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us sanctions
The Last Thing Iraq Needs: US Sanctions Threaten a Nation Trying to Heal
As I leave Baghdad, I carry a sense of Iraq’s resilience, the palpable scars of war, the warmth of its people, the hope for a better future, and the ongoing story of a nation rebuilding itself.
Dec 14, 2025
I arrived at the Taj Hotel in Baghdad's Jadriyah neighborhood at 6:00 am, worn thin by the long flight from Los Angeles. After sleeping until mid-afternoon, I stepped out into the 90°F heat on a simple mission: find falafel, fries, and a place to exchange money. A local bus picked me up and dropped me right across from a falafel shop—a small act of hospitality. Full and settled, I walked beside the Tigris River, watching construction cranes against the sky. Life was visibly moving forward. Yet the mental newsreel kept playing: bombs falling on these same banks 20 years earlier. I was a tourist now in a country I had once protested my own nation for invading. Needing to escape both the heat and the weight of those memories, I returned to the hotel for Nutella cake and Iraqi tea, yet deeply conscious of the complex layers beneath the surface.
The next day settled heavily. We started at Tahrir Monument and the roundabout where Saddam’s statue once stood—toppled in 2003 by US Marines in an image seen around the world. Today, no plaque marks the spot. Only election banners fluttered in the wind. From there, we traveled to the Arch of Ctesiphon, a soaring Persian vault from 540 AD. Nearby lay the relics of a different era: a derelict tourist complex and a museum designed by North Koreans, its walls scarred with bullet marks. Al-Mada’in, our guide remarked, had been a final stronghold against the invasion. It’s one thing to read about war and occupation, another to stand where it happened and touch the pockmarked concrete.
Just yards away, young boys kicked a soccer ball in the dust, a powerful scene of life insisting on moving forward. That contrast stayed with me: The tourist complex, once a thriving vacation spot with a luxurious pool, is now a place to store garbage. Aside from the enduring arch, the entire area lies in ruins, destroyed in the war and never rebuilt. Who knows if it ever will be. For some parts of Iraq, rebuilding only began around 2017, over a decade after the invasion. With elections approaching, I wondered about Iraq’s future—and what accountability looks like when destruction runs so deep.
A slower day followed, wandering through Old Baghdad: its bazaar, colonial facades, antique shops, Christian churches, and tea houses thick with the smoke of cigarettes. But I felt an unease seeing Saddam-era memorabilia, like old currency, sold as casual souvenirs. My time in Iraqi Kurdistan, at Amna Suraka and Halabja Memorial, had shown me the human cost of his brutal regime. Later, we passed the haunting cement skeleton of one of Saddam’s grand mosques, frozen mid-construction by the 2003 war. It stood empty, monumental yet abandoned, like a set from Dune—a stark metaphor for interrupted futures.
Now, as the world’s attention drifts to other conflicts, the weight of history here feels so obvious.
We traveled to Babylon. Before entering, we paused before one of the last remaining monuments to Saddam. His image is now outlawed; we gazed at the bullet marks and graffiti scoring the stone. Nearby, his palace loomed over the Euphrates—a hollow shell gazing across timeless dust. After roaming Babylon’s ruins, we crossed a low fence onto the palace grounds. Entering the space once occupied by a brutal dictator again filled me with unease. While others explored the looted, spray-painted halls, I was struck by the collision of histories here: ancient civilization, the US invasion, and the regime’s own atrocities against the Kurds.
From there, we journeyed to Karbala and the breathtaking Al-Abbas Holy Shrine. I wore an abaya to enter, humbled by the devotion, chanting, and crying that resonated in the air. The contrast stayed with me: between ransacked palaces of fallen power, land ravaged by war, and this enduring faith. We paused briefly at one of the world’s largest cemeteries in Najaf before visiting the Holy Shrine of Imam Ali. The long drive south to Nasiriyah that followed gave me space to hold all these layers: history, belief, silence, and dust.
A highlight came in the Mesopotamian Marshes. Gliding by water buffalo through vast wetlands, said to be the Garden of Eden, I felt a deep connection to this ancient ecosystem and the Indigenous communities who sustain it. The use of reeds to build entire homes felt like a quiet miracle. Later, we visited the Great Ziggurat of Ur—a stairway to a Sumerian sky. We moved through biblical landscapes that day, though in the distance stood an old American military base, now repurposed by the Iraqis. Someone showed me photos of US soldiers standing on those same Ziggurat steps.
As I leave Baghdad, I carry a sense of Iraq’s resilience, the palpable scars of war, the warmth of its people, the hope for a better future, and the ongoing story of a nation rebuilding itself. Now, as the world’s attention drifts to other conflicts, the weight of history here feels so obvious. The US footprint left in Iraq is deep—and as it threatens Iraq with sanctions, it is the last thing this country needs as it tries to move forward and heal.
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'Pure Evil': Rubio Ripped for Sanctions Against Cuba's Medical Missions
"The U.S. State Department should explain to Americans and the international community how the attack on Cuban medical services, on which the health of millions of people in dozens of countries depends, enhances their country," said Cuba's president.
