Cuba’s top diplomat to the United States says recent sanctions targeting the island's leadership and the indictment of former President Raúl Castro are a “pretext” for the Trump administration to persuade the American people to support a U.S. military intervention in Cuba. In an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday, Ambassador Lianys Torres Rivera complained bitterly that the U.S. is targeting Cuban civilians with its decades-old embargo and new blockade of energy shipments to the island. She described the situation as “a war without bombs.” Trump has been threatening military action in Cuba for months, while his energy blockade has choked off fuel shipments.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio says he is optimistic about the potential for a resumption in nuclear talks with Iran despite a shaky ceasefire in the war looking increasingly in doubt. Rubio told lawmakers Tuesday that the Iranians have agreed to negotiate on nuclear points they had not been willing to address in the past. He would not offer an assessment on what those talks might produce and added that it was no guarantee they would produce an acceptable deal. His optimism is running into two semiofficial Iranian news agencies reporting that Iran has stopped communicating with mediators after Israel threatened to bomb Beirut as it fights the Hezbollah militant group.