President Donald Trump listens during a Board of Peace meeting at the U.S. Institute of Peace, February 19, 2026, in Washington
PRESIDENT Donald Trump has now assembled the largest US military force in the Middle East since the disastrous and criminal Iraq invasion in 2003.
It is not there for show. The chatter from Washington is that a US attack on Iran is now a “90 per cent” likelihood.
It is still possible that the deployment is simply to pressure the Iranian regime into complying with US demands regarding its nuclear power programme and its wider policy across the region.
But Trump has already attacked Iran once during his second term, and he is under pressure from the Israeli government to move towards overthrowing the regime in Tehran, something that would require military action on a far larger scale than previously, and co-ordination with pro-US political forces like the son of the deposed Shah.
So the danger of war seems imminent. The anti-war and labour movements here in Britain need to be clear-sighted.
Any military action by Trump, or Israel, or both would be a gross violation of international legality and a criminal imperialist adventure which would risk an escalating conflict across the Middle East. The peoples of the region, including the Iranian people, would be the losers.
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If Trump and Starmer want a peaceful and stable Middle East, Israel is the rogue power which needs to be curbed. Instead it is armed, supported and diplomatically protected by the imperialist powers.
These are not nuances, but the heart of the crisis in the Middle East. The anti-war and solidarity movements here must not be distracted from their main responsibility — challenging the imperialist interventions and alliances of the Starmer government — by the temptation to sit in moral judgement on those who are its targets.
The future of Iran is for the Iranian people alone to determine. US or Israeli military intervention must be firmly opposed, and the British government pressed to dissociate from any such plan.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
US President Donald Trump has expressed his opposition to the Chagos deal
The British government has not given permission for the US to use UK military bases to support potential US strikes on Iran, the BBC understands.
The US has in the past used RAF Fairford, in Gloucestershire, and the UK overseas territory of Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean, to carry out strikes in the Middle East region.
A UK government spokesperson said: “As routine, we do not comment on operational matters.”
The US has been pressuring Iran to agree to curb its nuclear programme.
It has threatened possible strikes if it fails to do so and has moved warships, aircraft and other military assets to the region in preparation for a possible strike.
At the same time, some progress has been reported at talks between American and Iranian negotiators in Switzerland.
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Insiders believe the Pentagon’s preparations for possible strikes on Iran – which could potentially be launched from Diego Garcia – may have shifted the president’s understanding of the significance of the island, the largest in the Chagos archipelago.
Original article by Abdul Rahman republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license. See the original article for embedded content.
The strike was called jointly by the worker unions and farmers groups to demand the withdrawal of the anti-people policies, such as the four new labor codes and the recently signed trade deals with the US and the EU.
The strike was called jointly by the worker unions and farmers groups to demand the withdrawal of the anti-people policies, such as the four new labor codes and the recently signed trade deals with the US and the EU
300 million workers, farmers, students, and professionals from various fields took to the streets across India on Thursday, February 12, in defense of their rights and to denounce the policies of the ultra-right-wing government in the country.
Workers went on strike shutting down thousands of coal fields, refineries, factories, banking, and transportation in remote corners of the country, heeding the call of the Central Trade Unions (CTUs), a joint platform of major trade unions in India, including the Centre for Indian Trade Unions (CITU), the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), the All India Central Council of Trade Unions (AICCTU), and the Hind Mazdoor Sabha (HMS), among others.
The All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) congratulates crores of Indian workers, agricultural workers and toiling peasantry for making the 12th February 2026 General Strike a historic success. The anger of working people against the (1/n) pic.twitter.com/jfItzhDVeg
The workers were joined by millions of farmers and agricultural workers from across the country under the call of the Samyukta Kisan Sabha (SKM) and the All India Agricultural Workers Union (AIAWA), among others. The farmers and agricultural workers demonstrated at all the district headquarters and the village centers across India.
is a warning to the ruling dispensation: Withdraw the slew of anti-people bills and acts and restore the pro-worker and pro-farmer policies. If the Modi government fails to respond adequately to the demands of the toilers of the country, it will be inviting a much longer (9/n) pic.twitter.com/UT0eVGOlqU
In several places, workers and farmers were joined by students, women’s organizations, and other civil society groups who extended their solidarity with the strike call.
Strikers in many areas defied attempts by factory owners and security forces to stop the strike by picketing the factory gates and marching on the streets to implement the strike.
