Anwar Iqbal, Washington, May 23, 2026 Updated about 4 hours
WASHINGTON: A recent report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) says the United States lost or damaged 42 military aircraft during Operation Epic Fury, the 40-day military campaign against Iran that began on February 28, 2026.
The report, released last week and circulated by several US media outlets on Friday, is believed to be the most detailed public accounting so far of US aircraft losses in the conflict. However, the Pentagon has not yet issued its own comprehensive assessment.
In the report, CRS researchers said they compiled the figures from news reports, official Pentagon statements, and announcements by US Central Command (Centcom).
The report notes that the Department of Defence — now also using the title “Department of War” under an executive order issued in September 2025 — has not publicly provided a full list of losses from the campaign.
During a congressional hearing on May 12, Acting Pentagon Comptroller Jules W. Hurst III said that the estimated cost of US military operations against Iran had risen to $29 billion. He said much of the increase came from “repair or replacement costs for equipment.”
The aircraft losses listed in the CRS report include fighter jets, refuelling aircraft, helicopters, surveillance planes, and drones.
Among the most serious incidents were the loss of four F-15E Strike Eagle fighter aircraft. Centcom said three of the aircraft were accidentally shot down by friendly fire over Kuwait on March 2. All six crew members survived after ejecting safely. A fourth F-15E was reportedly shot down during combat operations over Iran on April 5, although both crew members were later rescued.
The report also cited damage to an F-35A stealth fighter caused by Iranian ground fire during operations over Iran in March.
An A-10 Thunderbolt II attack aircraft was lost after being hit by enemy fire on April 3. According to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, the pilot ejected safely before the aircraft crashed.
The CRS report also described significant losses among support aircraft.
Two KC-135 aerial refueling aircraft were involved in an incident over friendly airspace on March 12. One crashed in Iraq, killing all six crew members on board, while the second made an emergency landing. Five additional KC-135 tankers were damaged in an Iranian missile and drone strike on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.
One E-3 Sentry airborne warning and control aircraft (AWACS) was also damaged during the same attack. Later reports said the aircraft had been parked on an unprotected taxiway.
Special operations forces also suffered losses. Two MC-130J Commando II aircraft supporting a rescue mission for a downed F-15E were reportedly intentionally destroyed on the ground in Iran after they became unable to leave the area. Their crews were evacuated safely.
An HH-60W Jolly Green II rescue helicopter was damaged by small-arms fire during rescue operations inside Iran.
The largest losses involved unmanned aircraft. According to the report, the US military lost 24 MQ-9 Reaper drones during the campaign. Another MQ-4C Triton surveillance drone crashed in what a US Navy document described as a mishap.
The CRS said the reported losses could raise major questions for Congress about military readiness, replacement costs, and the ability of the US defence industry to replace aircraft quickly during a prolonged conflict.
The report also warned that the losses may reveal growing risks for US aircraft operating in heavily contested airspace and could force the Pentagon to reconsider tactics, deployment strategies, and future procurement plans.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) lost his bid for re-election to primary opponent Ed Gallrein 54% to 45% with nearly all votes counted on Tuesday night.
Massie’s defeat will no doubt be seen as a triumph of both the continued durability of pro-Israel forces in the party, as well as the president’s own ability to dictate outcomes in intra-party races. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who voted to impeach Donald Trump during his first term, lost his primary election over the weekend against a Trump-endorsed candidate.
Massie, who had served seven terms representing his state, is a fiscal conservative and libertarian. He had emerged during Trump’s first term as a rare Republican who stood up to the president, notably opposing Trump on his massive $2.2 trillion COVID spending bill. More recently he proposed and helped to pass a law in November opening the Epstein files, and then supported a series of war powers votes as a major critic of Trump’s war on Iran. Massie has also opposed bills that would provide aid to Israel for its own wars.
This drew Trump’s ire. The president called the Kentucky incumbent “Worst Congressman in the History of our Country,” in a series of social media posts hours before the primary. Trump has also called him a “moron,” “bum,” “obstructionist,” and a “fool.”
The race also attracted the attention of the Republican Jewish Coalition and the pro-Israel lobbying group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). PACs associated with both, with multi-million dollar contributions from powerful pro-Israel GOP donors Miriam Adelson, Paul Singer, and John Paulson, helped it to become the most expensive primary election in the U.S. history. The two other most expensive primaries (in 2024) also featured AIPAC-backed candidates defeating incumbents (both Democrats) who were deemed to be too anti-Israel.
