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BOMBS AND TALKS, SIMULTANEOUSLY
The United States is bombing Iran and negotiating with Iran at the same time. That is not a metaphor for the diplomatic tension. It is what happened Monday night.
US forces struck missile launch sites and mine-laying vessels in southern Iran in what CENTCOM described as “self-defense” strikes designed “to protect our troops from threats posed by Iranian forces.” Explosions were heard near Bandar Abbas at around midnight local time. The IRGC said it downed a US Reaper drone that had entered Iranian airspace. Hours earlier, a high-level Iranian delegation had landed in Doha.
Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, and central bank governor Abdolnaser Hemmati arrived in Qatar Monday for talks with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, according to AFP. The visit focused on the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile. The central bank governor’s presence was specifically to discuss the release of frozen Iranian funds — an issue the MoU addresses as part of any eventual final deal. Pakistan has been the primary mediator throughout the ceasefire negotiations. Qatar, which brokered previous US-Iran arrangements and maintains direct relationships with both governments, has taken on a growing role in the final push.
The MoU framework, as confirmed by Reuters and Axios reporting from officials briefed on the talks, contains 14 points. The core exchange: the Strait of Hormuz reopens, Iran removes its mines, the US lifts its naval blockade, and Iran is permitted to sell oil. Nuclear issues are explicitly deferred. They will be negotiated over a 60-day period only if the framework accord is first agreed. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said as much publicly: nuclear questions come later, not now.
That is the version from Tehran. The version from Washington is different. Trump posted Monday that talks were “going nicely,” and a senior US official has described Iranian assurances, both verbal and written, that any final deal will cover all of Iran’s roughly 2,000 kilograms of enriched uranium, not just the 450 kilograms enriched to near-weapons grade. Iran has not confirmed those assurances publicly. Those two accounts cannot both be accurate.
Alongside the MoU framework, Trump made a second demand that stunned the Arab world. In a lengthy Truth Social post Saturday, he said that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, and Jordan must simultaneously sign the Abraham Accords as a condition of the broader regional settlement, and said he had raised it directly with their leaders. He called it “mandatory.” According to US officials who leaked details to Axios, the demand left Arab leaders in silence — Trump quipped, “Are they still there?” He then floated the idea that Iran itself could eventually join the Abraham Accords framework.
Arab capitals have responded with what WION News called “deep hesitation, silence, and conditional pushback.” Saudi Arabia’s position has not shifted: Riyadh demands that Israel commit to an irreversible, time-bound path toward Palestinian statehood before any normalization. That demand has hardened, not softened, under the weight of the Iran war and the ongoing Israeli military operations in Gaza and Lebanon. The Abraham Accords were built on bilateral normalization deals that deliberately sidestepped Palestinian statehood. What Trump is now asking for is something categorically different: mass simultaneous normalization by countries with deep political, religious, and public opinion constraints, timed to an Iran deal that most of their populations opposed.
Brent crude is at $98.80 this morning. Gas is $4.491 a gallon. The market hasn’t moved on the Abraham Accords demand, because the market knows it won’t happen quickly. What it’s watching is whether the MoU gets signed — and whether Monday night’s strikes killed it.
🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: The US resumed strikes on Iran Monday night while Iranian negotiators were sitting in Doha trying to close a deal. That is either a carefully calibrated pressure tactic or a sign that the two sides of the US government, diplomatic and military, are not fully synchronized. Either interpretation is concerning. If the MoU holds together despite the strikes, gas prices fall and markets rally. If Iran walks out of Doha, the blockade continues, and the question of what Rubio meant by “another way” becomes urgent. Meanwhile, Trump is demanding that Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, and Qatar normalize relations with Israel as part of the same package. The Arab world went silent when he said it. That silence is not agreement.
Sources: Al Jazeera live blog (Qatar, state-funded/editorially independent — US strikes, IRGC drone claim, Doha talks); Al Arabiya/AFP (wire — Iranian delegation confirmed, delegation composition, frozen assets); Rappler/Reuters (wire — 14-point MoU framework, nuclear deferral, Baghaei statement); Axios (US — Abraham Accords demand, Arab leaders’ silence, Saudi position); Mediaite (US — Trump Truth Social post, country list, confirmed this session); WION News (India, confirmed this session — Arab reaction, Palestinian statehood context); CNN live (US confirmation — strike framing, ceasefire status)
THE DEAL NOBODY IS COVERING
Washington is negotiating with Cuba. That is not a rumor. It is documented, confirmed by both governments, and almost entirely absent from the American news cycle — which is consumed by Iran.
