U.S. Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio told reporters this week that Cuba poses a national security threat to the United States and said the likelihood of a peaceful agreement with Havana is not high. The comments came one day after the U.S. Justice Department charged former Cuban president and military chief Raúl Castro with the murder of U.S. nationals.
War with Cuba Coming Soon?
President Donald Trump plays golf in the Senior Club Championship at Trump National Golf Club Jupiter, Sunday, April 6, 2025, in Jupiter, Florida. (Official White House Photo by Molly Riley)
President Donald Trump signs executive orders alongside Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and wounded warriors in the Oval Office, Wednesday, April 23, 2025. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)
US Secretary of State Rubio Calls Cuba a Threat to US National Security: The American Secretary of State and National Security Advisor (NSA) to US President Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, has said Cuba poses a “national security threat” to the US. He further stated that the likelihood of a peaceful agreement between Washington and the island communist nation is “not high.”
Rubio made his comments while speaking to a group of reporters on Thursday and emphasized that diplomacy “remains our preference with Cuba”, but then added: “I’m just being honest with you, you know, the likelihood of that happening, given who we’re dealing with right now, is not high.”
Earlier in the month, Rubio had discussed the situation with Cuba after providing the press with an update on the conflict in Iran. Describing the mounting crisis with the Cuban economy, he stated, “Their economic model doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. And the people who are in charge can’t fix it.”
“And the reason that they can’t fix it is not just because they’re communists – that’s bad enough, but they’re incompetent communists. The only thing worse than a communist is an incompetent one, and that’s what – so incompetent communists run that country. They don’t know how to fix it. They really don’t. And we have 90 miles from our shores a failed state that also happens to be friendly territory for some of our adversaries. So, it’s an unacceptable status quo, and we’ll be addressing it, but not today.”
Indictment of Raúl Castro
“Today” may just be around the corner.
Rubio’s comments about his pessimism as to the probability of a peaceful resolution come just a day after the US Justice Department charged Cuba’s former president and head of the island’s military, Raúl Castro, with the murder of US nationals in 1996.
The US citizens were members of an anti-Castro Cuban exile organization called “Brothers to the Rescue” (Hermanos al Rescate). They were killed when the two private civil aircraft that were flying near Cuba to drop leaflets were shot down by a Defensa Anti-Aérea y Fuerza Aérea Revolucionaria (Cuban Air Force) two-seat Mikoyan MiG-29UB-9.51 fighter aircraft.
Rubio said that Washington’s preference was still for “a diplomatic solution,” but he made it clear that President Trump retains the right and has the obligation to protect his country against any threat. In response, the Cuban Foreign Minister, Bruno Rodríguez, accused Rubio of “lies” and claimed the island did not now, nor had it ever, posed a threat to the US.
Speaking to reporters Thursday, Rubio explained that diplomacy “remains our preference with Cuba”, and that “I’m just being honest with you, you know”. He then added that the odds of this dispute being resolved peacefully were low at present because of the nature of the regime and its leadership.
Ratcheting Up Pressure
Rubio also accused Cuba of being “one of the leading sponsors of terrorism in the entire region”, which Rodríguez then denied in a post he made on the X messaging platform.
The Cuban foreign minister also denounced Rubio for attempting to “instigate a military aggression” and accused Washington of “ruthlessly and systematically” attacking his country.
Currently, Cuba is suffering from a fuel crisis that has been exacerbated by a US oil blockade.
That cutoff of the island’s oil supply has been maintained while the Cuban Government is under increasing pressure from the White House to make internal changes. The general public in Cuba has been living with severe power blackouts – sometimes lasting up to 22 hours a day – and shortages of food, water, and medicine.
Those changes amount to dismantling the communist-style dictatorship and restoration of human rights and civil liberties in Cuban society. Havana would also be forced to expel intelligence and military personnel from the People’s Republic of China, Russia, Iran, and other nations hostile to the US from the island.
In a separate event, Trump spoke to reporters in the Oval Office, saying that Cuba was a “failed country” and that his administration was trying to help them “on a humanitarian basis”. He continued by saying Cuban-Americans “want to go back to their country” and help Cuba succeed.
President Donald Trump greets members of the Navy Midshipmen football team from the U.S. Naval Academy, Tuesday, April 15, 2025, in the State Dining Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)
“Other presidents have looked at this [freeing Cuba] for 50, 60 years doing something, and it looks like I’ll be the one that does it, so I would be happy to do it,” Trump said.
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. Johnson is the Director of Research at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industry as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two awards in a row for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, specializing in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw.
xi-xi-xi
May 22, 2026 at 8:36 am
The current fast billowing very dire and dangerously dangerous threat against Cuba has come about because of the corrupt conduct of xi jinping of china.