From left, President of the Eurogroup Kyriakos Pierrakakis, German Vice-Chancellor and Federal Minister of Finance Lars Klingbeil, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, French Finance Minister Roland Lescure, Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves, Canada’s Finance and National Revenue Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne, Japan’s Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama, Italian Finance Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti, European Commissioner for Economy and Productivity, Implementation and Simplification Valdis Dombrovskis pose for a family photo at the G7 finance meeting in Paris, Monday, May 18, 2026. [AP Photo/Thibault Camus]
US President Donald Trump menaced Iran with another military onslaught on Tuesday, declaring, “We may have to hit them one more time.” Just hours after claiming to have “paused” an imminent resumption of the bombardment of Iran, Trump asserted that the US military was “locked and loaded,” and that he could make a decision on whether to attack by early next week.
Trump’s gangster-like threats are the authentic voice of world imperialism, which is determined to impose colonial chains on Iran and the entire region as part of the new redivision of the world among the major powers that is already well underway. The communique released by the G7 finance ministers yesterday after two days of consultations in Paris underscored this fact, with all members signing on to a statement that blamed the victim of the criminal US/Israeli war of aggression for the economic disaster it has produced.
The finance ministers and central bankers from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US insisted that “a swift return to free and safe transit through the Strait of Hormuz and a lasting resolution to the conflict are imperative.” While not uttering a word about the unprovoked onslaught on Iran launched as negotiations were still ongoing on 28 February or the thousands of Iranian civilians slaughtered by indiscriminate American and Israeli bombing, the G7 finance ministers, displaying typical imperialist double-standards, hypocritically began their main communique with the statement, “We are united in our condemnation of Russia’s continued brutal war against Ukraine and escalatory actions aimed at undermining collective efforts to broker peace.”
The glaring inconsistency of the imperialists’ moral outrage manages to consistently coincide with the global predatory interests they are pursuing. American imperialism is determined to regain the domination over Iran it lost following the 1979 revolution as part of a drive to consolidate its hegemony over the energy-rich Middle East by sidelining its rivals, above all China. The European imperialists have endorsed the war because they hope to secure their own share of the spoils with a revival of the barbaric methods associated with colonialism and because they require continued US support for their war against Russia.
The governments supposedly engaged in “collective efforts” to “broker peace” are in fact the chief protagonists in a rapidly escalating third world war. Trump travelled to Beijing last week to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in what was billed as a summit to stabilise relations between the world’s two largest economies. But behind the diplomatic niceties, the American financial oligarchy for which Trump speaks has no intention of permitting China’s steady economic rise at the expense of the US and is openly preparing for war with China.
Trump’s failure to reach any substantive agreement in Beijing is now being followed just days later with another round of threats on the part of Trump to exterminate Iran, which not coincidentally is one of China’s most important oil suppliers.
The erratic outbursts by Trump and frequent explosions of militarist violence are indications of US imperialism’s weakness, not its strength. For the past 35 years, Washington has sought under successive administrations to offset its precipitous economic decline by deploying brutal military force. This uninterrupted series of wars has only deepened American imperialism’s crisis, both by aggravating social tensions to the breaking point and exacerbating the rivalries between the imperialist powers as they compete to secure markets, raw materials, cheap labour and strategic influence under conditions of a worsening world capitalist breakdown.
Imperialism—whether of the American or European variety—can offer no way out of this crisis other than by further escalating wars.
Trump’s threats to resume the war on Iran have been punctuated with discussions on whether he will order an invasion of Cuba, which the White House is now absurdly accusing of playing host to Iranian military advisers and possessing 300 drones supplied by Russia and Iran. Military operations on the Caribbean island aimed at toppling the Castroite regime would mark the second US-led “regime change” operation in Latin America in less than six months, following January’s invasion of Venezuela to abduct President Nicolas Maduro and try him as a common criminal in a New York courtroom. Trump may be plotting a parallel scenario to seize the 94-year-old Raul Castro, who will reportedly soon be indicted in a US court.
In Europe, the continent’s imperialist powers are fuelling the war on Russia—a nuclear-armed power—with reckless abandon. Germany in particular has taken the lead in assisting Ukraine to develop drone technology and supplying it with long-range weaponry capable of hitting targets deep inside Russia. Kiev has felt emboldened over recent weeks to strike high-rise residential buildings in Moscow and energy infrastructure. These provocative acts of aggression, which have only increased after the Kremlin’s threat earlier this year to bomb manufacturing facilities in NATO countries, are designed to produce a retaliatory strike by Russia that can be exploited as justification to expand the war.