Feb 26, 2025
The Trump administration is under fire this week for expanding a visa restriction policy that targets Cuba's medical missions around the world—which U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio described as "forced labor," a characterization Cuban officials reject.
"This expanded policy applies to current or former Cuban government officials, and other individuals, including foreign government officials, who are believed to be responsible for, or involved in, the Cuban labor export program, particularly Cuba's overseas medical missions," Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, said Tuesday. "This policy also applies to the immediate family of such persons."
Social media users called the Trump administration's move " depraved," "beyond cruel," and "absolutely repulsive," and warned of the impact it could have on patients across the globe.
Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the U.S.-based peace group CodePink, said that "this is PURE EVIL. Punishing people who help provide healthcare to poor people around the world."
As Reuters reported Wednesday:
Since its 1959 leftist revolution, Cuba has dispatched an "army of white coats" to disaster sites and disease outbreaks around the world in the name of solidarity. In the last decade, they have fought cholera in Haiti and Ebola in West Africa.
But Cuba has also exported doctors on more routine missions in exchange for cash or goods in recent decades, an increasingly critical source of hard currency in a nation suffering a deep economic crisis.
Venezueanalysis noted Wednesday that "according to official figures, Cuban doctors in Venezuela numbered as many as 30,000, with approximately 255,000 serving in the country since the start of the program following a deal signed by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Cuban President Fidel Castro in the year 2000, primarily working in low-income barrios. Havana's support was key during the Covid-19 pandemic, supplying vaccines that Caracas found hard to secure due to wide-reaching U.S. sanctions."
Cuba has been targeted by U.S. sanctions for decades—and although former President Joe Biden notified Congress of his intent to remove the island nation from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list shortly before leaving office last month, President Donald Trump swiftly reversed that decision and restored a list of "restricted entities" created during the Republican's first term.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez denounced those decisions and the visa policy.
Rodriguez took aim at the U.S. secretary of state on Tuesday, saying in English and Spanish social media posts that "once again, Marco Rubio puts his personal agenda before the U.S. interests. The suspension of visas associated to Cuba's international medical cooperation is the seventh unjustified aggressive measure against our population within a month."
"The decision announced today, based on falsehoods and coercion, is intended to affect health services of millions in Cuba and the world, to benefit special groups of interest for which Rubio... guarantees the squandering of the U.S. taxpayers' money," he said.
Díaz-Canel said that "the U.S. State Department should explain to Americans and the international community how the attack on Cuban medical services, on which the health of millions of people in dozens of countries depends, enhances their country."
The new sanctions against Cuba notably come as Republicans in the U.S. Congress work to gut healthcare programs that serve low-income Americans, who have to contend with a for-profit healthcare system dominated by corporate greed.
Every person living in Cuba has access to its universal healthcare system, which is free at the point of service and government-run.
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On the Need for Transparency in Venezuela
Following a disputed election, the government of President Nicolás Maduro has yet to publicly release the full tally sheets of the results. Meanwhile, U.S. officials are keeping quiet about their links to the opposition.
Aug 06, 2024
Since the disputed July 28 presidential election in Venezuela, U.S. officials have been calling for transparency from the Venezuelan government while keeping quiet about their efforts at regime change.
Claiming that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has stolen the election, U.S. officials have been working to bring to power the Venezuelan opposition. With nothing to say about their decadeslong relationship with opposition leader María Corina Machado, who has previously benefited from U.S. funding, U.S. officials have been portraying the opposition as a popular movement that won the election, all without external support or interference.
“The Venezuelan people deserve an election that genuinely reflects their will, free from any manipulation,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on the day of the election.
If U.S. officials are serious about wanting to see an election free from any manipulation, then they must be transparent about the U.S. role in the country. While it remains important for the Venezuelan government to release detailed voting results, just as several leftist leaders in Latin America have requested, it also remains critical for the United States to release detailed records about its relationship with the opposition, something it has spent years trying to keep hidden.
U.S. Manipulation
For decades, the United States has been the primary source of manipulation in Venezuela. With the goal of achieving regime change, the United States has been supporting an opposition movement that has been trying to mobilize the Venezuelan people against the Venezuelan government.
During the early 2000s, U.S. officials worked closely with Machado, the current opposition leader, who has long faced allegations of trying to overthrow the Venezuelan government. With funding from the U.S. government and support from U.S. diplomats, she and her organization Súmate led an effort in 2004 to oust then-Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in a recall referendum. When it failed, Machado repeatedly cast doubt on the results, even though data collected by her organization indicated that Chávez had won, just as election monitors found.
At the time, former President Jimmy Carter charged members of Súmate with deliberately distributing misleading data for the purpose of manipulating the election. “There’s no doubt some of their leaders deliberately distributed this erroneous exit poll data,” Carter said, as reported by The New York Times.
