President Trump told POLITICO in a phone interview Thursday that the United States would help shape who leads Iran next, that Cuba's communist government is on the verge of collapse, and that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy needs to stop being an obstacle to peace. He covered the full map in a single conversation, from the decimation of Iran's military to the squeeze on Havana to the firing of Anthropic.
The breadth was striking. So was the confidence.
Trump made clear that the U.S. military campaign against Iran has been devastating and precise. He described the Islamic Republic's defenses as functionally destroyed.
"They have no navy. They have no air force. They have no detection of air. It's all wiped out. Their radar is all wiped out. Their military is decimated."
What remains, Trump acknowledged, is resolve. "All they have is guts." But guts don't intercept cruise missiles, and they don't rebuild a shattered command structure.
The more consequential revelation was what came after. Trump said the United States would actively work to influence Iran's future leadership, framing it not as regime change imposed at gunpoint but as collaborative steering toward a stable, non-nuclear outcome.
"We'll work with the people and the regime to make sure that somebody gets there that can nicely build Iran but without nuclear weapons."
He referenced the succession question following the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, noting that Khamenei's son is now in contention for supreme leader. Trump was blunt about the assessment circulating among Iranian power brokers: "The reason the father wouldn't give it to the son is they say he's incompetent."
Trump's stated goal is to "work with them to help them make the proper choice," and his reasoning is strategic, not ideological. Without the right outcome, he warned, the same problem returns.
"I'm going to have a big impact, or they're not going to have any settlement, because we're not going to have to go do this again."
The alternative, he said plainly, is "having to do this again in another 10 years." That framing matters. For decades, American foreign policy in the Middle East has cycled between intervention and retreat, never resolving the underlying threat. Trump is signaling that this time, the endgame is part of the plan.
He described the current operations as "surgical" and backed up the posture with scale: "We have unlimited supply of weapons, unlimited. We have thousands, thousands, of them."
Trump turned his attention to the Western Hemisphere with equal directness. Cuba, he predicted, is finished.
"Cuba's going to fall, too."
The instability intensifies following the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, which severed Havana's lifeline from Caracas. Trump described the pressure campaign in concrete terms: the U.S. cut off all oil, all money, and everything flowing from Venezuela to Cuba, "which was the sole source."
And the result? "They want to make a deal."
Trump said the United States is actively talking to Cuba's communist leadership. He framed the moment with a question that doubles as its own answer: "How long have you been hearing about Cuba, Cuba, Cuba, for 50 years?"
He pointed to Venezuela as proof of concept. "Venezuela is doing fantastically," he said, praising Delcy Rodríguez by name: "She is doing a fantastic job. The relationship with them is great." The broader point is that pressure works. Cut off the money, isolate the regime, and negotiations follow. Cuba, in Trump's telling, is the next domino.
"And that's one of the small ones for me," he added. The line lands because it's probably true. Relative to Iran, Cuba is a smaller strategic footprint. But for the millions who have suffered under six decades of communist rule on that island, it is anything but small.
Trump reserved his sharpest words for Zelenskyy, expressing open frustration with the Ukrainian president's posture on negotiations.
"Zelenskyy has to get on the ball, and he has to get a deal done."
Trump said he believes Putin is ready to negotiate an end to the war. That makes Zelenskyy's resistance, in Trump's view, not just strategically unwise but inexplicable.
"It's unthinkable that he's the obstacle."
The message to Kyiv was delivered without a diplomatic cushion: "You don't have the cards. Now he's got even fewer cards." The arithmetic is cold but honest. Ukraine's leverage has diminished, not grown, as the war has ground on. Continuing to reject negotiations from a weakening position is not courage. It is a miscalculation.
For years, Washington's bipartisan establishment treated any questioning of Ukraine's strategy as tantamount to supporting Russia. That framing was always dishonest. Wanting a war to end on realistic terms is not capitulation. It is the responsibility of any leader whose people are dying.
Trump also confirmed he had moved against the AI company Anthropic, saying flatly, "Well, I fired Anthropic. Anthropic is in trouble because I fired them like dogs, because they shouldn't have done that." He offered no further detail on the mechanism, but the message was unmistakable. There are consequences for crossing this administration.
He praised Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's performance and tied it to a broader point about military readiness. "You see how good Pete's doing, and you see how good the military," Trump said. "I built the military in my first term, and I'm using it in my second term."
That single line captures the strategic logic of the moment. The investments in hardware and capability made during the first administration are now being deployed, not theoretically, but operationally, across multiple theaters. The world is watching, and the results are visible.
The interview covered Iran, Cuba, Ukraine, Venezuela, AI, and the U.S. military. On the surface, these are disparate topics. Beneath the surface, a single principle runs through every one of them: leverage applied, not just accumulated.
For decades, American power sat on the shelf. Sanctions were imposed but never enforced to their conclusion. Military assets were funded but deployed tentatively. Diplomatic engagement happened without credible consequences for walking away. The result was a world that took American threats as suggestions.
What Trump described Thursday is the opposite model:
Whether each of these moves produces the desired outcome remains to be seen. But the pattern is unmistakable, and so is the message it sends to every government, company, and leader calculating whether this administration means what it says.
It does.
