Last January, the United States detained the former president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, in a military operation that caused a change in leadership in the country and a government that was much more open to the US Executive. Days later, the Trump Administration put its focus on Cuba: Marco Rubio launched a warning saying that the island was in “serious problems,” and Donald Trump himself warned that an agreement had to be reached before it was “too late.”
The US oil siege of Cuba
Since that agreement did not come, at the end of January, Trump declared the situation with the island an “extraordinary threat to national security” and signed a decree imposing tariffs on goods from countries that sold oil to Cuba.
This aggravated the energy crisis that the Caribbean country had already been suffering since mid-2024. As a result of Trump’s oil siege, electricity and power outages began to occur; The Cuban Government described it as “genocidal” and accused the US Administration of being “suffocating” the island.
“Friendly” takeover of Cuba
Just one day before the attacks by the United States and Israel on Iran, which led to a war in the Middle East and one of the biggest energy crises in recent years, Donald Trump declared that his country was talking to Cuba and even raised the possibility of a “friendly takeover” of the island.
Although he did not give details in this regard, the president assured that Marco Rubio was holding meetings with the Cuban regime “at the highest level” and hinted that the situation could even reach a critical point.
Several diplomatic meetings
Throughout the months of February, March and April, several diplomatic meetings took place with the aim of resolving the situation between both countries. One of them would have been the one between Castro’s grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, with Rubio sometime in February.
In April, the president of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel, stated in several statements and interviews that he would not resign from his position, while ensuring that the United States did not have a compelling and valid reason to carry out a military attack or intervention against the island.
“The moment is challenging and calls us again, as in April 1961, to be ready to face threats, among them, military aggression. We do not want it, but it is our duty to prepare to avoid it and, if it were inevitable, win it,” he said during a rally in April.
The talks continued during the month of April on several occasions and amid requests by the US to release the Cuban political prisoners. However, the negotiations continued to stall and in May Trump’s threats of intervention in Cuba returned (in fact, he even said that warships deployed by the US in the Middle East would return and stay on the island).
Indictment of Raúl Castro
But despite the negotiations, tensions between both countries have returned to a fever pitch following the indictment this Thursday of Raúl Castro, Fidel Castro’s younger brother, on charges that include the murder of Americans, a decision that was widely celebrated by the Cuban exile, but refuted by the island’s government, which assured that it had no legal basis. Castro could face life in prison for each of the four murders.
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) made public the accusation, which had been presented in April before a federal court in Florida, but had remained secret, and charged Castro with the downing of two aircraft of the humanitarian organization ‘Brothers to the Rescue’ in 1996.
The incident took place 30 years ago, when Cuban fighters attacked two of the three ‘Brothers to the Rescue’ aircraft, which were flying over the strip of sea that separates Florida from Cuba to rescue rafters fleeing the island.
Castro was then serving as minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, and although the Castro regime argued that the planes were flying over its airspace, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) ruled that the attack occurred in international waters.
The shadow of a “military aggression” and Rubio’s statements
The Cuban Government was quick to respond to the accusation against Castro, which it described as “a political action, without any legal basis,” which only sought to “faster” the argument “to justify the folly of military aggression.”
The president of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel, came out in defense of the ‘number two’ of the Cuban revolution and criticized the “infamy” committed by the United States against the Cuban “hero”, ensuring that Washington lied and manipulated about the events surrounding the downing of the small planes.
However, Trump – the main instigator of the tightening of sanctions against Cuba – ruled out that the accusation was a symptom of a new escalation, while maintaining that it was not necessary because “that place is falling apart.” For his part, Marco Rubio considered the possibilities of reaching an agreement with the Cubans “low” in view of their supposed lack of openness to changing a system that he called “failed.”
“The president’s (Donald Trump’s) preference is always for a negotiated and peaceful agreement. That remains our preference. As for Cuba, I’ll be honest, the likelihood of that happening, given who we’re dealing with right now, is not very high,” he said.