The European imperialist powers are subordinating all of society’s resources to waging war, with Germany approving €1 trillion for war spending and all NATO members committing to allocating 5 percent of their GDP for the military. The destruction of public services and worker rights needed to fund this mad rearmament drive is being justified with hysterical anti-Russian propaganda.
Carsten Breuer, the top commander of the German Armed Forces, declared in a joint interview with his British counterpart in the Süddeutsche Zeitung that Russia—which has proven incapable after four years of war to conquer even half of Ukraine’s territory—could attack a NATO country by 2029. Europe’s rearmament drive is not only aimed at Russia, but is motivated at the most fundamental level by the ruling class’ recognition that US imperialism—long an ally—is now a rival in the struggle to carve up the world among the major powers.
The sharpening of inter-imperialist antagonisms and acceleration of a third world war confirm that the same basic features of capitalism identified by Lenin in his analysis of imperialism apply today with full force. Lenin wrote at the height of the bloody slaughter of World War I, “Monopolies, oligarchy, the striving for domination and not for freedom, the exploitation of an increasing number of small or weak nations by a handful of the richest or most powerful nations—all these have given birth to those distinctive characteristics of imperialism which compel us to define it as parasitic or decaying capitalism.”
This understanding was central to Lenin’s conception of the epoch as one of wars and revolutions, i.e., not only a period of imperialist reaction, but one in which crisis-ridden capitalism had created the objective conditions for the working class to offer a socialist road out of the impasse.
The same capitalist contradictions propelling all of the imperialist powers to engage in world war are driving the only social force that can stop this catastrophe into struggle: the international working class. The US-instigated war on Iran has already, within less than three months, triggered sharp spikes in energy, fuel and food prices. Strikes and protests have involved workers across continents, from the ongoing national strikes against price rises in Kenya and Bolivia, to Monday’s one-day national strike that hit wide swathes of the Italian economy against war and the Gaza genocide.
The intensification of the class struggle demonstrates the urgency of the fight to build an international anti-war movement on the basis of a revolutionary socialist programme. The initial anger among workers expressed in the strikes must be developed into conscious opposition to imperialist war, linking the fight to defend jobs and living standards with the struggle against imperialist barbarism and the capitalist system that is its root cause. This movement must end the domination of society by the financial oligarchy and its relentless quest for profit and plunder by setting as its goals the conquest of political power by the working class and the socialist transformation of society.
With the US ceasefire announced on April 8 all but over, the conflict with Iran is intensifying with President Trump escalating threats of renewed military attacks against Tehran.
On Monday, Trump dismissed Iran’s latest reply to the US proposal as “totally unacceptable,” called it a “piece of garbage,” and said he “didn’t even finish reading it.” He said the ceasefire—which effectively ended last week when the US fired on Iranian military targets—was on “massive life support.”
On Tuesday, before departing for China, the president continued with the posture that the US is dictating terms to Iran. When asked if he was going to discuss the war with Beijing, Trump said he would talk to President Xi about the war but mostly about trade and added that Iran was not really one of the topics because the US had it “very much under control.”
He told reporters, “We’re only going to make a good deal,” and then said, “We’re either going to make a deal or they’re going to be decimated. One way or the other, we win.”
Trump continued to insist that the US has already “won” and that a deal with Iran has little significance. Along with the threat to “decimate” Iran, Trump warned on May 7 that the US would soon have to “look at one big glow coming out of Iran”—a comment widely understood as a threat to use nuclear weapons.
Iran’s latest confirmed position, as reported by state broadcaster and other outlets, is that any settlement must include war reparations, sanctions relief, release of frozen assets and recognition of Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said Tehran was “not asking for anything unusual” and that the country was demanding only its “legitimate rights.”
The Iranian proposal also reportedly included a willingness to dilute part of its enriched uranium and transfer the rest abroad, but not under terms that would amount to a complete capitulation to Washington.
The key political point is that Iran is refusing to accept the framework dictated by US imperialism which, with the support of Israel, has carried out the illegal war including targeting 13,000 sites with missiles strikes and murdering the entire political leadership of the country.
While the White House has portrayed Iran’s position as obstructive, Tehran has consistently and explicitly linked any peace agreement to compensation for damage done and an acknowledgment of its sovereign rights over the strategic waterway.
Over the past 48 hours, there has been no publicly confirmed report of an Iranian or US strike sinking boats in the Strait of Hormuz itself, but the waterway remains the central strategic flashpoint of the war. The US has maintained naval pressure and claimed it is working to reopen the strait, while Tehran has insisted it retains sovereign rights there.
