Citing “two sources familiar with the matter,” USA Today reported reported on April 15 that the Pentagon is preparing for a possible military operation against Cuba on Donald Trump’s orders. The independent media site Zeteo first reported this story April 13, and immediately it circulated widely on Capitol Hill and across Washington. It asserted that the Pentagon and others within government had “received a new directive straight from the Trump White House” with instructions to “quietly ramp up your operations for possible military operations against Cuba.” In typically flippant fashion, Trump told White House reporters on April 13 that “we may stop by Cuba when we’re finished with this,” referring to Iran.
EIRNS doesn’t have access to Zeteo’s complete account, but USA Today reported that the directives instructed the Pentagon to prepare a “range of contingencies” and be ready to carry out President Donald Trump’s orders, should he decide to launch military action against the island. In recent weeks, Trump’s threats against Cuba, whose economy he is strangling with an oil blockade, have been all over the map, including claims that he’s “making a deal” with Cuban leaders, to demands that President Miguel Diaz-Canel step down, to “I can do anything I want with it.”
USA Today consulted with Brian Fonseca from the very neocon Florida International University’s Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy, who noted that Trump isn’t warning of some “imminent threat” from Cuba, as he did with Iran, but predicts that any military operation against the island would be a “fast, overwhelming success.” However, what comes afterward, establishing the rule of law, “propping up opposition leaders,” could be much more difficult.
An April 14 report from Axios adds more intense war-mongering to the above, pointing to a State Department report recently sent to Congress charging that Cuba has aided Russia’s war against Ukraine, by sending 5,000 “fighters” to participate in that conflict and provide “diplomatic and political support to Moscow.” This therefore maies Cuba “complicit” in this war. The five-page unclassified document reflects Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s rage state against Cuba. It doesn’t categorically prove that Cuban soldiers were sent, but insists “there are significant indicators that the regime knowingly tolerated, enabled, or selectively facilitated the flow.” Hence, the Cuban regime “has failed to protect its citizens from being used as pawns in the Russia Ukraine War,” providing Rubio with another pretext for regime change.
