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venezuela
The Iranians Probably Wish They Had Developed Nuclear Weapons!
The lesson that Iranian government and the world has learned is that NOT developing a nuclear weapon will lead to the US and Israel assassinating the leadership of your country and bombing the hell out of the rest of the country.
Mar 14, 2026
Including the minute when the US and Israel fired missiles and dropped bombs on the home of Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his wife and other members of his family killing over 40 members of the leadership of Iran, senior Iranian officials had maintained that Iran would never develop a nuclear bomb.
The Omani foreign minister who was in discussions with Iran and the United States on February 27, 2026 only days before the US-Israeli attack on Iran said Iran agreed to "never, ever have… nuclear material that will create a bomb."
“There was no evidence that Iran was close to a nuclear weapon,” said Jeffery Lewis of of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies after the US attack on Iran.
Arms control experts have disputed President Donald Trump’s claim that Iran “soon” could have missiles capable of reaching the US, and they say there’s a lack of evidence that the country “attempted to rebuild” nuclear enrichment facilities damaged by US strikes last year.
US Intelligence Community Said That Iran Was NOT Developing a Nuclear Weapon
Prior to the US-Israeli June, 2025 attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, in March 2025, the US Intelligence Agencies' 31-page “threat assessment” states that “we continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003, though pressure has probably built on him to do so.” (Page 26)
Lesson Learned: Nuclear Weapons Are A Deterrent to US Attacks
The lesson that Iranian government and the world has learned is that NOT developing a nuclear weapon will lead to the US and Israel assassinating the leadership of your country and bombing the hell out of the rest of the country.
All you have to do is ask the Russians, Chinese, and North Koreans about the value of nuclear weapons to deter the United States from attacking them.
Will developing and testing nuclear weapons keep the United States from attacking? So far, the answer is YES.
So that’s the foreign policy imperative of 2026: Develop nuclear weapons or always be threatened by the United States.
Venezuela: No Nuclear Weapons—US Attacked
Venezuela had no nuclear weapons and its head of state Nicolás Maduro and the former Attorney General and President of the National Assembly, Maduro’s spouse Cilia Flores, were kidnapped and imprisoned in the US on January 3, 2026 by the military of the United States and the other leadership of the country threatened with the same treatment.
Afghanistan: No Nuclear Weapons—US Attacked
Iraq: No Nuclear Weapons—US Attacked
Cuba, Nicaragua, Canada, Greenland, Denmark, Mexico
Cuba has no nuclear weapons, and after the Cuban missile crisis of 1961, has no means of strategic defense of the country, and its leadership is threatened daily by Trump.
Nicaragua has no nuclear weapons, and its leadership is threatened by the United States.
Canada, Greenland, Denmark, and Mexico have no nuclear weapons and the threats from the US come almost daily.
When is enough… enough?
When 72,000 are killed by US bombs in the genocide of Gaza—is that enough?
When the head of state of another country is kidnapped and imprisoned in the US—is that enough?
When Israel dictates when the US goes to war on a country that has not attacked the US and has not developed nuclear weapons—is that enough?
When the US threatens a 70-year-old revolution 90 miles off the United States with decapitation and destruction—is that enough?
When the president of the United States orders the assassination of 125-plus?? persons in boats allegedly transporting drugs and then pardons the former president of Honduras who was convicted by a federal court and sentenced to 45 years in prison for drug operations while president of his country—is that enough?
When the president pardons over 1,000 persons convicted of the 2020 rioting and destruction of the US Capitol—is that enough?
When its policy for 100,000 non-criminal human beings to be locked up in horrific detention or prison facilities—is that enough?
And on and on! Is that enough?
In the words of religious friends, “Sweet Jesus, What will be Enough?”
When Does It End?
It ends at the White House when the people of the United States have had enough.
It ends when the US Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, have had enough.
Have we had enough yet?
On one level, it seems like NOT---but on other levels, we are reaching that point.