In several states, such as Kerala, Odisha, and Tripura, among others, most of the business establishments were shut in solidarity with the strike call. Demonstrations were held at government offices with thousands marching, shouting slogans, carrying banners, posters, and red flags.
general strike in the coming days.
Red Salute to the 12th February 2026 General Strike!
In the capital, Delhi, workers held large gatherings at the state secretariat. Later they also gathered at Jantar Mantar, where the central leadership of the CTUs and the SKM made speeches calling the strike a success.
Sudip Dutta, president of the CITU, claimed that the one day strike is just symbolic and if the Narendra Modi-led government fails to fulfill their demands it should be ready to see larger and longer strikes in the coming days as workers and farmers will not allow the government to harm their interests or sell India’s national sovereignty to the US and other foreign powers.
One of the major demands of the strike was the withdrawal of the trade deals India has recently agreed to with the US and the EU. The CTUs, SKM, and left parties in India have called the deals a surrender of the country’s sovereignty and harmful to the interests of the millions of farmers in the country as they allow open access of Indian markets to foreign farm products.
general strike in the coming days.
Red Salute to the 12th February 2026 General Strike!
Another key demand was the withdrawal of the four new labor codes brought by the Modi government despite long term opposition by the trade unions, and withdrawal of a new rural employment guarantee act called the VB GRAM G Act.
The SKM and the AIAWU have claimed that the VB GRAM G Act actually makes the right to employment ineffective. They want the earlier MGNREGA back which was withdrawn by the government.
general strike in the coming days.
Red Salute to the 12th February 2026 General Strike!
Farmers and workers in India have also been demanding the withdrawal of a series of laws brought by the Modi government, such as the electricity law, seed bill, and others, calling them pro-corporate and anti-people.
The protection of India’s secular and democratic polity was one of the major demands raised during the strike. The CTUs, the SKM and others believe that the Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-government is threatening the secular and democratic nature of India by pursuing majoritarian and authoritarian actions.
The major left parties in the country: Communist Party of India (Marxist), Communist Party of India (CPI), Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation and others also supported the strike call.
The CITU and the SKM thanked millions for participating in the strike on Thursday, calling it “historic”. They mentioned the large-scale participation of workers from unorganized sectors and peasants and cautioned the government to listen to their demands.
US Rep Maria Elvira Salazar and US President Donald Trump. Photos via Official Pages
On January 29, US President Donald Trump declared Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to US national security and tightened the blockade against the island nation
In the stillness of a Havana night, the only sounds are the hum of a generator in a distant hospital and the murmur of a family gathered in candlelight. For them, “US national security” is not an abstract concept debated on American cable news; it is the tangible reality of a 20-hour blackout, the smell of spoiled food, and the fear for a child’s refrigerated medicine. This is the face of a policy that the United States government calls a response to an “extraordinary threat.” The true threat, however, is not military. It is the 67-year defiance of a small island nation that has refused to relinquish its sovereignty.
On January 29, 2026, the Trump administration transformed a long-standing campaign of pressure into a blunt instrument of suffocation. With an executive order, it weaponized the US tariff system against any nation, including countries like Mexico, that dares to sell oil to Cuba. This is no longer about isolating or containing the Cuban people from the rest of the hemisphere; it is a deliberate strategy of total economic asphyxiation, a move unseen in its aggression since the Cold War.
The machinery of suffocation
Cuba’s electrical grid, water pumps, public transport, hospitals, and schools run on imported fuel. By coercing third countries, the US aims not merely to sanction but to disrupt a nation’s very metabolism. The Cuban government’s statement cut to the core: this is “blackmail, threats, and direct coercion” designed to prevent fuel from entering the country. The result is collective punishment, a violation of international law that uses hunger, darkness, and disease as political weapons to break the will of a people.
A constant war: the imperial playbook from Eisenhower to Trump
To call this a “foreign policy” is to undersell its nature. It is an evolving, multilateral instrument of war, relentlessly pursued by ten consecutive US presidencies with a single goal: the destruction of Cuba’s socialist project.
Eisenhower (1960) initiated the aggression with the first blockade after Cuba nationalized US-owned refineries.
Kennedy (1961-1962) escalated with the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, made the blockade total, and greenlit Operation Mongoose, a secret program of sabotage and attempted assassination of Cuban leaders, including over 630 attempts against Fidel Castro.