In practical terms, the strait is not under “absolute control” by Washington despite the claim by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on May 4. The ongoing disruption, militarized patrols and negotiations show the strait to be a contested chokepoint which is not under US control.
The fact that Washington is publicly appealing to China to help “open” the strait is an open admission that the US cannot simply command passage through the strait by fiat. Reports on Tuesday that the UAE carried out a covert strike on Iran’s Lavan Island refinery demonstrates that the conflict over the strait involves multiple regional actors operating as proxies for US imperialism.
Although Abu Dhabi has not publicly acknowledged involvement, the reported strike caused a major fire and is expected to disrupt refinery production for months. A report by Reuters also stated, based on accounts from anonymous sources, that Saudi Arabia has been involved in covert anti-Iran operations. These reports confirm that the war is being conducted by a network of state actors, proxies and covert actions across the Gulf, all managed by the US government.
Hurst’s testimony exposed Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s effort to cover up the escalating cost of the war in testimony before both House and Senate appropriations committees by refusing to answer any questions about the total cost of the ten-week war. Hegseth’s appearance before Congress came amid a White House request for a 2027 military budget of roughly $1.5 trillion.
The Iranian Ministry of Health has reported 3,468 people killed in Iran, including more than 1,700 civilians, and over 26,500 injured. US casualties include roughly 200 wounded service members and 13 dead.
In a Truth Social post on Tuesday, Trump denounced media criticism of the war writing, “When the Fake News says that the Iranian enemy is doing well, Militarily, against us, it’s virtual TREASON in that it is such a false, and even preposterous, statement.” The administration’s attacks on public criticism are being paired with Pentagon restrictions that limit press access including credentials being revoked on “security” grounds.
Department of War policies have also targeted Pentagon reporters and, in the case of military publications, imposed tighter control over content and access. The aim is to silence criticism while expanding censorship and threats of legal action under wartime conditions.
Trump’s insistence that the US does not need any help from China clashes sharply with the fact that top US officials have been publicly urging Beijing to use its influence on Iran to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Secretary Bessent called on China to “step up” diplomatically, making clear that Washington is seeking Chinese assistance even while pretending otherwise.
In Lebanon, Israeli strikes continued, resulting in the killing of two paramedics in southern Lebanon on Sunday in strikes on health committee sites. The killing of medical workers—a strategic aim by the Zionist regime throughout the Gaza genocide—exposes the criminal character of the Lebanon campaign.
US President Donald Trump, flanked by US Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, speaks with workers painting the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, DC, on May 7, 2026.
(Photo by Kent Nishimura/AFP via Getty Images)
“It again raises urgent questions: Is this president fit to lead and make consequential decisions that impact countless lives?” said the National Iranian-American Council.
As he struggles to force Iran’s capitulation, US President Donald Trump issued what seemed to be yet another threat to commit an act of mass destruction against the country through nuclear warfare.
When negotiations have faltered in recent weeks, Trump has on multiple occasions defaulted to genocidal threats—including that the “whole civilization” of Iran would “die,” and that the whole country would be “blown up“—which have only seemed to anger and galvanize his Iranian adversaries rather than make them quake with fear.
While the Trump administration has continued to insist that the ceasefire with Iran was still in effect, the two countries have exchanged significant fire this week.
On Thursday, the US launched what it said were “self-defense” strikes on military facilities it claimed were responsible for attempting to attack three US Navy ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran called the attacks a violation of the ceasefire and said its attacks on US ships were in response to American bombings of Iranian oil tankers the previous day.
Trump told reporters on Thursday that if the ceasefire were truly over, everyone would know. “If there’s no ceasefire, you’re just going to have to look at one big glow coming out of Iran,” he said. “They’d better sign the agreement fast… If they don’t sign, they’re going to have a lot of pain.”
To many observers, this sounded like a threat from Trump to carry out a nuclear holocaust, though it could also be a redux of Trump’s threats to attack civilian energy infrastructure, which would still be a war crime.
Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, the editor-in-chief of Responsible Statecraft, noted that if it were indeed a nuclear threat, it would be “ironic since the war today supposedly is to prevent Iran from getting… a nuclear weapon.”
The National Iranian-American Council (NIAC) said that “threatening to make Iran glow—with nuclear weapons or otherwise—is an almost unthinkable threat to commit a mass war crime against 92 million people. It must never be normalized.”
“It again raises urgent questions: Is this president fit to lead and make consequential decisions that impact countless lives?” the group said. “Would the chain of command refuse unlawful orders to make Iran ‘glow,’ killing millions of people?”
