US President Donald Trump. Photo: Mark Schiefelbein/AP/file photo.
On Friday, US President Donald Trump stated that following the Pentagon’s attacks on Venezuela and Iran, “Cuba is next” on the list.
“Sometimes you have to use force, and Cuba is next,” Trump said during a speech for the Future Investment Initiative summit in Miami, Florida. During his address, he ironically requested that the media “please” ignore the statement.
The US president recalled his recent deployment of the US Army, specifically the elite Pentagon unit Delta Force, to bomb the Venezuelan capital and kidnap President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Deputy Cilia Flores, in January. This followed months of maritime siege that included extrajudicial killings by the US Southern Command in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific.
“Cuba is next,” Trump reiterated at the forum, before pivoting to anti-immigration rhetoric and defending his “America for Americans” policies.
Trump’s statements follow an announcement by Cuban President Miguel DĂaz-Canel that his country had decided to engage in a “collective” dialogue with the US. However, the Cuban leader clarified that the island’s political system “is not at stake.”
“Our political system and any decision that belongs to our people are not at stake,” DĂaz-Canel stated in an interview with La Jornada. He emphasized that the future of Havana “does not depend on the US,” a country he described as having always longed “to take over Cuba.”
DĂaz-Canel interview
In the interview, President DĂaz-Canel stated that the US regime’s greatest failure in 67 years of the Cuban revolution has been its inability to seize control of the island. The Cuban president explained that this failure has fueled a sense of anger, manifesting in a tightened embargo since 2019, including more than 240 measures implemented during the first phase of the Trump regime, as reported by Telesur.
DĂaz-Canel condemned the inclusion of Cuba on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, which has effectively cut off its international financing channels. He also highlighted a recent executive order threatening to impose tariffs on countries supplying oil to the island. This measure has resulted in Cuba receiving no fuel for nearly four months, subsequently triggering a collapse of the national electricity grid.
“On January 29, an executive order was issued declaring Cuba an ‘unusual and extraordinary threat’ to the security of the United States. It is another slander, another completely fabricated claim,” the DĂaz-Canel stated.
According to the Cuban president, the energy blockade constitutes a flagrant violation of international law, the human rights of the Cuban people, and the very logic of the free market. “They, who talk so much about free trade and the free market, are imposing on us an energy blockade that is criminal,” he concluded.
(RT) with Orinoco Tribune content
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/SF