Clinton (1992-1996) delivered what was hoped to be a “knockout blow” after the Soviet Union’s fall, passing the Torricelli and Helms-Burton Acts. These laws extended the US blockade extraterritorially, punishing foreign companies for trading with Cuba and asserting US authority over global commerce.
Trump (2017-2026), after a fragile thaw under Obama, not only reversed course but plunged deeper into cruelty. He added Cuba back to the “State Sponsors of Terrorism” list, a move widely condemned as political fiction, and enacted 243 new sanctions. His most recent act, the 2026 executive order, seeks to seal the island’s fate by starving it of energy.
The strategy has always been naked in its intent. A declassified 1960 State Department memo by Lester D. Mallory advocated creating “hunger, desperation and overthrow of government” by denying “money and supplies.” The human cost is the point, not a side effect.
The “brutal dilemma” and its human toll
This engineered crisis has measurable, horrific consequences. By the 1990s, the tightened blockade caused a 40% drop in caloric intake and a 48% surge in tuberculosis deaths. Today, it blocks the purchase of medical ventilators, spare parts for water purification, and, crucially, the fuel to power them.
This suffering is framed as a necessary sacrifice by members of the Cuban-American mafia that serve in the US Congress. US Representative Maria Elvira Salazar of Florida, recently articulated the chilling calculus: “It’s devastating to think about a mother’s hunger, a child who needs immediate help… But that is precisely the brutal dilemma we face…: to alleviate short-term suffering or to free Cuba forever.”
This promised “freedom” is a return to the pre-1959 past, when US corporations controlled 80% of Cuba’s public utilities and 70% of all arable land. It is the “freedom” to exploit, purchased with the calculated suffering of an entire generation.
The “Donroe Doctrine”: imperialism unleashed
Trump’s escalation is the cornerstone of his administration’s “Donroe Doctrine,” a 21st-century revival of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine that declares the whole of Latin America and the Caribbean to be US property. Following the illegal attack of January 3, 2026, on Venezuela, Trump stated plainly: “American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.” Under this doctrine, any nation that chooses an independent path, especially one organizing its economy for human need, like Cuba’s world-renowned healthcare system, is deemed a “national emergency”.
The war abroad and the war at home
For the American people, it is critical to see this not as a distant issue but as part of a continuous logic. The same administration that invokes “national emergencies” to strangle Cuba’s economy uses “emergencies” to unleash ICE raids in US cities and kill its own citizens like Renee Good and Alex Pretti. The same mindset that labels 11 million Cubans a collective threat for practicing self-determination labels migrants and minorities as domestic threats. The logic of the blockade and the logic of the border are one and the same: the violent control of populations and resources, and the designation of entire groups of human beings as disposable.
The flickering candle in that Havana home, then, is more than a light against the darkness. It is a defiance of an imperial order. The struggle of the Cuban people to keep their lights on is a fundamental struggle for the right of all peoples to determine their destiny, free from the coercion of an empire that confuses dominance with security and mistakes cruelty for strength. As in the past, Cubans will collectively rise to the challenge in order to not only survive, but overcome the blockade.
Manolo De Los Santos is Executive Director of The People’s Forum and a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. His writing appears regularly in Monthly Review, Peoples Dispatch, CounterPunch, La Jornada, and other progressive media. He coedited, most recently, Viviremos: Venezuela vs. Hybrid War (LeftWord, 2020), Comrade of the Revolution: Selected Speeches of Fidel Castro (LeftWord, 2021), and Our Own Path to Socialism: Selected Speeches of Hugo Chávez (LeftWord, 2023).
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
Cuban President and First Secretary Miguel Diaz-Canel is seen in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on July 7, 2025, and US President Donald Trump boards Air Force One at Haneda Airport in Tokyo on October 29, 2025. (Photo by Mauro Pimentel and Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)
The White House accused Cuba of supporting terrorist groups as the Trump administration cut off much of the island’s energy supply and threatened countries with tariffs if they continue to send Cuba oil.
Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday said the country is open to expanding “bilateral cooperation” with the US, following President Donald Trump’s comments that the White House is “going to make a deal with Cuba”—but diplomatic officials emphasized that they vehemently reject Trump’s recent accusations that they harbor terrorists and pose an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the US.
“Cuba categorically declares that it does not harbor, support, finance, or permit terrorist or extremist organizations,” said the ministry.