Trump’s pledge to wipe out Iranian civilization last month drew widespread condemnation and led dozens of Democratic members of Congress to call for his Cabinet to remove him from office using the powers of the 25th Amendment.
“Our leaders need to interrogate these questions seriously, and not write them off as the ramblings of a madman,” NIAC said. “Trump is the president, and may seek to act on these horrible, contemptible threats. This war needs to end, and so [does] Trump’s horrific threatening of war crimes.”
It has now emerged that Trump’s decision to pause the operation was driven by complaints by Saudi Arabia, two US officials told NBC News.
Saudi Arabia’s leaders had been angered by the announcement and the government told the US it would not allow American military forces to fly aircraft through Prince Sultan Airbase, located southeast of its capital, Riyadh.
Officials said the Kingdom denied access for any US aircraft to fly through Saudi airspace as part of Project Freedom.
A call is reported to have taken place between Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, but the pair were unable to reach a resolution – forcing the US president to axe the operation.
Trump has ruffled feathers across the Gulf with seemingly unilateral decisions (Reuters)
The leaders “have been in touch regularly” and officials are also in touch with vice president JD Vance, secretary of state Marco Rubio, a Saudi source told NBC News.
“The problem with that premise is that things are happening quickly in real time,” the source said about the announcement, adding that the country was “very supportive of the diplomatic efforts” by Pakistan to guide the countries towards an agreement.
A White House official told NBC News that “regional allies were notified in advance.”
The Independent has contacted the White House for comment.
A diplomat in the region said that the operation was not coordinated with Oman either. “The US made an announcement and then coordinated with us,” they said, adding, “We were not upset or angry.”
Trump’s project is said to have angered the Saudi leadership (Getty)
“Because of geography, you need cooperation from regional partners to utilise their airspace along their borders,” one US official explained about the success of the scheme.
The Strait of Hormuz is a vital shipping route for global supplies of oil, fertiliser and other commodities that has been virtually closed since the US and Israel attacked Iran on 28 February, causing global price rises.
(L/R) US Secretary of State Marco Rubio looks on as US President Donald Trump speaks to the press following US military actions in Venezuela, at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida, on January 3, 2026.
(Photo by Jim Watson/ AFP via Getty Images)
The president is using the power of the US military to steal the wealth of Latin American countries to enrich himself, his family, his closest business associates, and US corporations.
Some lawmakers have grown so alarmed by the Trump administration’s actions in Latin America that they are beginning to accuse the administration of gangsterism.
Representative Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) saw the possibility of gangsterism at the start of the second Trump administration when he warned that the United States could “join the ranks of gangster nations,” but there is a growing sense in Congress that the day has arrived.
At a congressional hearing last month, Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) asserted that the Trump administration is exploiting the US military to take Latin American resources for US corporations. Castro seemingly channeled the anti-war critiques of Smedley Butler, the US military hero of the early 20th century, who condemned war as a racket and lamented his exploitation as a racketeer for capitalism.
“For decades, our men and women in uniform who volunteered to protect our country became mercenaries ordered to risk their lives to protect the profits of US corporations,” Castro said. “Today, President Trump is ordering them to do so again.”
The Case of Venezuela
The Trump administration’s critics in Congress have been warning about the administration’s gangsterism due to its actions in Venezuela.
Since the Trump administration directed a military operation earlier this year to seize Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and take control of the country’s oil and minerals, several lawmakers have suggested that the administration has begun to employ force and intimidation as its basic tools of statecraft.
Lawmakers have condemned the administration for conducting a military operation without congressional approval, meddling in Venezuela’s internal politics, displaying contempt for Venezuela’s political process, facilitating corruption in Venezuela and the United States, and using the US military to take control of Venezuela’s resources.
Now that the Trump administration has moved against Venezuela, establishing new leadership and doling out profits from its resources, lawmakers anticipate that it will move against Cuba next.
“You are taking their oil at gunpoint,” Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier this year.
Although Congress has not held the president accountable, as the Republican majority in each chamber supports the president, critics have kept pressure on the White House, prompting officials to defend the administration’s actions.
At the congressional hearing last month, State Department official Michael Kozak claimed that the intervention in Venezuela advanced US interests. He cited the Monroe Doctrine, which marks Latin America as a sphere of influence. Like the president, he boasted that the United States now controls the country’s resources.
“We’ve got very significant control over the oil revenues at this point,” Kozak said.
Several Democratic lawmakers responded with strong criticisms. They condemned the Trump administration for acting so aggressively in the hemisphere, and they warned that its actions would create a backlash against the United States.
Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Calif.) described the administration’s approach as “shameful.” She insisted that the United States should not be “reviving a policy of domination and subjugation in the Western Hemisphere through the Monroe Doctrine.”
