In an interview on Euronews’ flagship programme, MEP Marc Botenga (The Left, Belgium) welcomed the two-week ceasefire agreed between the US and Iran, following US President Donald Trump’s announcement mere hours before the expiration of his ultimatum to Tehran.

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Yet Botenga was highly critical of the EU’s response to the crisis, telling Euronews’ flagship morning show Europe Today that the EU’s position had been “horrible”.

“The European Union has done nothing, no diplomatic efforts whatsoever for a crisis that not only is violating human rights, is violating international law, but was also violating our interests,” said Botenga.

The two-week ceasefire was announced by Trump on his Truth Social platform overnight on Wednesday. Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said it has accepted the ceasefire and would negotiate with the US in Islamabad beginning Friday.

“They (the EU) should have condemned the war. They should have condemned the war crimes,” Botenga said.

The truce comes after Trump ramped up his threats on Tuesday, saying a “whole civilisation will die” if there was no deal with Iran.

According to Botenga, the EU should have condemned the “genocidal rhetoric” used by Trump and failed to identify the true victims of the conflict. “They’ve been speaking about Iran attacking its neighbours rather than Iran being a victim, so we’ve mixed this up,” said Botenga.

Iran has been launching daily barrages of missiles and drones on its neighbours since the beginning of the war on 28 February.

While Tehran claims it is targeting only US and Israeli-linked assets, official reports and Euronews reporters on the ground have shown Tehran has struck civilian targets across the Gulf, including hotels and energy and water-processing facilities.

The strongest response from an EU leader to Trump’s threats came from European Council President António Costa, who warned on Monday that striking civilian infrastructure, like energy facilities, would be “illegal and unacceptable”.

Meanwhile on Tuesday a spokesperson for the European Commission urged Trump to act with “maximum restraint”.

In a message on X after the announcement, the EU’s High Representative Kaja Kallas said this ceasefire is “a step back from the brink”.

The ceasefire does not include Lebanon, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed. For Botenga, Israel has been “ethnically cleansing the south of Lebanon”.

“Why are we silent? Why are our top officials not condemning this? Why we are not taking sanctions?” asked Botenga.

In Lebanon, Israel has been engaged in a campaign against Iran-backed Hezbollah militants, who launched what they said was a retaliatory campaign against Israel following the death of Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in US-Israeli bombardment on day one of the war.

Communist China is reportedly providing military assistance to the embattled Iranian regime, according to a leading U.S. military think tank and other reporting. 

The Institute for the Study of War stated that China is providing military assistance to the Iranian regime’s missile program, basing its research on recent reporting.

According to the Institute, “China is helping Iran reconstitute the Iranian missile program amid US-Israeli efforts to degrade it.”

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According to the Institute for the Study of War, “Western media reported that China has sent multiple shipments of missile fuel precursor to Iran since the start of the war.”

The institute said that, “China’s efforts to help Iran reconstitute could undermine the combined force efforts to degrade or destroy the supporting elements of the ballistic missile program.”

Gordon Chang, an expert on China, told Fox News Digital that “China is an enemy combatant and is endangering our troops.”

The Daily Telegraph recently reported that, “Ships believed to be carrying Chinese chemicals for missile fuel have arrived in Iran, raising questions about Beijing’s support for the regime. Four sanctioned Iran-flagged vessels have docked at Iranian ports since the war broke out.”

The report also claimed that, “Sanctioned vessels carrying enough chemicals to produce hundreds of projectiles travel from Chinese to Iranian ports.”

Chang urged the U.S. to seize the Chinese vessels that are reportedly transporting sodium perchlorate, the chemical material required for Iran’s missile fuel systems. He added that “It is a question of America’s will to impose costs on China.”

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Chang concluded by noting that the “President of the U.S. has many points of leverage. If you look at the overall relationship between China and the U.S., the U.S. has more cards to play.” He cited the U.S.-China trade relationship because China is an export-driven country and depends on the vital American consumer market.

The Islamic Republic’s military forces have reportedly been feverishly working to rebuild their missile apparatus after punishing U.S. and Israeli airstrikes since the start of the war on Feb. 28.

According to the Institute for the Study of War, “Iran has been digging out underground missile bunkers and silos struck by the combined force, in some cases returning them to operation hours after strikes, according to recent U.S. intelligence assessments. Iran may be reestablishing access to their launchers hours after strikes, but these launchers are components of a larger system that has been degraded. Reported fear and lack of coordination across some Iranian forces mean that medium-range missile systems are still functioning sub-optimally.”

Chinese companies have been sanctioned as part of busting U.S. restrictions on providing military aid to Iran’s regime. In 2023, the U.S. Treasury Department said it had “designated one individual and six entities in a sanctions’ evasion network that has facilitated Iran’s procurement of electronic components for its destabilizing military programs, including those used in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Particularly, this action targets the head of U.S.-designated Iran’s Pardazan System Namad Arman (PASNA), and the entity’s Iran-, Malaysia-, Hong Kong, and PRC-based front companies[People’s Republic of China] and suppliers that have enabled PASNA’s procurement of goods and technology.”