A US government plane carrying a senior State Department delegation landed in Havana on April 10 for direct talks with Cuban officials. The meeting included a side session with Raúl Castro’s grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro. The agenda, according to sources briefed on the talks: prisoner releases, economic reforms, internet connectivity, property claims, and political freedoms. Cuba’s foreign ministry confirmed the talks, describing them as “professional and respectful.”
The pressure producing those talks is not subtle. Trump designated Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism on his first day back in office and has systematically cut off the island’s economic lifelines. Through military action in Venezuela and threats of tariffs on Mexico, his administration has blocked oil from reaching Cuba, producing daily power blackouts and a humanitarian crisis that Cubans describe as the worst since 1962. ICE detentions of Cubans have risen 463 percent since October 2024. Permanent residency approvals for Cubans have collapsed 99.8 percent in the same period. Cuba is under maximum pressure and it is showing.
The most explosive element of the negotiations is the proposed repatriation of 500,000 Cubans currently in the United States. The figure comes from former Democratic congressman Joe Garcia, who told the Palm Beach Post he has contacts with both Trump administration officials and Cuban regime representatives. Garcia described it as “perhaps the most difficult” issue in the negotiations. “This is something Trump wants,” he said. CiberCuba and Diario de Cuba, two of the most credible Cuban diaspora outlets, have both confirmed the figure and its context. The 500,000 represents Cubans who arrived primarily under humanitarian parole programs during the Biden administration, as well as others with pending immigration status the Trump administration has terminated or reversed. Cuba would be required to accept them back. The logistical challenge is enormous: Cuba is in the middle of an economic and energy crisis and does not have the infrastructure to absorb a mass return. The political challenge is just as large: the Cuban-American community in Florida, whose votes matter to the Republican coalition, includes many of those 500,000 people and their families.
The repatriation demand is one of eight negotiating axes identified in the talks. The others include the release of more than 1,000 political prisoners, described by one negotiator as “essential” for the Cuban-American electorate, along with broad economic reforms, compensation for properties expropriated since 1959, political reforms, lifting of the US embargo, and Cuba’s readmission to multilateral institutions including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Cuba has said it is ready for “serious dialogue” on a range of issues. Earlier in the year, officials drew a clear line: the constitution, the political system, and the economic model were not on the table. This month, Cuba’s ambassador to the UN, Ernesto Soberón Guzmán, told the New York Times that Havana is now willing to negotiate “everything” with Washington, with no taboo topics — the first interview a sitting Cuban official has given to that outlet in years. Whether that shift reflects a genuine change in position or a public signal calibrated to keep the talks alive is not yet clear.
Marco Rubio, whose parents fled Cuba and who has spent his political career as a hardliner on Havana, is the Secretary of State conducting these negotiations. “The people in charge, they don’t know how to fix it,” Rubio told CNN in March. “So they have to get new people in charge. That’s what has to happen.” That is the maximalist position. Whether it survives contact with the actual terms of a deal remains to be seen.
🌍 TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: The Cuba negotiations are not visible in US media, but they are being watched closely in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Europe. For the countries of the region, a US-Cuba deal would represent the most significant shift in Western Hemisphere geopolitics since the Obama-era opening of 2014 — and its collapse would represent a warning about what Washington’s promises are worth. The 500,000 repatriation figure has received significant coverage in Spanish-language diaspora press and Cuban outlets, where it is being read not as a diplomatic concession but as a deportation by another name.
Cuba’s ambassador to the UN, Ernesto Soberón Guzmán, gave an interview to the New York Times this month — his first to a US outlet in years — and said Havana is willing to negotiate “everything” with Washington with no taboo topics, according to CiberCuba’s reporting on the interview. It is a significant public shift. The question is whether it survives contact with the maximalist demands on the US side.
14ymedio, founded by dissident journalist Yoani Sánchez and one of the most credible independent Cuban voices, identified the specific political risk the regime faces in accepting returns: people who come back will have experienced different wages, different rights, and a different relationship with the state. For a government that fears any spontaneous concentration of dissent, a mass return of people with direct experience of life outside totalitarian control is a first-order political problem — not a humanitarian gesture. The Cuban government’s willingness to accept 500,000 people back would be a genuine concession, not a formality.
The JCPOA parallel is hard to miss. The US is simultaneously conducting high-stakes, high-pressure negotiations with two countries it has economically strangled, Iran and Cuba, with maximalist opening positions, contested public accounts of what has been agreed, and domestic political audiences that make compromise costly. Both deals, if they happen, will be significant. Both carry the same structural fragility.
🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: The Trump administration is negotiating a deal with Cuba that would, among other things, require Cuba to accept the return of 500,000 people currently living in the United States — many of them in Florida, many of them with American families. This is not a minor immigration footnote. It is a central demand in an active negotiation that could reshape US-Cuba relations for a generation. You are not hearing about it because Iran is consuming the news cycle. The silence is not evidence that nothing is happening.
Sources: Responsible Statecraft (centre-left, non-interventionist — Havana April 10 talks, agenda, Cuba foreign ministry confirmation); CiberCuba (Cuban diaspora press, Miami-based — 500,000 figure context, eight negotiating axes, political prisoner demand); Diario de Cuba (independent Cuban journalism, Spain-based — Joe Garcia named source, Palm Beach Post origin of figure); 14ymedio (independent Cuban press, founded by Yoani Sánchez — Cuban government political risk analysis); CNN (US — Rubio quote, Cuba crisis context, oil blockade mechanics); Congress.gov/CRS (primary — Trump executive order, ICE detention figures, residency approval collapse)
THE OUTBREAK THE US HELPED CREATE
On May 15, the Democratic Republic of Congo confirmed what health workers in Ituri Province had known for weeks: Ebola was back. By the time the announcement came, hundreds of suspected cases had already accumulated. That delay, between outbreak and official confirmation, is not a bureaucratic failure. It is the direct consequence of the dismantling of the early warning infrastructure that was supposed to prevent exactly this.
This is now the third-largest Ebola outbreak on record.
As of May 24, the DRC Ministry of Health reported more than 904 suspected cases, 101 confirmed cases, and 119 suspected deaths. Confirmed cases have been found in three provinces: Ituri, where the outbreak began in the remote Mongbwalu health zone; North Kivu, which includes the city of Goma; and South Kivu. Bunia airport has been closed. Two tents at a treatment facility in Ituri were burned by residents — a sign of the community fear and mistrust that, in previous outbreaks, has driven people away from care and accelerated spread. Uganda has confirmed seven cases and one death, all linked to travel from DRC. No cases have been confirmed in the United States. Dr. Peter Stafford, an American surgeon and medical missionary working in DRC, tested positive for Ebola after unknowingly operating on an infected patient before the outbreak was detected. He was flown to Charité University Hospital in Berlin for treatment, the CDC confirmed. His wife, also a doctor who treated the same patient, and their four children are being monitored in Germany.
The Bundibugyo strain is the one for which there is no approved vaccine and no specific treatment. This is not the Zaire strain, which has vaccines and therapeutics developed through years of outbreak response. Bundibugyo was first identified in 2007. The previous outbreak it caused ended in December 2025 — five months before this one began. The interval between outbreaks is shrinking.
The WHO declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on May 17 — the highest level of global health alert. It is the designation reserved for outbreaks that pose a serious risk of international spread. The DRC has been here before; this is its 17th Ebola outbreak since 1976. What is different this time is the response infrastructure. And what is left of it is not much.
The Trump administration’s cuts to global health capacity have been four-pronged: it withdrew from the WHO, dissolved USAID, made significant staffing cuts at the CDC, and reduced direct health aid to DRC and Uganda. The Department of Health and Human Services sent nearly $33 million in foreign aid to DRC in fiscal year 2024. That figure fell to less than $10 million in fiscal year 2025. USAID sent $67 million to DRC in the final three months of 2025 alone, down from $715 million in fiscal year 2025 and nearly $1.2 billion in fiscal year 2024. Almost everyone on the USAID team that worked on the most recent previous Ebola outbreak in Uganda has been fired, according to former USAID officials interviewed by STAT News.
“When you add up all of those elements, it’s hard to see how there could not have been an effect on the surveillance and response capacities in these countries,” Josh Michaud, associate director for global and public health policy at KFF, told CNN. A former USAID worker who lost their job described witnessing “a silent but dangerous drift” in the region. “The actors who once ensured epidemic preparedness are now absent or paralyzed,” the person said. “Politicians control budgets; budgets control lives.”
The Trump administration’s senior State Department official responded by blaming WHO for the delay in identifying the outbreak. The administration has mobilized some emergency funding for the current response. Health policy analysts told CNN that further cuts to global health programs are planned regardless — including $647 million in reductions to global health security as part of a $2 billion redirection of global health funding to cover the cost of closing USAID.