Will There Be Blowback from these Policies?
In one word: YES
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Amnesty Condemns US 'Murder' of 6 More People After Latest Trump Boat Bombing
"Human life cannot be left to the mercy of a president’s whim."
Mar 12, 2026
Amnesty International on Wednesday denounced this week's killing of six more people as US forces bombed another boat the Trump administration said—without evidence—was operated by narco-traffickers.
"Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations," US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) said Sunday on social media. "Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations. Six male narco-terrorists were killed during this action."
The US has bombed at least 40 vessels in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean since last September, killing at least 156 people, according to the Trump administration.
"Amnesty International strongly condemns these acts and reiterates that they constitute extrajudicial killings, a form of murder, prohibited under international law, and represent a grave affront to the most basic principles of humanity and legality," Amnesty said in a statement. "No circumstances justify the arbitrary deprivation of life."
The boat strikes were fraught from the start. In the first known attack, US forces killed nine people in an initial strike and then two men clinging to the boat's wreckage in a follow-up bombing. Legal experts have debated whether those strikes were a war crime or simply murder, and many argue that all of the boat bombings violate international law.
“The United States cannot claim the right to blow up boats with people on board based solely on suspicions of drug trafficking or other allegedly illicit activities," Amnesty International Americas director Ana Piquer said Wednesday. "The rest of the international community cannot normalize these extrajudicial killings, in which the United States military is judge and executioner."
"No president or military has the right to arbitrarily take life."
"Human life cannot be left to the mercy of a president’s whim," Piquer stressed. "No president or military has the right to arbitrarily take life. The level of dehumanization and cynicism reflected in these acts is deeply alarming and should be of global concern."
"It is urgent to demand accountability and immediately end these types of attacks," she added. "Due to the current acquiescence of the attorney general’s office, Congress must step in with its oversight power and investigate."
In addition to bombing boats—and 10 countries—President Donald Trump launched an invasion of Venezuela to abduct its president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, who are jailed in the US awaiting trial for dubious narco-trafficking charges.
Earlier this month, Trump also authorized a joint campaign with Ecuador to combat "narco-terrorists" in which US ground troops have been deployed in the Andean nation.
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'The First Victim Was the Truth' – The Cognitive War on Venezuela
This is not the time for over-analyzing every misstep, real or imagined, by the Bolivarian government. It is a time to relentlessly denounce the kidnapping of a president and a legislator.
Mar 11, 2026
Two days before his kidnapping, President Nicolás Maduro gave an interview to Spanish writer Ignacio Ramonet and explained that the war on Venezuela is a cognitive one, “because the war is for the brain, the brain handles emotions and handles concepts.”
The term cognitive war is relatively new, and it sheds light on recent discourse around Venezuela. One of NATO’s definitions characterizes cognitive war as unconventional warfare used to “alter enemy cognitive processes, exploit mental biases or reflexive thinking, and provoke thought distortions, influence decision-making and hinder actions, with negative effects, both at the individual and collective levels.” It goes beyond propaganda or psychological warfare. Another NATO source says it “is not the means by which we fight; it is the fight itself. The brain is both the target and the weapon in the fight for cognitive superiority.”
Maduro understood this, saying that “to counteract a cognitive war, you have to create a force of conscience, a force of values, a spiritual force, and fight with the truth. Our greatest weapon is not a nuclear rocket, our greatest weapon is the truth of Venezuela.”
In a recent Venezuela Solidarity Network webinar about the Venezuelan people’s reaction to the January 3rd attack, Ana Maldonado of the Frente Francisco de Miranda said, “The first victim of this war was truth.” She explained that hours after the bombing and kidnapping, Trump went on television to say the military operation was easy, and that narrative was widely accepted.