The statement was released days after the White House issued an executive order to address what it called threats that Cuba poses to the US, threatening to impose new tariffs on countries that sell oil to Cuba.
Trump’s invasion of Venezuela—which had been the top energy supplier to Cuba—and his push to take control of the South American country’s oil has left Cuba’s economy struggling with a virtual energy blockade and rolling blackouts. The US has also been pressuring Mexico to stop supplying energy to the island nation, prompting fears of a potential humanitarian crisis.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Millersaid last month that the US has the right to take over any country if doing so furthers its interests, and said the Trump administration should “secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere.”
In the executive order last week, the president made sweeping accusations against Cuba, claiming that it provides support for countries including Russia and China—though the Trump administration has also sought improved relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping—and offering no evidence for the allegation that it also supports Hamas and Hezbollah.
The Cuban storytelling platform Belly of the Beast called the accusation “laughable, if it weren’t so serious,” and spoke to some of the hundreds of Palestinian medical students who are studying to be doctors at the Latin American School of Medicine and other institutions.
“The vast majority of Palestinians in Cuba are medical students,” said Ihab Masri, who is studying there alongside students from about 100 other countries. “Trump is a person who says he stopped 10 or 12 wars… a person who not only justifies but also denies the genocide in Gaza that they commit and have committed. You can’t trust someone like that.”
In his attempt to block oil shipments to Cuba, Donald Trump now claims the country is a safe haven for Hamas and Hezbollah, without presenting any evidence. Cubans say it’s complete nonsense. The real story? Hundreds of Palestinian students training to be doctors in Havana. pic.twitter.com/3X24dhF6mN — Belly of the Beast (@bellybeastcuba) February 1, 2026
Trump’s executive order also accused Cuba of spreading “its communist ideas, policies, and practices around the Western Hemisphere, threatening the foreign policy of the United States.”
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday emphasized that “Cuba does not host foreign military or intelligence bases and rejects the characterization that it is a threat to the security of the United States. Nor has it supported any hostile activity against that country, nor will it allow its territory to be used against another nation.”
The US has maintained a trade embargo on Cuba for more than six decades and has had hostile relations with the country since the communist revolution gave rise to the late President Fidel Castro and overthrew authoritarian leader Fulgencio Batista, who was backed by the US.
US Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Ill.) warned that Trump’s “latest economic assault against the island is designed to cause a humanitarian collapse, deepening our collective punishment of the Cuban people and forcing more migration.”
“Cuba poses no threat to the United States, but that’s not the point. Trump is manufacturing an excuse for cruelty and regime change,” added the congressman, while Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) denounced Trump’s executive order as “pure cruelty” that could “kill countless innocent Cubans.”
This Executive Order will kill countless innocent Cubans. I am horrified by the Trump Administration's attempt to strangle an entire people. Homes, schools, hospitals without power. Children without food or medicine. Cuba poses no threat to the US. This is pure cruelty. https://t.co/C28fHUmbW9
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said last week that Trump’s threat against countries that continue to supply energy “reveals the fascist, criminal, and genocidal nature of a clique that has hijacked the interests of the American people for purely personal ends.”
On Monday, the global organization Progressive International joined Cuban officials in denouncing Trump’s executive order as a “cruel and criminal act of economic warfare that will bring nothing but starvation, deprivation, and despair to [Cuba’s] people.”
“With this new executive order, the logic of siege has reached its apotheosis: Sanction not only Cuba but every nation that dares show solidarity, effectively demanding that sovereign states choose between the interests of their own people and the dictates of an empire,” said the Cabinet of Progressive International.
The group called on the international community to “coordinate diplomatic resistance, demand that governments refuse to enforce secondary tariffs, and amplify Cuban voices against this assault on international law, human dignity, and basic human rights.”
“History will judge those who saw this moment and turned away. Cuba stood with oppressed peoples globally—from defeating apartheid in South Africa to sending doctors to the frontlines of epidemics—and now it is our time to act with audacity, moral courage, and collective force,” said Progressive International.“
“Stand with the Cuban people now,” the group added. “Stand against this siege, this economic assault, this unfolding humanitarian disaster; join together in the provision of key supplies to the island, from medicine to food to fuel for its people; and stand for the right of all nations to self-determination and human dignity, or be complicit in its destruction.”
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
President Donald Trump listens during a Board of Peace meeting at the U.S. Institute of Peace, February 19, 2026, in Washington