Xi went out of his way on October 30 2025 in Busan south Korea, to grovel with president chuanpu, in order to add more untold benefits to china’s enormous export machine.
As a result, chuanpu decided he now has a free hand to finish off Venezuela, Iran and Cuba.
Xi is completely corrupt, totally amoral, and boundless in greed.
When xi visits the US later, chuanpu needs to return the big favor, and arrest xi, and put him in rikers island.
Swamplaw Yankee
May 22, 2026 at 1:02 pm
Did Castro have a minimum of 10,000 – 15,000 troops rotated into the Kremlin Muscovy Ethnic Genocide of Ukrainians meat grinder line over 5 years?
That would make about 50,000 to 75,000 Cubans trained + hardened in UAV/drone multi-layer technique.
Could it be that 1,000 to 2,000 thousand drifted off to experience Iran or North Korea?
If all still are of service age, have access to Kremlin Muscovy military grade UAV/drone technology in 2026 Cuba, can they be considered to be a factor in the manning of UAV/drone/radar networks supplied by the PRC as a component of World War Xi?
If the Cubans daily launched offensive missiles hundreds of miles into Ukraine using PRC technology sent to the Muscovy thru the artificial state run by Tehran Bayt-e Rahbari, have Han intelligence all over Cuba to update them, then can Castro easily visit any + all Yankee oil production facilities within 2,000 km of the Cuban coast line?
As MAGA Trump wishes to visit Cuba, would a visit in 2026-27 be vastly different than a US visit to Cuba staged seven or eight years earlier?
How many USA VLCC or any shipping could naval drones hit at any time? Launched from Cuban marine platforms, everything in the Gulf of America 200 km inland could have been gamed by PRC AI for effective destruction in this theatre of WW Xi.
As there seems to be zero Yankee citizen Cubans who have gone BOOTS on the Ground in Ukraine to fight the vassal NAZI Kremlin Muscovy divorcee regime, the Cuban diaspora in the USA may lack knowledge of the spectrum of lethal military power of UAV/drone technology.
If 10,000 US Cubans volunteered in 2026 to go Boots on the Ground with Ukraine then in how many months would the Cuban USA diaspora have the knowledge reserve to make ensure that the totally “Green” USA forces are at least up to Kremlin Muscovy standards in this evolving warfare?
Actually, the USA can speculate with advance AI that in just 3 months the PRC may re-fresh the Cuban military with state of the art UAV that can easily hit the USA up to 2500 km inland.
Who knows what secret trade offs MAGA Trump may have made with the vassal Kremlin Muscovy Putin at Anchorage or Xi in China?
bobb
May 23, 2026 at 2:47 am
In the next few days, US president telangpu chuanpu, or TC, will order centcom to whack iran.
Thus cuba will, for now, be put on the white house’s political back burner.
TC has not given up on his quest to strange iran, the top reason now being iran is such a hardcore s/o/b recalcitrant foe.
TC needs a win on the iran case, as tulsi gabbard is leaving the post of director of national intelligence.
Gabbard has never seen eye-to-eye with TC on iran, she being hard and fast on the opinion iran has never been a danger to US.
The coming attack on iran is a golden opportunity for vladimir putin to finish off the ukros.
But is putin intelligent enough to seize the chance.
bobb
May 23, 2026 at 8:51 am
The sabre rattling against Havana is just a clever distraction from what’s soon going to happen in the middle east.
What’s gonna happen there.
On Wednesday, trump pompously said (egged on by the media) “We’re going to get answers quickly. Iran needs to give 100% right answers, right good answers. Otherwise, we’re going straight in.”
The hell with right good answers. No one worth his salt will ever surrender both his body and soul to the devil.
No one.
bish-bish
May 23, 2026 at 6:08 pm
US foreign minister a.k.a. secretary of state Marco Rubio, is currently visiting new Delhi.
Perhaps president trump could request new Delhi via rubio to help Washington with its Cuba problem, or havana problem.
Instead of applying sanctions on Cuba with aim to force regime change, US could ask new Delhi to absorb all the cuban castroists.
With cuban castroists gone, the rest of the cuban population could then adopt the Haitian style of local governance.
That could be the best solution for Cuba, as today, nobody, and I mean NOBODY, wants to touch Haiti with a ten-meter pole.
dooyle
May 23, 2026 at 11:05 pm
President donald trump of America must take his ‘foot off the pedal’ concerning the sovereignty of cuba.
That’s because the state of Alberta, to the north of America has just voted (preliminarily) in favor of independence from ottawa.
Some people in Alberta province want ‘freedom’, but some want union with america.
The problem is now, today, in Alberta, the authorities are struggling with big south asian gangs, which like to promote violence and gun incidents.
That problem has long troubled the country of australia, which has struggled hard with highly violent middle eastern gangs frequently shooting and blowing up each other.
Just forget cuba.