Erased from the collective memory were ten years of economic warfare that cost Venezuela tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of lives, $630 billion in damages, and a migration crisis that separated countless families. Erased were the attempted color revolutions of 2014 and 2017, the attempted presidential assassination of 2018, the imposition of a fake president in 2019, and the failed mercenary incursion of 2020. Erased was the U.S. declaring Venezuela “an unusual and extraordinary threat” in 2015 and the imposition of increasingly harsh unilateral coercive measures (so-called sanctions), including during the pandemic.
Erased was the months-long, still ongoing U.S. naval presence in the Caribbean and the declaration of a no-fly zone. Erased was the naval blockade that chased down and seized ships attempting to trade in Venezuelan oil.
No, the January 3rd attack wasn’t “easy,” nor was it a victory. Though the U.S. demonstrated its military advantage, it has not won the cognitive battle. “The superiority shown by the Venezuelan people surpasses anything [the U.S.] has done. Their military attack needed an internal war, a fratricidal war they did not achieve,” explained Maldonado. There was no such war, no coup, no regime change.
The January 3rd attack would have been the perfect opportunity for a new color revolution or rebellion. Maldonado stressed the failure of the "unprecedented cognitive war of provocations, intrigue, of wanting to seed doubts and division.” The grassroots, the government, the military and the police remain united behind acting President Delcy Rodríguez. “The fact that we have and continue to demonstrate such unity shows our superiority. Our superiority is organic. It is revolutionary. It is popular. It is the people … building people’s power,” Maldonado continued.
Venezuelans continue building people’s power, including through plebiscites on March 8, when the nation’s 5,336 communes vote on funding local projects. They are in constant mobilization, making it known they want peace and the return of Maduro and Flores. The streets are theirs, with Venezuelan fascists being increasingly sidelined. They are creating culture and insisting that “a unified people will not yield,” as musician Akilin sings in this video:
Those that claim that Venezuela is now a “protectorate” or “colony” that has sold out or been betrayed don’t seem to be in conversation with Venezuelan revolutionaries. The global solidarity movement, which should be organizing for Maduro and Cilia, calling for an end to sanctions and the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Caribbean, instead finds itself having to counter such speculation, as Manolo de los Santos did in an excellent article.
A delegation of peace activists went to Venezuela in late February to hear directly from the people. In a report-back webinar, CODEPINK co-founder Jodie Evans observed that Venezuelans “are engaged in building a future…they are in constant dialogue [with each other] and trying to find ways to thread a needle.” The threats against Venezuela are ongoing and “horrific,” she said, noting that “these horrors are being breathed down their necks every day and they are staying quite committed.” The unity up and down the Bolivarian Revolution is what it needs to survive.
Yes, the United States controls the oil trade and pushed for changes in the hydrocarbon law. Yet there is reason to believe the Venezuelan people may see material gains from these concessions. The Venezuelan government is playing a long game that points towards sanctions relief. Domestically, the National Assembly approved an amnesty law aimed at reconciliation with the moderate opposition, which could be an important factor in preventing or blunting any future U.S. operations aimed at fomenting civil unrest. In these negotiations, the Venezuelan people’s red lines “haven’t been hit yet,” as Evans put it.
Maduro, in his final interview before the kidnapping, said he was “truly happy how millions of men and women in Venezuela and the world defend Venezuela’s truth.” In Venezuela, the defense of that truth happens every day, with constant mobilizations since the morning of the attack.
In the rest of the world, that defense feels lacking. This is not the time for over-analyzing every misstep, real or imagined, by the Bolivarian government. It is a time to relentlessly denounce the kidnapping of a president and a legislator. This is the moment to defend Latin America and the Caribbean as a zone of peace. It is an opportunity to counter Trump’s Monroe Doctrine, the plans for a “Greater North America,” and the so-called “Shield of the Americas.”
We can fight against this cognitive war by insisting on an alternative vision for US foreign policy, one in which the country becomes a good neighbor by centering its relationship with the hemisphere (and the world) on peace, solidarity and shared prosperity.
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