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U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday he wants to "get Cuba done" before leaving office and would "certainly consider" using military force against the island, the first time he has put a timeline on a possible operation.
"I want to get Cuba done before I leave," Trump told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on the Salem News Channel when asked whether he was considering "freeing Cuba" through military intervention.
"We’re watching it very closely. It’s doing very poorly. It’s essentially a failed nation," he said.
Trump said Secretary of State Marco Rubio would play a key role.
"We have a very good, talented guy for Cuba named Marco, because Marco’s parents are from ... Cuba, as you probably know, and he would love to do that," he said.
"Frankly, I’d love to be able to do it for the people, for the Cubans that came and were treated really badly, and they came to America," Trump said, referring to Cuban Americans who voted for him in Florida.
Trump has repeatedly talked about deposing Cuba’s communist government. In March, he said he believed he would have "the honor of taking Cuba." After the operation that deposed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, a key Havana ally, the U.S. imposed an oil blockade on Cuba, collapsing its electrical grid and triggering a humanitarian crisis.
The remarks come a week after Republicans' midterm defeat, driven in part by the unpopular war with Iran.
The State Department on Nov. 5 sanctioned eight entities, two individuals and five petroleum tankers linked to Cuba, targeting the Cuban military’s "illicit" revenue, energy supply networks, government "elites" and two Chinese state-owned defense contractors supplying Cuba’s armed forces through the procurement firm Sociedad Mercantil Duna S.A.
Those designated include Any Rodriguez Lastres, a former commercial director at the Mariel Container Terminal and daughter of Ania Guillermina Lastres Morera, head of the military conglomerate GAESA.
The Treasury expanded secondary sanctions authority to foreign persons operating in Cuba’s manufacturing, technology, electronics, and marine sectors.
"Cuba’s ruling elite is hoarding the island’s energy, shipping, and technology resources for its own enrichment, leaving the Cuban people to contend with blackouts, shortages, and a stagnant economy," Rubio said.
"We denounce that over the past 10 months, the Cuban people have suffered an unprecedented reinforcement of the US economic blockade, the imposition of an energy siege equivalent to a naval blockade, and the application of secondary sanctions," Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez wrote on X.
In Beijing on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi pledged support for Havana against sanctions, blockades and foreign interference, saying China would firmly back Cuba’s sovereignty "regardless of changes in the international situation."
Rodriguez reaffirmed Havana’s adherence to the one-China principle, as Trump's Cuba timeline raises the stakes.
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