U.S. strategy for Cuba shifts from military option to focus on sanctions

The Trump administration’s Cuba strategy is increasingly focused on ramping up sanctions and economic pressure rather than deploying military force to break the island’s Communist leadership, people familiar with the matter said.

U.S. attention is now centred on cutting off all revenue sources for the regime rather than any military or special forces operation similar to the January raid that seized Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, according to the people, who asked not to be identified to detail the administration’s thinking.

The strategy is aimed at creating fractures in the ranks and room for negotiation in a government that’s rejected U.S. calls for change after almost seven decades of one-party rule, the people said.

While the U.S. has maintained a trade embargo on Cuba since the early 1960s, officials led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio concluded more could be done to cut off funds flowing to the powerful Castro family and military leaders, the people said.

While it’s been weeks in the making, the approach echoes a recent shift in strategy toward Iran that’s focused less on military force and more on squeezing Tehran economically. On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the U.S. would soon impose what he said were “measures like have never been seen in the history of economic isolation on a country” against Iran.

However, it’s unclear whether the new Cuba strategy can yield a breakthrough after more than half a century of controversial economic sanctions and no credible political opposition. There’s also no agreeable political leader to install, as the U.S. did in Venezuela and as President Donald Trump has said he wanted to do in Iran — where the regime has also held out against U.S. pressure.

Asked to comment, a U.S. official said the Trump administration is open to a new chapter in its relationship with Cuba and that the only thing standing in the way is the nation’s current leadership. The official said a failed state in Cuba is a threat to U.S. national security and that almost every left-wing militant group in the Western Hemisphere has relied on Cuban support at some point.

“As with any foreign policy topic, President Trump has many options at his disposal,” the State Department said in a statement. “The United States will continue to use every tool available to both address the national security threats posed by the Cuban Communist regime, and to drive the economic and political reforms to give Cuba a better future.”

The ramped-up U.S. measures on Cuba include a naval quarantine of oil deliveries to the nation’s government that has led to repeated blackouts and warnings that ever-tighter sanctions risk a humanitarian crisis. Cuban officials have condemned the sanctions as “genocidal,” saying they’re willing to make economic reforms and negotiate but that the island’s political system is not up for debate.

Since using the military to capture Maduro, Trump has repeatedly raised the prospect that Cuban leaders could be “next,” and hinted at possible military operations.

Republican lawmakers from Florida, where there is a large Cuban diaspora, have also raised expectations of kinetic action. Representative Carlos Gimenez has suggested Trump and Rubio could “annihilate” the Cuban regime in “a matter of seconds,” and cast doubt on a report that Republican senators were cautioning Trump against an attack given the war in Iran.

Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe also visited the island of 9.4 million people in May for talks with top leaders. At the time, a CIA official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Ratcliffe wanted to make clear Trump must be taken seriously, citing what happened in Venezuela.

While the eventual use of the military can’t be ruled out for a president who values unpredictability, that option is being pushed to the back burner, the people said.

The idea Trump has floated — attacking Cuba after Iran – has also become less plausible as the unpopular war in the Middle East drags into a fifth month with the U.S. clearly pressing Tehran for a deal ahead of midterm elections. The usefulness of bombing targets in a poor island nation off the coast of Miami is also unclear, and Trump wants to avoid putting U.S. troops on the ground, the people said.

In Venezuela, the White House captured Maduro and gained clear influence over the government by installing his deputy, Delcy Rodríguez, as acting president. But the picture in Cuba is more complex. U.S. officials believe President Miguel Díaz-Canel is controlled by the Castro family, with power dispersed between members of the family and officials in the military.

Rubio — a Cuban-American politician tasked by Trump to lead U.S. policy on the issue — is well known for his outspoken condemnation of the Castro regime across 14 years in the Senate and tenure in Florida politics.

But he’s recently moderated language that was more aggressive just after Maduro’s capture.

Asked if Cuba was “next” after Venezuela on a podcast released this week with Homeland Security Adviser Stephen Miller’s wife, Katie Miller, Rubio instead said he’s confident Cuba “will be on an irreversible path towards a much different future” by the time “this administration ends” in January 2029.

That’s different than his public warning that Cuban leaders were in “a lot of trouble” in the hours after Maduro’s dramatic capture. “If I lived in Havana, and I was in the government, I’d be concerned,” he said at the time.

U.S. officials have struggled to navigate between what they see as competing Cuban factions including the Castro family, the military, the Communist Party bureaucracy and descendants of other revolutionary leaders. While the White House hoped to remove Díaz-Canel and the Castro family from power, the push has been complicated by the lack of a credible opposition since revolutionary brothers Fidel and Raúl overthrew the island’s military dictatorship in 1959.

It’s also unclear whether any political transition in Cuba could totally exclude all extended members of the Castro family. Their continued proximity to power would not sit well with the Cuban-American diaspora in Miami that’s cheered the administration’s pressure campaign.

That campaign saw the U.S. in May sanction Gaesa, the military-run business conglomerate that is the largest player in the tourism industry. And in July, the U.S. added sanctions on Cuba’s tourism ministry, the second-biggest, striking at one of the island’s main economic drivers.

Yet the stepped-up oil and fuel embargo — enabled by the toppling of Maduro and U.S. control over Cuba’s energy-rich former patron Venezuela — now risks a humanitarian catastrophe, with United Nations agencies warning of food and medicine shortages, and power outages impacting hospitals and cancer treatment.

Rubio this week suggested more time was needed.

“You can’t have something in place for 70 years — it grows roots — and then think overnight you’re just going to rip out the whole thing and put something brand-new into the ground,” Rubio said on the podcast.