“Regime change in Cuba has long been on President Donald Trump’s to-do list. But with Tehran dominating the agenda, Havana is getting a reprieve — for now,” Politico reports.

“Given the amount of resources and attention Iran is consuming, and the hassle a face off with Russia would cause, Trump and his aides decided it was worth letting Cuba’s regime have a longer lifeline for now.”

New York Times: “Russia is sending a second tanker of crude oil to Cuba, a government official said on Thursday, after one sent by the Kremlin reached Cuban territory earlier this week, ending a de facto U.S. oil blockade on the island.”

“Iran is responding to the threat of a ground operation on its soil by stepping up defenses around its biggest oil port, while threatening to attack a wider array of targets around the Gulf and launching a mass recruitment drive reminiscent of its 1980s war with Iraq,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Tehran is also mobilizing its population in ways that seek to harness the spirit of the 1980s war with Iraq. They include drives to recruit millions of Iranians, including children—a fixture of the tributes to martyrs via street signs and posters that are still a part of Iran’s daily life.”

“Roughly half of Iran’s missile launchers are still intact and thousands of one-way attack drones remain in Iran’s arsenal despite the daily pounding by US and Israeli strikes against military targets over the past five weeks, according to recent US intelligence assessments,” CNN reports.

Said one source: “They are still very much poised to wreak absolute havoc throughout the entire region.”

“President Trump has unapologetically wielded the power of the United States on the global stage, taking a much more belligerent approach economically and militarily to try to dictate the actions of other countries,” the New York Times reports.

“From high tariffs to the war with Iran, Mr. Trump has claimed that this aggressive behavior internationally has only upsides, and that past leaders were fools for refusing to tap into America’s power.”

“But one clear drawback of the strategy is emerging. While many countries have acceded to the president’s demands, some have found a highly effective new way to fight back. Mr. Trump’s aggression has given them the opportunity to test their control over choke points, threatening the United States and the global economy.”

Time: “Key Trump officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, were surprised by the barrage of retaliatory attacks Tehran launched against U.S. and Israeli targets across the region, including in countries long assumed to be off-limits: Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, a state that had both harbored Iran’s terrorist proxies and served as a conduit for backchannel diplomacy between the U.S. and Hamas. The response shattered the assumption that Tehran would confine itself to performative retaliation.” 

“In internal deliberations before the war’s launch, Hegseth had pointed to Iran’s muted reaction to Trump’s past attacks as evidence that calibrated force could impose costs on Tehran without triggering a broader war.”

Said one insider: “Hegseth was caught off guard. There’s no question.”