THE United States government is intensifying pressure on Cuba through a combination of military posturing, economic strangulation, and a cynical humanitarian aid offer, as the island faces what may be the most serious threat to its sovereignty since the 1959 revolution.
Over the weekend, Washington leaked intelligence to the news organisation Axios claiming Cuba had obtained around 300 Iranian drones and was drawing up plans to attack the United States.
The article acknowledged, further down, that such plans existed only as a contingency in the event of a US attack on Cuba, a caveat that did little to temper the response of Cuban-American politicians in South Florida, who circulated the story as justification for military action.
Original reporting on this story was carried out by the US-based investigative outlet Drop Site News.
On Wednesday, the Department of Justice was expected to indict 94-year-old Raúl Castro in connection with the 1996 downing of two planes carrying exiled anti-government activists from the group Brothers to the Rescue, which killed four people.
The incident came after months of repeated incursions into Cuban airspace by Brothers to the Rescue aircraft, flights contracted by José Basulto, a self-confessed CIA operative who admitted to carrying out terrorist activities aimed at overthrowing the Cuban government.
Cuba had repeatedly raised the matter through diplomatic channels before the Federal Aviation Administration took any corrective action.
Declassified documents published by the National Security Archive show the White House was aware the provocations risked a worst-case outcome that eventually materialised.
Sanctions imposed earlier this month have drawn warnings from UN experts that Cuba risks ‘energy starvation’.
Protests have broken out across the island as economic conditions deteriorate, an outcome Washington’s policy of deliberate immiseration has long sought to engineer.
US military surveillance flights near the island have increased sharply in recent weeks, fuelling concern that an operation may be in preparation.
Cuba’s conventional military capacity has been severely degraded by decades of blockade and the end of Soviet partnership.
An assessment by the US military publication SOFREP found Cuba now operates fewer than two dozen serviceable aircraft, mostly Soviet-era holdovers, with similarly limited naval and air defence capabilities.
Russia and China are reported to maintain signals intelligence installations on the island, though concrete military support from either country is believed to be minimal.
Cuba’s elite special forces units, the Avispas Negras, the Black Wasps, retain better training and equipment, but their numbers are limited, and nearly three dozen were killed in Venezuela during the US operation to capture Nicolás Maduro.
This asymmetry has shaped Cuban military doctrine.
Facing a wealthy and heavily armed adversary ninety miles off its coast, the government has built its defence strategy around ‘People’s War’, assigning wartime roles to every able-bodied adult and conducting national defence exercises to prepare the civilian population for armed conflict.
Cuba’s Civil Defence recently published a family guide to protection against military aggression, covering everything from first aid to how to identify suspicious objects.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, speaking at a ceremony marking the 65th anniversary of the socialist proclamation of the revolution, held at the same Havana site where Fidel Castro made that proclamation during a funeral for victims of US bombing raids that preceded the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, addressed the crowd in military fatigues.
‘The moment is extremely challenging and calls upon us once again, as on that April 16, 1961, to be ready to face serious threats, including military aggression,’ he said.
Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, now national coordinator of the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution, spent sixteen years imprisoned in the United States for espionage work that included infiltrating radical Cuban exile groups, among them Brothers to the Rescue.
Speaking to Drop Site News in April, he questioned the influence of hardline Miami factions and in particular Secretary of State Marco Rubio over US policy towards Cuba.
‘If the United States listens to that small group of advisers who spread misinformation about what is really happening in Cuba, they are destined to fail,’ he said. ‘It would be a massacre that would not be good for any of the people.’
On the question of popular resistance, Hernández was unequivocal.
‘Foreign aggression, no matter where it comes from, would only unite the people of Cuba.
‘Even those who do not yet agree with this government, those who complain about the scarcities, those who criticise, would unite to defend the sovereignty of their country.’
Lizara Corona, a member of a volunteer civilian militia in Havana’s Diez de Octubre neighbourhood, expressed the same sentiment.
‘Cuba poses no threat to either the government or the people of the United States,’ she told Drop Site News in April.
‘But if there is one word that has been erased from the Cuban vocabulary, it is precisely the word ‘surrender’ – there will be no surrender here; no one is going to come here and plant an American boot on our soil and tell us what to do in our own country.’
Daniel DePetris, a fellow at the Defence Priorities think tank, said the possibility of US military action could not be dismissed.
‘I don’t think there’s any doubt that the Trump administration is at least reviewing military action in Cuba as an option.
‘As the war in Iran has shown, boasting a military advantage doesn’t necessarily translate into strategic victory.’
The blockade, which Trump has escalated, has inflicted severe damage on the population.
Havana is almost entirely dark at night, its ageing electrical grid reliant on fossil fuels, with whatever supply remains prioritised for hospitals and essential services.
The Cuban government says more than 100,000 surgeries have been postponed, including operations on 12,000 children.
A recent study by the Centre for Economic and Policy Research found Cuba’s infant mortality rate rose from 4 per 1,000 live births in 2018 to 9.9 in 2025 — a rise of 148%.
The authors concluded that US sanctions are ‘very likely the primary cause of the current economic and humanitarian crisis in Cuba.’
Against this backdrop, Washington has publicised an offer of $100 million in humanitarian assistance.
Two sources with direct knowledge of the offer say it consists largely of millions of Starlink satellite internet devices, with the cash aid contingent on their acceptance.
The State Department’s public statement confirmed the package includes ‘support for free and fast satellite internet and $100 million in direct humanitarian assistance.’
Spanish-language agency EFE reported that US officials first pressed Cuba to accept Starlink units in April.
The same equipment was smuggled into Iran ahead of the US military operation there, according to reporting by the Wall Street Journal.
Rubio, in an interview with NBC News, claimed the offer consisted of food and medicine and that Cuba was refusing it.
Cuba has consistently stated its willingness to accept a genuine offer of aid and has an established working relationship with the Catholic Church’s aid group Caritas, through which a $3 million shipment was received in January and a $7 million shipment announced in February following Hurricane Melissa.
Cuban Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Carlos Fernández de Cossío said only $2.5 million of goods have actually been delivered. Rubio said the remainder was ‘held up’.
Reverend Claudia de la Cruz, executive director of IFCO/Pastors for Peace, which has over three decades of experience working in Cuba and sent delegations twice in the past five months, dismissed the offer as theatre.
‘The reality is that if the US is sincere about helping the Cuban people, then collaboration with the government of the Cuban people is the only path forward.
‘The refusal of the US to do so is part of the larger plan of having the offer of humanitarian aid be a failure or not materialise at all, to then justify further aggression.’
Hernández, reflecting on the blockade’s daily toll, put it plainly: ‘They have us by the neck trying to strangle us, and on top of that they criticise us for not being able to breathe.’
