Marco's Cuba Crackdown - July 21, 2026

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
I'm so upset, my God.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:02)
Let's see how Earth responds to that.

**Ana Kasparian** (0:12)
Are you guys kidding me? I've been gone for a week and there's been so much news that I've been desperate to comment on. I tried to be good and stay away from social media. I did not succeed.
But there's so much to talk about today. Welcome to The Young Turks, I'm your host Ana Kasparian. We're going to talk about the latest in the Iran war, of course, which has been devastating, continues to be devastating. And if it continues, will be devastating for the entire global community. We'll give you all those updates in just a minute.
Lots of debates have been taking place. Lots of stories that I will not have the opportunity to comment on, including Jeremy Scahill's interview with Ro Khanna while I was out. I just want to say, anyone giving Scahill a hard time over doing what a journalist is supposed to do maybe needs to kick rocks. But later in the show, we will have one of my very favorite guests, Ken Klippenstein, to come on and talk a little bit about his latest piece for Substack. He has been reporting extensively on what the US State Department is basically doing to set up the excuse to go to war with Cuba. And it involves targeting American citizens, by the way. So I'll share those details with you along with the interview with Ken Klippenstein later in the first hour. We've got so much to get to, so I don't want to waste any more time with these teases. Let's just get right to it with our very first story.

**SPEAKER_4** (1:34)
Iran has found ways to retaliate with lethal results.

**SPEAKER_5** (1:39)
We're seeing some casualties now. Now, in military terms, these are not large casualties.
But nonetheless, they're politically very important and very sensitive matters. He promised to keep us out of endless wars or unsatisfactory wars. And now, he's in one and it's not at all clear how it's gonna end. So he's vulnerable on this point. And I was in political terms, he does need to get this over with.

**SPEAKER_6** (2:04)
War continues to escalate with new US attacks overnight and more Iranian drone strikes on Jordan.

**Ana Kasparian** (2:12)
Well, the gentleman you heard speaking extensively in that video was Brit Hume. Not some anti-interventionist libertarian, not some anti-war leftist, a conservative who typically supports what the Republicans like to do. But the human toll, meaning the loss of American service members in this war, is going to be politically devastating for the Republican Party. And that's what Brit Hume is warning about. Now remember, this is a war that benefits the United States in no way, shape or form and is being fought on behalf of Israel. The Strait of Hormuz, which is now effectively shut now, was open and ready for the free flow of trade and transit. Trump starts the war, Iran did what everyone predicted Iran would do. They shut down the Strait of Hormuz and now the war is just about getting that strait open again.
What a disaster. In the meantime, it does appear that Israel is happy to sit back and watch the United States fight a war that was started on their behalf and is devastating the global economy. So the United States has lost a total of 18 service members in this war so far. The IDF has not lost 18 service members. They've lost zero service members. Anyway, let's put that graphic back up. 18 service members have died and 447 have been injured since the beginning of the war on February 28th. Now the new tally of those killed in action included, well, a Friday night attack that left three US troops dead. One still unidentified and others wounded at the Muafak Salty Air Base in Jordan. So the death of another service member in Iraq on Saturday brought the total number of American troops killed in the war against Iran up to 18 But the number could actually be higher because there is reason to believe that the Pentagon is withholding information about American casualties. Because of the fact that this is not really a politically popular war, and the Trump administration knows that. And so the more we hear about Americans getting killed in a war that's being fought on behalf of Israel, that has caused so much economic damage already, that has destroyed oil and gas infrastructure in the Gulf. The more we hear about that, the less likely it is that Republicans will win their re-election campaigns. The less likely it is that the midterms will be, I should say the devastation for the Republican Party in the midterm elections would be mitigated, right? Now, for me personally, I don't care. I see Democrats and Republicans as very similar on the issue of war and peace. So anyone who's thinking the Democrats are going to handle this much differently, have another thing coming. For the Democrats who are excited about winning, well, after you win and have the majority, and you continue to do what the Republicans have been doing in their leadership roles in Congress, are you ready for the reckoning that you're going to deal with? That's the real question. But getting back to this story about US casualties and how this is making an already unpopular war even less popular. The two who were killed in Jordan, this is last Friday, included a young woman who wasn't even old enough to drink yet, but apparently she was old enough to die for Israel.