Castro repeated his warning that the Trump administration is focused on commerce and profits. He suggested that the president is using the US military to enrich people close to him.
“What has happened now is that there’s a group of folks that the president favors in his circle that is able to commence commerce and make money off of, whether it’s valuable minerals, oil, anything else in Venezuela,” Castro said.
Kozak expressed disagreement with Castro’s analysis, but he acknowledged that the Trump administration has established significant controls over Venezuela. Once again, he boasted that the Trump administration controls the country’s resources.
“People can lift oil and sell it on the open market, but all that money goes into an account that we have control over,” Kozak said. “All the revenues that are coming from the mining sector and everything, instead of going into their bank accounts, are coming into the Treasury accounts, and then we can dole it out as we see fit.”
The Case of Cuba
Now that the Trump administration has moved against Venezuela, establishing new leadership and doling out profits from its resources, lawmakers anticipate that it will move against Cuba next.
For months, President Donald Trump has been openly threatening Cuba. He has moved to block oil shipments to the country, causing an economic crisis. Knowing that he has put tremendous pressure on the Cuban government, he has demanded that the country’s president leave office.
“I do believe I’ll be having the honor of taking Cuba,” Trump said in March. “I think I could do anything I want with it, if you want to know the truth.”
Critics are giving serious consideration to the idea that Trump’s wars are a racket and that Cuba may be next.
Although the Trump administration’s military intervention in Iran has shifted its focus away from Cuba, the administration is maintaining an economic stranglehold over the island nation, making its recovery impossible. The US military continues blocking the free flow of oil to Cuba, even while Trump demands the free flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz. The few oil shipments that have reached Cuba, for instance a recent tanker from Russia, have provided little relief.
At the congressional hearing last month, several lawmakers argued that the Trump administration is a major reason why Cuba is facing such tremendous hardship, including island-wide blackouts and preventable deaths at hospitals and health clinics.
“We cannot ignore our own country’s role in the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in Cuba,” Castro said.
Rep. Jonathan Jackson (D-Ill.), who recently visited the country, made the strongest criticisms. Warning that the administration’s policies are causing tremendous harm to the Cuban people, he indicated that the Trump administration is violating international humanitarian law.
“We have engaged in collective punishment,” Jackson said.
The congressman also accused the Trump administration of trying to make life so miserable for the Cuban people that they would rise up and overthrow the Cuban government. He described it as a failed “policy of starving” Cuba.
“It was one of the most cruel things I had ever seen in my life,” he said.
Just as the Trump administration has been able to get away with its actions in Venezuela, however, it has been able to continue its policies toward Cuba. The administration maintains support among Republicans and some Democrats, few of whom oppose the administration’s goal of regime change.
The president, who knows that he faces little opposition in Congress, continues threatening to direct a military intervention in Cuba, even citing the operation in Venezuela as a precedent.
“In January, our warriors flew straight into the heart of the Venezuelan capital, captured the outlawed dictator Nicolás Maduro, and brought him to face American justice,” Trump said last month. “And very soon this great strength will also bring about a day 70 years in waiting. It’s called, ‘A New Dawn for Cuba.’”
War Is a Racket
When Smedley Butler spoke against his exploitation as a racketeer for capitalism nearly a century ago, he made a criticism of the American way of war that was considered to be so radical by US leaders that it has been largely excluded from mainstream political discourse.
Only a few politicians, such as former Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) and Ron Paul (R-Texas), have cited Butler and his warnings. Rarely, if ever, does the mass media report on war as a racket in which the country’s leaders are exploiting US military forces as gangsters for capitalism.
Today, however, some elected leaders are beginning to issue the same kinds of warnings about the Trump administration. Alarmed by the president’s insatiable lust for wealth and power, they are starting to suggest that the president is engaging in a kind of gangsterism across Latin America. The president, they say, is using the power of the US military to steal the wealth of Latin American countries to enrich himself, his family, his closest business associates, and US corporations.
“By any measure, this is the most corrupt administration in American history,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said earlier this year.
Now that the Trump administration is openly pillaging Venezuela and getting away with it, several lawmakers are warning that it may apply the same approach to other Latin American countries.
“It’s making me think that the goal in Cuba is going to be the same,” Castro said at the hearing in April. “It’s who’s going to go over there that’s friends with the president to make money and who’s going to profit off of Cuba and the Cuban people.”
