WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

Using humanitarian suffering as a tool for political change, I find really not only uncomfortable, but not the United States that I know.

Trump's foreign policy is not exactly winning hearts and minds.

It's Monday, March 23rd, and this is here and now anytime from NPR and WBR.

I'm Chris Bentley.

Today on the show, the economic toll of war. It's not just gas prices.

The impact on energy costs, shipping costs, insurance costs, all of these costs are going to be

enormous. Also, we'll meet a man who left his job at the Department

of Homeland Security and now works as a paralegal on immigration cases. But first, the U.S. is now

weeks into a war with Iran that it initially claimed would be a quick operation, with no end in sight.

And at the same time, the Trump administration is pushing

regime change in Cuba. Cuba's communist government has held on to power for nearly 70 years,

despite economic warfare and coup attempts from the U.S. But the country is now suffering its

worst humanitarian crisis in decades. On top of its long-standing

trade embargo, the U.S. recently imposed a total blockade of oil reaching the island,

crippling Cuba's power grid and forcing cuts to everything from trash collection to hospital service.

Jeffrey D. Larentis was the top diplomat at the American Embassy in Havana from

2015 to 2017, and he tells Indira Lakshmanan, the U.S. is escalating things quickly.

We've moved from economic reform and a gradual approach, and then we heard talk about the U.S. wanting the removal of so-called older

officials who remain committed to the ideas of Fidel Castro. And then I'm guessing there might

have been some blowback from the Cuban diaspora wanting more than gradual economic reforms.

And the Secretary of State said what the Cubans have suggested is not enough.

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