Since then, U.S. leaders have overseen many additional efforts at regime change, targeting both Chávez and Maduro, all of which have failed. In 2019, the Trump administration made one of the most audacious moves, rallying behind opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who led a failed uprising and later fled the country.
At the same time that they are demanding that the Venezuelan government be transparent about the results, [U.S. officials] are keeping quiet about their own efforts to empower the opposition and achieve regime change.
“Our conundrum, which is to keep the opposition united, has proven devilishly difficult,” then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lamented, as reported by The Washington Post.
In the July 28 election, the Venezuelan people voted in the context of widespread social and economic collapse, which has been facilitated by the United States. During the Trump administration, U.S. officials imposed severe sanctions on Venezuela, trying to make life so miserable for the Venezuelan people that they would turn against the Venezuelan government.
As former officials in the Trump administration recently acknowledged, they expected their approach to cause the Venezuelan economy to collapse and many people to flee the country. Not only did their actions push Venezuela into the one of worst economic collapses in modern history, but they made life so difficult that more than 7 million Venezuelans fled the country in one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.
Many Venezuelan migrants have sought entry to the United States, driving the large increase in border crossings, all of which had been anticipated.
The Venezuelan people who have remained in their homeland are still suffering from the effects of U.S. sanctions. Even with the recent election, they have faced few good options, having been forced to deal with a hostile United States.
One of their options has been to support Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the current target of the United States. A vote for Maduro could lead the United States to preserve its sanctions, all but guaranteeing more years of suffering.
Another one of their options has been to side with the U.S.-backed opposition. A vote for the opposition could lead to relief from U.S. sanctions, but it risks bringing to power a right-wing regime that will prioritize U.S. interests and perhaps even transfer the country’s oil wealth to U.S. corporations. Machado, for example, has insisted that she will privatize PDVSA, the state oil company.
Although the Venezuelan government barred Machado from running for office, she remains the main opposition leader, being the driving force behind little-known opposition candidate Edmundo González, who has been serving as her proxy.
U.S. officials have said that public opinion polls display widespread support for González, but critics have questioned their reliability. Analysts at the Center for Economic Policy and Research have reported that support for González has been overestimated, largely due to polling bias.
U.S. Secrecy
Through it all, U.S. officials have been highly secretive about their actions, even while calling for transparency. They have not disclosed which opposition groups they are funding, a longstanding practice.
Neither have they been open about their links to Machado, perhaps due to a critical change in their approach that they began to consider after the 2004 referendum. Once the Venezuelan government began publicizing Machado’s connections to the United States, even charging her and her colleagues with treason, U.S. officials began to consider how they could empower her without appearing as if they were her puppet-master.
During a private meeting on January 10, 2005, then-U.S. Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT) floated one possibility, advising Machado and her colleagues “to seek international financing from non-U.S. sources” so that the Venezuelan government “cannot credibly label Súmate as a USG-backed organization.”
Machado rejected the advice, however, insisting that Súmate should be able to openly receive funding from the United States, including from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). “Foreign financing for NGOs is legal, despite the GOV’s contention to the contrary,” she claimed. “Súmate will continue to apply for NED and other grants.”
Initially, the U.S. government supported her approach. In 2005, then-President George W. Bush welcomed Machado to the White House, where he openly supported her. Not long after the meeting, Machado announced that the United States would provide Súmate with additional funding.
Concerned about how the Venezuelan government might respond, U.S. diplomats in Venezuela, who were closely coordinating with Súmate, called for some adjustments. Their main advice was to continue supporting Súmate while making it appear as if there was some distance between Súmate and the United States.
“A continuing, too evident, public identification with the U.S. could now be counterproductive,” the diplomats warned. “At the same time, however, we need to ensure that Súmate has the resources it needs to exploit this new vantage point it enjoys.”
Not only have U.S. officials remained silent about these past moves, but they have been employing many of the same tactics. Taking the approach favored by U.S. diplomats, officials in Washington have been trying to appear distant from the opposition while remaining supportive.
During the most recent election, the Biden administration prepared for multiple scenarios, including ways of supporting the opposition in the case that Maduro was declared the winner. With its public diplomacy, it has framed the vote as a struggle by an admirable and heroic opposition against a corrupt and fraudulent government, just as past administrations have done.
In perhaps its most striking move, Biden administration declared that the opposition won the election, even without having access to the data that administration officials repeatedly said is necessary for confirming the results. After spending days demanding that the Venezuelan government release detailed polling data, the administration went ahead and announced the opposition’s victory anyway.
“Venezuelan opposition and civil society provided decisive evidence showing that Edmundo González received a majority of the votes in this election,” State Department Spokesperson Vedant Patel claimed.
Indeed, U.S. officials are once again throwing their support behind the opposition. At the same time that they are demanding that the Venezuelan government be transparent about the results, they are keeping quiet about their own efforts to empower the opposition and achieve regime change.
Until the United States lifts its sanctions and ends its meddling, the people of Venezuela will never participate in elections that are free from manipulation, just as Secretary of State Antony Blinken insisted they deserve.
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