Indeed, there is a growing sense in Congress that the Trump administration is turning to gangsterism. Moving beyond standard establishment critiques of the president’s contempt for norms and traditions, critics are giving serious consideration to the idea that Trump’s wars are a racket and that Cuba may be next.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth appears before a House Committee on Armed Services business meeting on the Department of Defense Fiscal Year 2027, on Capitol Hill, Wednesday, April 29, 2026, in Washington. [AP Photo/Rod Lamkey Jr.]
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth testified before the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday on the Trump administration’s plan to increase military spending by 50 percent, from $1 trillion this year to $1.5 trillion in Fiscal Year 2027.
Hegseth, who has rebranded the Pentagon as “the Department of War,” told the committee the budget would put the defense industrial base “back on a wartime footing.”
The request is the sharpest single-year jump in US military spending in the postwar era. It would lift outlays to 4.5 percent of gross domestic product, with House Republican leaders calling for 5 percent as the eventual target.
The buildup is preparation for war with nuclear-armed China and Russia, the two states Trump’s National Defense Strategy names as principal adversaries.
In the face of a broadly unpopular administration openly stating its intent to commit war crimes in pursuit of global domination, the Democrats on the committee made it their highest priority to emphasize—despite tactical disagreements—their solidarity with the Trump administration’s megalomaniacal program of world conquest.
Democratic ranking member Adam Smith of Washington opened by expressing his sympathy with the Iran war and with the 50 percent surge in military spending. “I think we should all recognize that our troops deserve nothing but our praise for the incredible job that they have done,” Smith told Hegseth. “We have demonstrated to the world that we have a highly capable military, and I hear the chairman on the need for an increased” budget.
Smith then condemned the mass popular opposition to the war. “I strongly disagree with the folks on the far left who say that we don’t really face any threats, that the US is a malign influence in the world and always has been. I don’t agree with that,” Smith said. “China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis,” he continued, “They want to push us aside.”
Republican Don Bacon of Nebraska summed up the bipartisan consensus for global war. “We are the most bipartisan committee out of 20 in Congress. We have a tradition of voting on NDAAs with large, large majorities year after year,” Bacon said. “And it’s important not to be a Republican first in here or a Democrat first. We’re Americans trying to ensure that our country is well defended. And in that spirit, I compliment the operations in Iran.”
Bacon is correct about the bipartisanship of the war drive. The Democrats funded the buildup before the Iran war began and refused to halt it once it was under way. The House passed the FY26 National Defense Authorization Act on December 10, 2025, by 312 to 112, with the entire Democratic House leadership voting yes; the Senate followed 77 to 20. On January 22, 2026, the House cleared an $839 billion defense appropriations bill 341 to 88. On February 2, 21 House Democrats supplied the margin for a continuing resolution to keep the government funded; the same day, a US F-35 from the USS Abraham Lincoln shot down an Iranian drone over the Arabian Sea. Twenty-six days later, the US-Israeli assault on Iran began. Once it had, both chambers voted down War Powers Act resolutions to stop it.
The plan’s largest line item, $71 billion, would massively expand the US nuclear arsenal—new ballistic-missile submarines, long-range bombers and intercontinental missiles aimed at China and Russia. Shipbuilding receives $65 billion. Bombs and conventional missiles get $25 billion. The “Golden Dome” missile-defense program is funded at $22 billion. The Space Force budget doubles. Procurement rises 76 percent and research and development 64 percent. Another $54.6 billion is earmarked for a Defense Autonomous Warfare Group to wage drone war, most of it contingent on a future reconciliation bill.
Hegseth said the budget would put 14 munitions production lines on a sustained wartime tempo—Patriot, PAC-3, THAAD, Tomahawk, AMRAAM and JASSM missiles among them—with companies offered multi-year demand signals to expand their factories. The active-duty force grows by 44,000 troops. The Pentagon claims to have triggered more than $50 billion in private investment, 280 new factories and 18 million square feet of American manufacturing floorspace. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine called the budget “a historic down payment on future security.”
Republican Mike Rogers of Alabama, chair of the House committee, framed the request around preparation for war with China. “China builds 47% of the world’s ships. The US builds one-tenth of 1%. We build fewer ships than Croatia or the Netherlands,” Rogers said. The Chinese military, he added, has become “a modernized military force capable of projecting power well into the Pacific.”
Caine said the Pentagon was reviewing “all three legs of the nuclear triad”—submarines, missiles and bombers—to make sure they were “reliable, redundant, and workable” for, in his words, “our nation’s most important day.” Hegseth warned the committee that “the country that dominates in quantum will dominate the future in C2, in comms, in every way that we fight.” Bacon called for a nuclear buildup expressly aimed at Beijing: “Russia, China needs to know no matter what they do, we can launch those 400 ICBMs.”