🌍 TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: Outside the United States, this outbreak is being covered as a global health emergency with a clear causal thread to American policy decisions. The ECDC — the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control — has been issuing weekly updates since May 15. Rwanda has reinforced health screening at all border crossings with DRC and at Kigali International Airport. The concern in the region is not just about DRC and Uganda. Goma, where confirmed cases have now been found, is a transit hub, a city with an international airport and constant movement of people across borders. Goma has been controlled by the Rwanda-backed M23 militia since January 2025, which has complicated the humanitarian response. The combination of an unvaccinable strain, a conflict zone, a gutted international response infrastructure, and a transit city is not a combination that experienced outbreak responders view without alarm.
🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: The US dismantled the early warning and response systems that were designed to catch outbreaks like this one before they became emergencies of international concern. The result is the third-largest Ebola outbreak on record, still growing, in a region with no approved vaccine for this strain. An American has already been infected. The CDC has issued enhanced travel screening and entry restrictions. The administration that cut the infrastructure is now mobilizing emergency funding to respond to the emergency the cuts helped produce. The outbreak is not contained. Goma has cases. Goma has an airport.
Sources: ECDC (European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control — confirmed case counts by province, contacts, May 24 figures); WHO (primary — PHEIC declaration, May 17); CDC (primary — Uganda figures, travel screening); Al Jazeera/Reuters/AP (wire — Dr. Peter Stafford confirmed, Charité Hospital, six high-risk contacts); NBC News (US — Stafford family details, Serge mission); CNN (US — four-pronged cuts, Michaud quote, HHS/USAID funding figures, $647 million reduction); STAT News (specialist health journalism — USAID team fired, “silent but dangerous drift” quote, funding database review); Al Jazeera (M23 control of Goma confirmed)
WAR DAY 86 | NUMBERS AT PUBLICATION 🇮🇷 Iran: 3,468 killed, 26,500+ injured (Iran Health Ministry, National Health, Defence and Interior Ministries via Al Jazeera tracker, May 20 — methodology note: previous editions carried HRANA floor estimate, frozen since Day 38/April 7 at 3,636; switching to Al Jazeera tracker as the more current confirmed figure; the lower MoH number does not mean fewer people died — the two sources use different methodologies and counting windows) 🇱🇧 Lebanon: 3,042 killed, 9,301 injured (Al Jazeera tracker, May 20) 🇮🇱 Israel: 26 killed, 7,791 injured (Al Jazeera tracker, May 20) 🇵🇸 Palestine: 4 killed (Al Jazeera tracker, May 20 — carried from this edition forward) 🇸🇾 Syria: 4 killed (Al Jazeera tracker, May 20 — carried from this edition forward) 🌍 Gulf states / Iraq: 146 killed in Iran-attributed attacks (Al Jazeera tracker, May 20 — Bahrain 3, Kuwait 7, Oman 3, Saudi Arabia 3, UAE 12, Iraq 118) 🇺🇸 US military: 13 killed, 381 injured (Al Jazeera tracker, May 20) 🛢️ Brent crude: $98.80/barrel (OilPrice.com, Tuesday morning) ⛽ US national gas average: $4.491/gallon (AAA, confirmed this session) 📈 US markets: Open — Tuesday
Sourcing note: All war casualty figures sourced to Al Jazeera live tracker, last updated May 20, 2026 at 08:45 GMT, citing Iran Health Ministry, National Health, Defence and Interior Ministries. Palestine and Syria figures added to the numbers block from this edition forward — both appeared on the tracker from the start of the war and should have been carried throughout. Methodology differs between countries; figures should not be treated as directly comparable.
WATCH LIST 🔴 Iran MoU. US strikes on Iranian targets in Bandar Abbas hit Monday night while the Iranian delegation was in Doha. The deal was not yet signed at the time of publication. Watch for Iran’s response to the strikes and whether Ghalibaf and Araghchi remain in Qatar or leave. 🔴 Ebola. Confirmed cases in Goma — a transit hub with an international airport. No approved vaccine for the Bundibugyo strain. US response infrastructure significantly degraded. Watch for whether cases cross into Rwanda or other neighboring countries. 🟡 Cuba-US negotiations. Active, confirmed by both governments, and almost entirely uncovered in English-language press. Watch for whether the political prisoner release deadline produces action — and whether the 500,000 repatriation demand becomes public in the US news cycle. 🟡 Abraham Accords. Trump demanded mass simultaneous Arab normalization with Israel as part of the Iran deal framework. Arab capitals went silent. Watch for formal responses from Saudi Arabia and Turkey, whose positions are the most consequential.
“Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1789
