The Iran War is getting hotter, and Cuba is getting help: "The United States may retain its power, but its moral authority and its claim to lead the free world are gone."

The whole world is realizing that the United States is just a paper tiger now.

And we know that Trump and Hegseth and their gang of idiots: 

1. Don't know what they're doing, so they're basing their war plans on wishful thinking, and 

2. In the unlikely chance that somebody in the Pentagon actually does know what he or she is doing, there is no one in the Trump administration who is willing to listen to them. 

Take the Iran War (please! Trump is desperate for someone to take this off his hands!): 

Black Cloud Six: Unscripted, Consequences: Trump’s War of Choice In Iran, American military power has been paired with strategic incoherence, allied alienation, and consequences that were entirely foreseeable.

...We have yet to see all of the consequences of Trump’s war against Iran. Despite the destabilising and odious nature of the Iranian regime, there was nothing to suggest that the geopolitical situation had changed enough, or that the threat level had increased sufficiently, to warrant a pre-emptive attack. This was, in every meaningful sense, a war of choice.
It is also a war that, as a military professional, I find jaw-droppingly stupid.
The Trump administration is consumed by hubris and exceptionalism, and this is reflected in the astonishingly poor level of strategic planning behind the war. The conflict has no obvious objectives beyond what Pete Hegseth has effectively described as “punching Iran while it’s down”, and it has no discernible end state. Objectively, while the American attack has succeeded tactically — which it was always likely to do — it has failed strategically. That failure stems from an inability, or unwillingness, to anticipate and plan for obvious consequences. Every single effect described above would have emerged in even the most elementary planning session. Yet either that planning was not done, or it was ignored.
What we are left with is Donald Trump’s intuition, vanity, and prejudice. He is notoriously unable to anticipate the consequences of his actions, and in this case that defect has produced a totally unnecessary war with hundreds, if not thousands, dead and injured. This is a war driven by Trump’s ego and planned and executed — at the strategic level, at least — by some of the worst people the U.S. political system can produce. Trump appears to view it as spectacle, a grotesque display of power. Pete Hegseth, for his part, seems almost gleeful in his embrace of violence and destruction.
And the worst part? The United States is so large and influential that it will not suffer immediate consequences for this gigantic mess. Instead, Trump will be hypnotised by the prowess of his military and may easily turn his attention to another opponent once he grows bored with Iran. He is already talking about how it would be his “honour” to take Cuba. Or will it be Greenland? Or Panama? Or Canada?
But while there may be no immediate consequences, the long-term damage is already done. Allies have been deeply alienated. U.S. policy has been exposed as irrational, incoherent, and cruel; hubris has become its animating principle, and the United States is increasingly being grouped with China and Russia as a destabilising bully. A future Democratic administration, perhaps backed by a Democratic Congress, may attempt to repair some of this damage, but I fear we are already past the point of no return. The United States may retain its power, but its moral authority and its claim to lead the free world are gone.
Thankfully, Canada and other democracies are beginning to realize it.

Phillips O'Brien, Midweek Update #2: The Two Wars Also: What Might Be Happening In US and Iranian Strategic Thinking.

...the US and Israel can basically destroy almost anything that they can find. Why, then, are they not winning? Well they cannot find everything to begin with. The Iranian war against them is based increasingly on cheap, small systems that can be widely dispersed and quickly moved. While the US and Israel can degrade Iranian capacities, they are struggling to wipe them out. And that means (see below) that so far they have been unable to stop Iran from waging its very different war.
The other problem the US/Israel face is that they cannot achieve their political objectives by simply blowing things up. They need Iran to politically end the war, but that will require either a completely new Iranian regime or power to be seized by those in Iran who want to end the war. So far this part of the campaign has been a failure so far by the US and Israel....
...The Trump administration is now fighting a war it did not plan for and for which it had no contingency plans. Much like Vladimir Putin, who expected Ukraine to collapse in a few days in February 2022, Donald Trump expected a quick and easy win over the Iranian regime.
There was a story in The Middle East Eye by a credible source that the US had told the Turkish government that this war would be over in four days....
Trump did not expect wholesale regime change and the liberation of the Iranian people, about whom he could care less. He really did expect that he would hit the existing Iranian leadership, remove/kill many of its senior members and devastate Iran across the country in a series of impressive air strikes. The result of this would be, in Trump’s mind, that a much more agreeable version of the present regime would take power and defer to him as their strategic big daddy. They would thus give him a deal on nuclear weapons and start the money taps flowing.
Unfortunately for him, it has been nothing of the sort.....
....The Iranians seem willing to try and outlast the US on this one. They do not want some interim settlement that will allow Israel and the US to regroup and come back at them in a few months or a year. They seem to believe that their regime integrity is strong enough to withstand the air assaults and that they have enough weaponry to continue to threaten trade for a while.
As such, they believe that they can keep shutting down trade until they get their way and the US fully backs off.
This, if true, seems to me like a very ambitious set of strategic assumptions. They might be overestimating their regime strength, how they will react if their leaders continue to get killed, and whether Trump might escalate more than they expect.
In other words, add this all together and this war could get far worse before it gets better.

