first delegation of the Nuestra América Convoy reached Havana this week carrying humanitarian aid — food, medicine, and energy supplies intended to bypass the blockade’s human toll.

Editors from Current Affairs joining the mission said the convoy is meant not only to deliver material support but to send a political message: that many Americans reject threats of annexation, strangulation, and forced political change carried out in their name.

“Words like “sanctions” and “restrictions” really don’t capture the reality. This is an undeclared economic war, and a lethal one. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio want to bring about regime change in Cuba, and have demanded that President Miguel Díaz-Canel resign from office. So they’re inflicting as much pain and suffering on the Cuban people as they can, in hopes of bringing the entire nation to its knees. If the blackouts continue, they will kill people; it’s possible they already have.

Now, it’s the rest of the world’s turn to come to Cuba’s aid. This month, a coalition of activists from around the globe are launching a humanitarian aid mission to Cuba to break the siege. Modeled after the Global Sumud Flotilla that attempted to bring aid to Gaza last year, the Nuestra América Convoy will converge in Havana on March 21, with participants coming from around the world by air and sea… Alex Skopic and Nathan J. Robinson: Why We’re Going to Cuba

For many on the American left, the convoy is more than a humanitarian delivery — it is a direct rejection of a foreign policy that continues to treat economic deprivation as leverage and sovereignty as conditional. At a moment when Washington openly discusses who should govern Cuba while tightening measures that deepen daily hardship on the island, the mission underscores a longer political truth: sanctions are never merely abstract instruments of pressure. They land in darkened homes, empty pharmacies, strained hospitals, and disrupted food supplies, while officials in Washington frame that suffering as evidence that the system must collapse. In traveling to Havana, the delegation is asserting that solidarity means refusing the logic that punishment can be called diplomacy when an entire population is made to absorb its cost.

At a time when American officials speak casually of deciding Cuba’s future, the deeper question is whether empire still assumes it owns that right. For Cuba, the message from Havana is equally blunt: pressure may deepen, but surrender is not on offer.

March 20, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | SOUTH AMERICA, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Washington’s Public Swagger Meets Private Panic Over Iran

18 March https://scheerpost.com/2026/03/17/washingtons-public-swagger-meets-private-panic-over-iran/

The White House is denying that special envoy Steve Witkoff sent back-channel messages to Iranian officials during the current war—but the denial itself is beginning to look like another chapter in Washington’s increasingly frantic damage control.

In an interview with Breaking Points, Jeremy Scahill said Iranian officials told him that the Trump administration, only days into the bombing campaign, began using intermediaries and private communications to probe whether Tehran would accept talks over an “endgame.”

According to Scahill, Iran’s answer was silence.

That silence matters because it punctures one of the White House’s most repeated claims: that Tehran is “begging” Washington for negotiations while President Donald Trump supposedly holds firm from a position of strength.

Instead, the picture emerging from multiple channels suggests something far less triumphant: an administration that expected rapid capitulation, encountered resistance, and then quietly began searching for exits.

The Story the White House Wants—and the One It Can’t Control

Scahill reported that Iranian officials described third countries carrying messages from Washington almost immediately after the bombing began.

The request was simple enough: was Iran prepared to discuss terms?

The answer, according to those officials, was no—at least not until Tehran believed it had restored deterrence and raised the cost of future U.S.-Israeli attacks.

That refusal reportedly extended to direct outreach allegedly sent through WhatsApp by Witkoff to senior Iranian officials, including Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

The White House responded not with evidence, but with fury.

Rather than issue a standard denial, Scahill said officials sent back a statement attacking Drop Site News as “abhorrent,” accusing it of carrying water for Iran and engaging in “America Last” journalism.

The intensity of that reaction may explain why the administration’s denial has drawn more scrutiny than reassurance.

In Washington, the louder the outrage, the more often it signals a pressure point.

A Diplomatic Reality Hidden Beneath Public Swagger

Trump has publicly insisted that Iran wants talks.

But if Tehran is refusing direct engagement while Washington privately tests channels through intermediaries, the public posture begins to look less like confidence and more like performance.

Scahill’s account suggests Iran’s leadership concluded that entering negotiations too early would validate a pattern it believes has defined recent U.S. policy: negotiate, strike, then negotiate again under coercion.

Their reported demands are expansive—ceasefire terms extending beyond Iran to Lebanon and Iraq, reparations for wartime destruction, and a U.N. Security Council resolution.

Those are not the demands of a government signaling surrender.

They are the demands of a government convinced it has leverage.

Assassinations and the Elimination of Moderates

The timing is especially volatile following reports that senior Iranian figure Ali Larijani may have been killed in Israeli strikes.

If confirmed, the killing would remove one of the few figures widely viewed as capable of mediating future de-escalation.

Scahill warned that each assassination of relatively pragmatic political actors hardens the internal balance inside Iran, strengthening factions less inclined toward diplomacy.

That pattern has repeated across the region for years: eliminate negotiators, then express surprise when negotiations become impossible.

The same logic has played out in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, and now appears to be repeating inside Iran itself.

Strait of Hormuz: The War’s Economic Fault Line

At the same time, Washington’s strategic problems are multiplying in the Strait of Hormuz.

Scahill described an administration struggling to recruit allies for maritime operations after Iran demonstrated it can selectively restrict shipping without imposing a total blockade.

That distinction matters.

A full closure would trigger universal backlash.

Selective disruption punishes adversaries while preserving Tehran’s own export routes, particularly toward China.

It also leaves Washington facing a dangerous choice: tolerate strategic embarrassment or escalate naval exposure near Iranian missile range.

Trump reportedly wants allied participation.

So far, major partners appear reluctant.

Even governments normally aligned with Washington are signaling caution.

That hesitation reflects what military planners already know: every additional vessel sent into contested waters increases the odds of casualties—and with them, political consequences at home.

The Familiar Machinery of Narrative Collapse

For now, the administration continues selling a narrative of control.

But the contradiction is becoming harder to conceal:

Publicly, Trump says Iran wants talks.

Privately, according to Iranian accounts, Washington is the one reaching out.

Publicly, officials frame escalation as strength.

Privately, they appear increasingly anxious about where escalation leads.

And as always, the press corps closest to power receives selective denials while independent reporters absorb the political blowback for asking whether the official story holds.

The deeper the war goes, the harder it becomes for the White House to keep its public narrative intact. Even as Trump claims Iran is “begging” for negotiations, reporting by Drop Site News indicates his own administration has been quietly reaching out through back channels, with envoy Steve Witkoff allegedly sending private messages that Tehran chose not to answer. In the account assembled by Jeremy Scahill, Iran’s refusal reflects a belief that Washington is again seeking a pause only after misjudging how costly escalation could become—for U.S. credibility, global energy markets, and a region already pushed to the edge. Here is the larger story from Drop Site News

Iranian Officials Say They Have Been Ignoring Witkoff’s Private Requests to Talk

Trump’s special envoy has been texting Iran’s foreign minister asking to start talks. Tehran says the war will end only when Iran believes it has established long-term deterrence.

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March 20, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, USA | Leave a comment