On May 14, CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Havana with a delegation to meet with Interior Minister Lazaro Alvarez Casas, the head of Cuba’s intelligence service and with Raul Guillermo Rodriguez Castro, grandson of the 94-year-old Raul Castro, with whom Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also previously met. [According to a Cuban government communique]( https://www.granma.cu/cuba/2026-05-14/informacion-del-gobierno-revolucionario) the Ratcliffe meeting was requested by the Trump administration and approved by “the leadership of the Revolution.”
Tensions between the two nations are very high, as the government struggles to deal with the life-threatening effects of the U.S.’s genocidal fuel blockade, in place since Jan. 29. One day before Ratcliffe’s arrival, Energy Secretary Vicente de la O-Levy announced that the island had completely run out of diesel and fuel oil and now relies on nationally-produced crude oil, natural gas and renewables, incapable of meeting national demand.
The trip’s purpose was clear. Attached to what Ratcliffe described as “a genuine offer of collaboration” in intelligence, law enforcement and security matters and to help in economic stabilization was the demand that the Cuban government “make fundamental changes” in policy and in leadership, [CBS News reported May 14.]( https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cia-director-john-ratcliffe-rare-trip-to-cuba/?intcid=CNR-02-0623 ) An unnamed CIA official elaborated that this offer “won’t be open indefinitely” and suggested that the Cuban government consider current-day Venezuela as a good model of collaboration under interim President Delcy Rodriguez. Of course, the U.S. decided to keep Rodriguez in this post after a Special Ops commando brutally kidnapped President Nicolas Maduro and removed him from the country to New York to face bogus drug-trafficking charges.
Is something like this being planned for Cuba?. Marco Rubio has repeatedly demanded that the current Cuban leadership, especially President Miguel Diez-Canel Bermudez, be removed. The Cubans “should have no illusions that the President won’t enforce red lines,” this same CIA official warned, according to The Hill, Add to this the report that some months ago Miami’s top federal prosecutor and other local and federal law enforcement officials, including the U.S. Treasury Department, launched an “initiative” to target Cuba’s Communist Party leaders for a variety of drug-related, economic, immigration and violent crimes. Although considered a symbolic act, on May 20, Cuban Independence Day, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida is holding a splashy event to announce the indictment of the 94-year-old Raul Castro in the 30-year-old case involving the Cuban military’s shooting down of a plane belonging to the Cuban-exile “group Brothers to the Rescue, which prowled around in Cuban waters to extract any Cuban seeking to leave the island on rafts. Future indictments of younger Cuban leaders are expected