At the last minute, Iran agreed on Monday to participate in negotiations with the United States in Islamabad, Pakistan. The fragile ceasefire agreement between the two countries ends on Wednesday. Following the US attack on and seizure of an Iranian cargo ship in the Sea of Oman on Saturday, and contradictory tweets by President Trump in recent days, Iran was understandably hesitant to engage in further discussions with the US. There are additional obstacles to a successful resolution of the US-Israeli war on Iran to consider.

To dissect the challenges involved in negotiating peace and the potential ramifications of a resumption of the war, Chris Hedges speaks with Professor John Mearsheimer. A fundamental difficulty is whether the United States realizes that Iran has the upper hand in this conflict. Mearsheimer explains that if the US chooses to escalate the situation, this would be to Iran’s advantage as they have the capacity to inflict greater harm on the global economy beyond restricting passage through the Strait of Hormuz, which has already created shortages in critical materials needed for manufacturing and agriculture.

The United States will have to make compromises in its demands to reach an agreement with Iran, something the US has so far been unwilling to do. Mearsheimer adds that the Trump administration must balance both the interests of Israel and its powerful lobby in the US, which “has no interest in settling this war,” and the domestic impacts of a global recession if the war continues that could hurt Trump in the midterms. If the administration succeeds in extending a ceasefire, Mearsheimer points out that the Israel lobby “will be working overtime not to make that framework morph into a peaceful agreement.”

The stakes are high and neither Mearsheimer or Hedges are optimistic that the United States has the capacity to navigate the complicated and competing challenges involved in reaching a lasting resolution. Mearsheimer summarizes the situation by stating, “The only thing I can say with a high degree of certainty is it looks like one giant mess that’s going to lead to endless trouble.”

Medea Benjamin, a co-founder of the antiwar organization CODEPINK, speaks with Chris Hedges about her recent visit to Cuba as part of one of the many humanitarian delegations that have visited the island in response to the severe economic blockade imposed by the Trump administration. Benjamin describes the current situation as “dire”, the worst she has experienced in her 50 years of solidarity work with Cuba, referring to the escalation of the blockade as a “medieval siege.”

The fuel shortages have had deadly impacts, imposing nationwide power outages. Sanctions and the blockade have created shortages of food, medicine and other necessities. Benjamin recounts, “People can’t go to work because the buses aren’t working or if they got to work, there’s no electricity or no materials.” She says that doctors and teachers are leaving the country because their salaries are too low to survive.

The U.S. media blame the hardships in Cuba on its communist government, but Benjamin shares the advancements that have been made since the Revolution, despite enduring more than sixty years of U.S.-imposed sanctions. A poor country of ten million, Cuba created a once-enviable universal healthcare system and an excellent education system that is free to residents. Now, many of those gains, such as reductions in infant mortality and improvements in life expectancy, are deteriorating under the boot of American imperialism.

Delegations have traveled to Cuba from all over the world this year to bring solar panels, medicines and other necessities. Palestinians participated in the delegation that Benjamin helped to organize, and they witnessed many similarities between Cuba and Gaza. In addition to the shortages, another similarity is the growing power of the Cuban-American lobby that supports the blockade, which is modeled on the Israeli-American lobby, AIPAC.

Despite this, the situation in Cuba is so severe that even many members of Congress can no longer deny the cruelty of the situation. There are two new pieces of legislation in Congress that CODEPINK and other Cuba solidarity organizations support. Benjamin urges people to take action in any way that they can because she believes Cubans will not be able to endure the hardships of the blockade for much longer.