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Just last month, a report by the Atlantic Council noted “China has supplied Iran with drones, anti-ship cruise missiles, surface-to-air missiles, and the components thereof, to aid in its aerial and maritime defense capabilities. In other instances, China directly supplies Iran with Western or Chinese technology components that are found in Iranian drones used against US military installations and economic interests in the Gulf, as well as on Russia’s battlefield in Ukraine.”

Fox News Digital press queries to China’s Embassy in Washington, D.C., were not immediately returned.

Hundreds of women marched in Cuba’s capital, Havana, to protest the de facto oil blockade and pressure campaign that the United States has imposed on the island.

Banners and signs at Tuesday’s demonstration bore the slogan “Tumba el bloqueo” or “Tear down the blockade”. Many protesters waved Cuban flags, and some wore T-shirts with the hashtag #NoMasBloqueo or “No more blockade”.

The protest took place on what would have been the 96th birthday of the late Vilma Espin, a leader in the Cuban Revolution and a former first lady. She was the wife of Raul Castro and the sister-in-law of Fidel Castro, both presidents.

Top officials in Cuba’s communist government led the demonstration, including Deputy Prime Minister Ines Maria Chapman and Deputy Foreign Minister Josefina Vidal.

They denounced the US campaign against the Cuban government as a kind of collective punishment.

“This policy of abuse has to stop,” Vidal told The Associated Press. “The Cuban people don’t deserve this. It’s the most comprehensive, all-encompassing, and longest-running system of coercive measures ever imposed against an entire country.”

A cap on foreign oil

The Cuban government has organised protests in recent weeks as a show of opposition to policies put in place under US President Donald Trump.

Last Thursday, for instance, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel joined demonstrators on bicycles and electric vehicles outside the US Embassy in Havana to denounce the US-led fuel shortage.

Since January, the Trump administration has sought to cut Cuba off from its foreign oil imports, as part of a bid to destabilise its government.

First, on January 11, Trump announced that Cuba would receive no more money or oil from its close regional ally Venezuela, following a US attack that culminated in the abduction and imprisonment of the South American country’s president, Nicolas Maduro.

Then, on January 29, Trump issued an executive order announcing tariffs against any foreign government that attempted, whether directly or indirectly, to deliver oil to Cuba.

Since then, Cuba’s foreign oil supply has effectively been severed. Only in the last couple of weeks has the blockade been eased slightly, when the Trump administration allowed the arrival of a Russian oil tanker in Havana’s harbour on March 30.

According to the International Energy Agency, some 58 percent of Cuba’s energy production comes from oil, as of 2023. Another 23.6 percent comes from natural gas.

While Cuba does produce some crude oil domestically, most of its oil supply comes from external sources. The International Energy Agency estimates that the country produces only 40.6 percent of its own oil supply, with 59.4 percent coming from abroad.

With little foreign oil entering the country, Cuba has suffered at least two island-wide blackouts in the last month. Those outages come with deadly consequences, as hospitals and other critical infrastructure lose the power necessary for life-saving work.

Russia has announced it plans to send a second oil tanker to Cuba, in defiance of the US blockade.

Pressure on Cuba’s leadership

But Trump has continued to apply pressure to the Cuban government, holding up the change in Venezuela’s leadership as an example he would like to replicate.

Since Maduro’s abduction, Venezuela has been led by interim President Delcy Rodriguez, who has largely agreed to cooperate with US demands.

Since February 28, the US has been embroiled in a war with Iran, but Trump has repeatedly warned that Cuba “is next” on his list of governments to confront. In March, Trump reiterated that stance on several occasions.

“I do believe I’ll be the honour of — having the honour of taking of Cuba,” Trump told reporters from the Oval Office on March 16. “Whether I free it, take it, I think I can do anything I want with it, if you want to know the truth. They’re a very weakened nation right now.”

Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign began in his first term as president, from 2017 to 2021, and it includes heightened sanctions against the island.

Already, since the 1960s, Cuba has faced a total trade embargo from the US over Cold War-era tensions.

The US and Cuba have been in negotiations in recent weeks to lift the recent oil blockade, and Vidal addressed those talks in an interview during Tuesday’s march.

“We are in a very preliminary, very initial phase, and there are still no structured negotiations between the two governments,” Vidal told the news agency AFP, adding that “Cuba has always believed in dialogue” over confrontation.

Vidal had helped lead past negotiations that resulted in a brief detente under US President Barack Obama in 2015, shortly before Trump took office for his first term. In her remarks to AFP, Vidal contrasted the circumstances now with those previous negotiations.

At the time, she said, “We worked to create a relationship that was not without differences, but that did not place those differences at the centre.”

Tuesday’s demonstration comes a day after two progressive members of the US Congress, Pramila Jayapal of Washington state and Jonathan Jackson of Illinois, visited Cuba to meet President Diaz-Canel over the blockade.

Upon receiving the US representatives, Diaz-Canel issued a statement saying he “denounced the criminal harm caused by the #blockade”, as well as the US’s “threats of even more aggressive actions”.

For their part, Jayapal and Jackson issued a joint statement, calling on Trump, a Republican, to end the blockade, noting that the energy shortage has caused food to spoil, water pumps to stop working, and medical patients to go untreated.

“We do not believe that the majority of Americans would want this kind of cruelty and inhumanity to continue in our name,” they wrote.