Wednesday, it got worse:

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Trump tried to put the genie back into the bottle:

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Rudy Martinez, The Rest of the World Report, Wednesday, March 18, 2026 Day 19 Evening Edition
Martinez does two daily reports about the Iran War, with much detail about events across the region and the reactions of the world press. Here is what he reports on Israel's attack of the South Pars gas field and Iran's response:

...South Pars is not merely an Iranian asset. It sits directly above Qatar’s North Field — the same reservoir, divided by a maritime boundary. Qatar processes and exports its share as LNG through Ras Laffan Industrial City, 80 kilometers north of Doha. Ras Laffan produces roughly 20 percent of the world’s liquefied natural gas supply. Qatar’s Foreign Ministry had explicitly warned against attacking South Pars, noting the shared geology: Qatar’s spokesperson Majed al-Ansari called it “a dangerous and irresponsible step amid the current military escalation.”
Iran retaliated within hours. The IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] issued a formal evacuation warning for energy facilities in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, naming specific targets: Qatar’s Ras Laffan refinery and Mesaieed petrochemical complex; Saudi Arabia’s Samref refinery and Jubail petrochemical complex; the UAE’s Al Hosn gas field. The warnings were followed by strikes. A ballistic missile penetrated Qatar’s air defenses — four others were intercepted — and struck the Ras Laffan Industrial City complex directly. QatarEnergy confirmed “extensive damage.” Emergency teams deployed. Fires reported. The interior ministry said the fire was “preliminarily brought under control” with no casualties.
Qatar’s response was immediate and significant. The Foreign Ministry condemned the strike as “a blatant violation of state sovereignty and a direct threat to national security,” said Qatar was invoking its right to self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter, and — in the sharpest diplomatic move of the war by any Gulf state — expelled Iran’s military and security attachés from Doha, giving them 24 hours to leave. In Abu Dhabi, shrapnel from intercepted missiles forced the suspension of operations at the Bab oil field and the Habshan gas complex — one of the world’s largest onshore gas processing facilities. The UAE Ministry of Defence said more than 2,000 projectiles have targeted the country since February 28.
Brent crude closed at $111.23 — up 7 percent on the day alone. US West Texas Intermediate crossed $100 for the first time since 2022. The Ras Laffan facility had already halted LNG production following an earlier drone attack on March 2. Qatar has warned that damage to facilities could extend the outage beyond May. Qatar accounts for nearly 20 percent of global LNG exports. European gas benchmark prices jumped close to 50 percent when production halted on March 2. Today’s strike on a facility that was already offline compounds the structural damage, potentially extending the global LNG supply disruption for months rather than weeks.
The sequence matters: Israel struck a gas field that straddles the Iran-Qatar maritime boundary. Iran struck back against Qatari civilian energy infrastructure. Qatar expelled Iranian diplomats. And the IRGC has publicly threatened Saudi Arabia and the UAE with the same treatment. The Gulf states did not start this war. They are now inside it.
...The international energy press — Bloomberg, Reuters, Al Jazeera, the Financial Times, the Peninsula Qatar — is covering the Ras Laffan strike as a structural turning point. The framing is not “Iran attacked Qatar.” It is “Israel struck a shared gas reservoir and Iran made Qatar pay for it.” Qatar’s Foreign Ministry statement — invoking Article 51, expelling attachés — is being read internationally as a country that has reached the end of its diplomatic tolerance. Gulf media is asking explicitly whether the Gulf Cooperation Council states, which have hosted US bases and absorbed Iranian retaliation without retaliating themselves, can continue to do so.
...Qatar hosts Al Udeid Air Base — the largest US military installation in the Middle East, with roughly 10,000 US personnel. Qatar has been a key US partner in managing the war’s logistics....

Next, Trump has been babbling about "taking" Cuba:

And its cool because when a hurricane does threaten Cuba he can just redirect its path with a Sharpie.

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— Ragnarok Lobster (@eclecticbrotha1.bsky.social) March 16, 2026 at 6:15 PM

You can't have Cuba until you finish your Iran. And you've barely touched your Venezuela. Finish your Iran and Venezuela before you even think about having some Cuba. And weren't you trying to save space for Greenland? Where are you planning to put all these countries?

— Ward Q. Normal (he/him) (@wardqnormal.bsky.social) March 16, 2026 at 3:08 PM

That illegal US blockade isn't blocking help anymore.

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The first shipment of the Nuestra América Convoy arrived today in Havana, Cuba, from Europe. More than four tons of critical medical aid was delivered. Video courtesy of The National (Scotland)

- Arturo Dominguez

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You heard it right - I’m headed to Cuba as part of the Nuestra America convoy. Honored to share my insights and experiences with the rest of you here on Substack in the coming weeks. Free Cuba!

- vic mensa

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I remember after Hurricane Katrina, Cuba offered to send a hospital ship with doctors and nurses to New Orleans to help. Bush turned them down, of course, because Cuba is supposed to be a failed state.

Cuba has better healthcare, lower crime, better housing, higher literacy, longer lifespans, fewer baby deaths, less people in prison and a happier population than the USA. Despite being under constant blockade for 60 years. It is Cuba which needs to liberate the USA.

— BladeoftheSun (@bladeofthes.bsky.social) March 18, 2026 at 12:04 PM