By Todd Lassa

UPDATE – After President Trump Truth Socialed Saturday that negotiations to end the war in Iran are “proceeding in an orderly and constructive manner” and told his negotiators “not to rush a deal,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio reported “significant” though “not final” progress had been made. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Turkey, Jordan, Bahrain and Pakistan are leading negotiations with Iran that reportedly do not address Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, the key reason Trump says the US and Israel initiated the war on Iran in late February.

Is this yet another Trump red herring? Rubio on Monday echoed the president’s bellicose threats from over the past 12 weeks to try and force Iran to reach an agreement, saying the US will either have a good agreement or deal with Iran “another way.” 

Also on Monday, Esmail Baqai, spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, said a deal “is not imminent.” (From reports by the BBC, NPR’s Morning Edition and The Independent.)

And so, the Strait of Hormuz remains blockaded. Meanwhile … Americans are paying an average of $4.507 for a gallon of unleaded regular to return from Memorial Day vacations Monday, AAA reports, 5.7-cents cheaper than last Thursday but $1.526 more than on February 28.

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President Trump famously, or infamously, has never expressed a coherent foreign policy, though his introduction of the “Donroe Doctrine” with the US Military attack on Venezuela and capture of its authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro, just after New Years 2026 has boosted his State Department’s belief in itself and hints at what could lead to a more coherent strategy. 

Trump is of the age to have vivid memories of news broadcasts following Cuba’s Marxist revolution of 1959, the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis of the Kennedy administration, the Mariel Boat Lift of the late Clinton administration and the custody fight over six-year-old Elián Gonzalez after he was rescued on a sinking boat between Havana and Miami (he was eventually returned to Cuba) in the second Clinton administration.

Certainly, Trump closely followed Iran’s 1979 revolution, the hostage crisis at the end of the Carter administration and chants of “Death to America” coming from leaders of the Islamic Republic in subsequent decades.

We’d bet Trump had little or no knowledge of Cuba’s dictatorship under Fulgencia Batista, from 1952 up to Fidel Castro’s revolution.

We suspect Trump does not think much about the Shah of Iran’s CIA- and MI6-assisted coup ď état of democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953 (when the president was seven years old).

But the Trump administration seems to be connecting the two nations. As the war on Iran drives up oil prices, pushing the US Labor Department’s Consumer Price Index to 3.8% and putting pressure on the global economy, Trump’s State Department, led by Cuban-American Marco Rubio – who has more expertise by far than anybody else in the president’s cabinet – is using the early January attack on Venezuela and capture of Nicolás Maduro as a template for its actions in Cuba and potential capture of its former president Raúl Castro, brother of the late Fidel.

Chances of something that looks like regime change on the island are probably better than in Iran, where our initial attacks killed off palatable alternatives to the late Ayatollah Khamenei, or in Venezuela, where Trump is copacetic with the leadership of Maduro’s subordinates. Shutting off oil shipments to Cuba from Venezuela and anywhere else makes potential regime change in Cuba much easier, satisfying generations of Cuban-Americans in South Florida while opening up the possibility of Trump Organization-style beachfront projects in Havana. 

The upshot is this could happen as the US is in the middle of yet another ceasefire with Iran.

If and when Trump can finally end the war (which he has said many times has already ended, and we’ve won) with any agreement that neutralizes Iran’s nuclear enrichment program beyond what the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action achieved during the Obama administration, a Venezuela-like victory in Cuba would top the headlines, especially on Fox News and its cohorts to its right. 

This could be the sort of Trump administration “win” that would do more for the GOP in the midterms than the mid-decade gerrymanders in Republican-led states.

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CORRECTION: A report in Thursday's center column, "Castro, Meet Maduro?" misstated former Cuban President Raúl Castro's age. He is 94.

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FRIDAY 5/22/26