The defense secretary spoke the vocabulary of a crime boss. He said the spending would build a military that “instills nothing less than unrelenting fear in our adversaries.” He cited the year’s operations as proof. “That matters when you go 37 hours around the world for Midnight Hammer,” he said, referring to the June 2025 B-2 bombing of Iranian nuclear sites. “That matters when you go downtown in Venezuela and grab the indicted dictator of a country in the middle of the night.” Russian air defenses sent to protect Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro before his January 3 abduction, Hegseth said, “were defeated in 15 minutes.”
Democratic Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts questioned Hegseth over his March 13 press conference order to give boats in the Caribbean “no quarter, no mercy.” Moulton, a former Marine Corps officer with four combat tours in Iraq from 2003 to 2008, said, “An order for no quarter or no survivors is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.” Hegseth did not retract the order. “The Department of War fights to win,” he replied.
Wednesday’s hearing made clear that the war on Iran is one phase of a global war the American ruling class is preparing for control of the world.
As the war with Iran drags on, now suspended in a ceasefire as the combatants attempt to organize negotiations, the Nobel laureate economist Joseph E. Stiglitz has a harsh assessment of the results so far. According to Stiglitz, President Donald Trump’s decision to wage war against Iran was a ‘calamitous’ mistake, the consequences of which have been war crimes, death, and the destruction of the global economy.
“No decision is more important than waging war against another country. Yet the United States has done exactly that without even a nod to its own system of checks and balances and reasoned deliberation,” writes Stiglitz. “The disastrous result is now clear: America is once again embroiled in a Middle East war that has already cost thousands of lives — mostly civilians — and in which it has almost certainly committed multiple war crimes.”
What’s more, Stiglitz asserts that the longer the war lasts, “the greater the damage will be. But even if the war ends quickly, the effects will linger. After all, critical supply chains have already been disrupted, and oil and gas production facilities destroyed. Most estimates suggest that repairs will take years.”
The economic damage comes on the heels of Trump’s tariffs, which, along with the war, have contributed to rising inflation. With the world “already facing an affordability crisis that US policies have made worse, the risk now is that central bankers everywhere will either raise interest rates or at least slow the pace at which they were lowering them.” As a result, what economic gains were made as the world recovered from COVID have been lost.
This is going to exacerbate the affordability crisis, which will in turn worsen the housing and credit situation. At the same time, “Trump’s regressive tax cuts for billionaires and corporations now in force, the US has less fiscal space to buffer the disruptions he has caused.” What’s more, “Trump’s claim that the US will benefit as a net oil exporter is nonsense. Yes, Exxon will benefit, but US consumers pay prices that are set globally — and that have risen substantially.” So Americans will pay at the pump while big oil sees soaring profits. Stiglitz says there is little cause for optimism, concluding, “Yet another nail has been added to the coffin of the peaceful, borderless world that our forebearers sought to build after World War II. Under Trump, the country that laid the foundations of that world is now dismantling it… And with democracy in the US in such a weakened state, the human errors and their consequences are piling up fast.”
President Trump on Thursday shared a post calling for the killing of Iranian leaders who won’t accept US demands, ramping up his threats against the country amid a very fragile ceasefire.
The post Trump amplified was written by Marc Thiessen, who served as a speechwriter for the George W. Bush administration. “If there are two factions in Iran, one that wants a deal and one that doesn’t, let’s kill the ones who don’t want a deal,” Thiessen said in a post on X where he was quoting himself from an appearance on Fox News.
In the piece, Thiessen argued that Trump should restart the bombing campaign against Iran. “Right now, the remnants of the Iranian regime are under the misimpression that Trump wants a deal more than they do,” he wrote.
“Trump needs to disabuse them of that notion. He has reportedly told Iran that it has three to five days to make a serious counteroffer. If it fails to do so, he should resume combat operations — starting with strikes targeting Iran’s recalcitrant leaders. If the Iranian regime is really ‘fractured’ between a faction that wants a deal and a faction that does not, there is a simple solution: Kill the faction that does not,” Thiessen said.
Thiessen said the US should maintain the blockade and claimed the US military could open the Strait of Hormuz by force and that it just needed 14 more days to “finish the job” against Iran.
The Trump administration has pushed the narrative that Iran’s military has essentially been obliterated, but Iran was able to continue missile and drone attacks throughout the entire war, and according to US officials speaking to The New York Times, US intelligence assesses that Tehran likely has access to the majority of its missiles and launchers.
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