The Trump administration on Thursday imposed sanctions on Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, his wife and three other individuals in the latest move by Washington to pressure Havana’s leadership.
According to a statement signed by the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, those “designated today (Thursday) direct or fund the regime and its efforts to mobilise its radical revolutionary movements in the United States and around the world.”
The move drew immediate condemnation from Havana, with President Miguel saying, “This political blindness adds to the coercive measures applied in recent weeks against our country, designed to harm the Cuban people.”
Included in the sanctions are Alejandro Castro Espín, the sole son of former Cuban President Raúl Castro and Vilma Espín.
He served as an adviser to Cuba’s Defense and National Security Commission and was present when Raúl Castro greeted then-U.S. President Barack Obama in Havana during a historic March 2016 meeting. Castro Espín’s son, Raúl Alejandro Castro Calis, also was listed.
Thursday’s penalties, which follow Trump signing of an executive order expanding sanctions against the island, freeze individuals’ property and bank accounts in the US.
But it’s unclear how intertwined their finances are with the American financial system, as analysts believe it’s “pretty unlikely” Cuba’s president and others have assets in the US, according to Richard Feinberg, former US national security adviser on Latin America and professor emeritus of international political economy at the University of California, San Diego.
The new sanctions come amid US President Donald Trump’s threats of military action in Cuba since he overthrew Nicolás Maduro in January and imposed an energy blockade that prevented petroleum supplies to Cuba. That blockade has led to severe blackouts, food shortages and an economic collapse across the island this year.
The threats took on additional weight after the U.S. announced criminal charges against Raúl Castro last month.
According to Feinberg, the latest sanctions “could be seen as preliminary to an intervention or increasing pressure on the regime to cut a deal,” adding that the rhetoric of Trump and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio “could take you in either direction.”
Reacting to the sanctions, Díaz-Canel accused Trump of making “new threatening statements against Cuba” and said “these measures are aimed at reinforcing the blockade and escalating the conflict between Cuba and the United States.”
“The aggression and perversion of the US government will clash with our resolve to confront the worst-case scenarios and resist the imperial onslaught,” he wrote on X.
Cuba’s minister of foreign affairs said “the vile inclusion” of Díaz-Canel and others, including Cuban institutions and civil society organizations, “is the latest example of the US interventionist plan to portray Cuba as a threat to US national security.”
Trump: ‘We’re going to handle Cuba after Iran’
Asked Thursday if his sanctions were meant to accelerate Cuba’s collapse, Trump said, “We just want them to be a nicely run country.”
“The country is starving, and it’s got no energy, it’s got no oil, it’s got no money, it’s got nothing. It’s got a beautiful piece of land. You could have beautiful resorts,” Trump told reporters at an unrelated event in the Oval Office.
Asked whether Cuba is close to collapsing, he said, “It’s sort of collapsed” and added that “we’re going to handle that as soon as we’ve finished” military operations in Iran.
“I like to do one thing at a time,” Trump said.
Trump has ratcheted up talk of regime change in Cuba after pledging to conduct a “friendly takeover” of the country if its leadership did not open its economy to American investment and kick out US adversaries.
Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants who has always maintained a tough stance against Cuba’s socialist regime, has stated that Trump wants to make a deal but that he is sceptical that the United States can reach a diplomatic solution with the current administration.
Rubio has defended the Trump administration’s decision to slap escalating sanctions on Havana, the largest of which is against Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A., a business conglomerate operated by the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces.
Additional sources • AP