Is ‘Cuba Libre’ next?, China is Trump’s real target and other commentary

Eye on liberty: Is ‘Cuba Libre’ Next?

“When riots broke out recently at a prison in Cuba’s Ciego de Avila province, the videos that circulated showed something remarkable,” reports Daniel Allott at The Hill: “Inmates were shouting, ‘Long live Trump!’ ”

Along with a growing dissident movement, this “marks a significant psychological shift inside a nation long defined by resistance to US intervention.”

Independent journalist Camila Acosta reports many Cubans “long ago” stopped believing the US embargo was behind “every shortage, every blackout, every empty pharmacy shelf.”

Notes Allot: “When Cubans protest — and there have been hundreds of demonstrations since July 2021 — they do not chant ‘Down with the embargo.’ They chant ‘Down with [President Miguel] Díaz-Canel.’ ‘Down with the Castros.’ ‘Down with the dictatorship.’ ”

Mideast beat: China Is Trump’s Real Target

Across the globe, it’s the same argument: “America is fighting Israel’s war,” marvels Haviv Rettig Gur at The Free Press.

No, this war is about “whether the American-led global order survives or whether China displaces it.”

Iran was no “threat to American primacy on the global stage” until it “turned to China as its economic lifeline.”

“China’s single greatest vulnerability is the American Navy’s ability to interdict its energy imports,” but now 90% “of Iran’s crude oil exports go to China, processed through a network of Chinese refineries that operate beyond the reach of American sanctions enforcement.”

Beijing “was also arming Iran with systems specifically designed to threaten commercial and American military assets,” among other threats to US interests.

When Iran became “a Chinese forward base,” it “stopped being Israel’s problem and became America’s.”

Conservative: Irrational Iran Demanded War

The Nazi hatred of the Jews, per Historian Yehuda Bauer, was “totally anti-pragmatic, anti-modern, anti-capitalistic, anti-cost-effective”; Commentary’s Seth Mandel adds that the “ayatollahs in Iran were similarly beset with, and blinded by, a self-defeating obsession with the Jews.”

Their single-minded focus on “nuclear capability” so as to “encircle the Jewish state in a ‘ring of fire’ ” led to the sanctions regime that “brought inflation” and a “loss of access to the international banking system.”

President Trump “practically begged” the Iranians to “come to their senses,” but “Iran’s despotic rulers cling to war rather than peace and prosperity.”

None of it makes rational sense for their nation, but “a regime animated and motivated by eliminationist anti-Semitism is not a rational actor.”

Disinfo watch: Sorry, Don’s No Bibi Stooge

The claims that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “dragged” President Trump “unwillingly into war with Iran,” defy the sniff rest, notes National Review’s Philip Klein.

“Last June, he had Israel pull back planes that were on their way for a bombing run on Iran just before the cease-fire took hold,” and “pressured Netanyahu into accepting a cease-fire in Gaza that forced a number of concessions on Israel’s part.”

And “he spent the past several months arguing that if Iran didn’t willingly give up their pursuit [of nukes], he would attack.”

How can anyone think he “sent a massive amount of US military hardware to the region because he simply could not tell Netanyahu no?”

From the right: Well Worth the Fight

“A cautiously optimistic case can be made,” suggests The Wall Street Journal’s Gerard Baker, that the US intervention into the Middle East “will end better than most of the others.”

For all the noise over “the supposed lawlessness” of US action, the Iranian regime “has made murdering Americans among its highest priorities” so “under the principle of self-defense,” action against Iran is justified “to prevent further killings.”

“Regime change is self-evidently the most desirable outcome,” but even if it “doesn’t come now,” a government radically “undermined” by the “awesome combination of a US-Israeli intelligence and military capability,” will be left “leaderless, impoverished, isolated, besieged” and “mostly disarmed.”

In the end, “there may never be a better opportunity” than now to eliminate the threat.

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board