Cuba is out of oil. Or at least that’s what it said on Wednesday.
In the past, Donald Trump would be rubbing his hands with glee, but the timing couldn’t be worse for the US President, with his war with Iran occupying the US military and damaging his political standing back home ahead of critical midterm elections in November.
“We have absolutely no fuel, we have absolutely no diesel,” said Vicente de la O Levy, the head of Cuba’s Ministry of Energy and Mines. The country is suffering blackouts of up to 22 hours a day, and Havana residents have taken to banging pots and pans in protest.
“This dramatic worsening has a single cause: the genocidal energy blockade to which the United States subjects our country, threatening irrational tariffs against any nation that supplies us with fuel,” President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez wrote on X.
It would ordinarily seem like the perfect moment for the Trump administration to follow through on its long-held goal of toppling the Cuban regime, as it did in Venezuela earlier this year. But the conflict with Iran, which has dragged on far longer than Trump initially pledged, is limiting its options.
When it comes to intervening in Cuba, “Iran has shown them that actually, no. Things are a lot more complicated than that,” H.A. Hellyer, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, told The i Paper.
‘Anything I want’ with Cuba
Trump’s White House has exerted what’s become known as its “maximum pressure” policy on Cuba, in an effort to topple the regime. It’s designated the state “an unusual and extraordinary threat” to the US and has threatened to ramp up tariffs on any country that supplies it with oil.
Sanctions were ramped up at the start of May, after which Trump promised the US would “be taking over” Cuba “almost immediately”.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has advocated putting further pressure on Cuba, telling Fox News on Wednesday that Cuba cannot flourish economically because its current leaders “have proven incapable”.
People walk on a street during a blackout in Havana on this month. Cuba blamed the United States for its lack of fuel (Photo: Yamil Lage/AFP via Getty Images)Trump has floated the idea of a “friendly takeover”, at times saying he would have the “honour” of “taking Cuba” and that he can do “anything” he wants with the country. The US President has gone so far as to joke that the US Navy can take over Cuba easily — by stationing the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln off the Cuban coast “on the way back” from Iran.
But that vast military commitment against Iran is exactly what could hold him back.
“I think, and many analysts think, that they recognise that it would be a disaster to try to militarily invade Cuba at this point,” said Helen Yaffe, a professor of political and international studies at the University of Glasgow.
While Cuba is unlikely to be able to defend itself against a full-force US attack, the US military is increasingly stretched. As of late April, 75 per cent of its aircraft carriers were committed to operations around Iran, according to a tracker maintained by the Atlantic Council, as well as a significant number of other naval vessels.
The war has also been a major drain on the US stockpile of long-range weapons. Around 1,100 long-range stealth cruise missiles, more than 1,200 Patriot interceptor missiles and over 1,000 Precision Strike and ATACMS ground-based missiles were used against Iran as of the end of April, according to The New York Times.
This has left many concerned about the US’s ability to replenish its stock to deal with future threats.
The USS Spruance firing a Tomahawk missile as part of Operation Epic Fury earlier this year (Photo: US Navy/Handout via Reuters)To be clear: even with a depleted inventory “the US has sufficient military capability in the Caribbean to attack Cuba”, Stephen Wilkinson, an expert in Cuba’s politics and international relations at the University of Buckingham, told The i Paper.
Hellyer agreed: “Conceivably, they could run two military campaigns in terms of hardware.”
But two concurrent campaigns is likely to spread the administration’s expertise and focus too thin. “Iran is already taking up huge amounts of bandwidth,” Hellyer said.
‘America First’ and unpopular wars
It’s the political upshot of the Iran war that could really limit Trump’s options in Cuba. Ahead of the midterms, the unpopularity of military intervention is top of mind with Trump and his allies.
The Iran war is deeply unpopular, even among segments of Trump’s Maga base. Polling has shown that a majority of Americans feel the intervention isn’t worth it, with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz hitting their wallets hard.
“He’s already losing support as a result,” said Hellyer.
Iran will likely to play a key role in the upcoming midterms. It’s therefore no surprise that the prospect of yet another intervention, this time in Cuba, is polling badly — 64 per cent of Americans oppose it, according to YouGov polling released last week.
And there’s an increasingly vocal anti-interventionist wing of Trump’s base — in the form of figures like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson — who have decried any foreign wars, while highlighting Trump’s “America First” pledge during his presidential campaign.
US voters are unlikely to support Donald Trump in another major foreign intervention, with the conflict against Iran ongoing (Photo: Evan Vucci/Reuters)Even Cuban emigrés who have long supported US intervention might not back it right now, Félix E. Martín, a professor in international relations at Florida International University, told The i Paper. “Their euphoria may be waning, given the protracted development and the absence of an Iraq-like moment,” he said.
Senate Republicans have begun to warn Trump off further military action. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said on Monday that he thinks “right now we’re focused on where we are and that is trying to get the Strait of Hormuz opened up”.
On Wednesday, 30 members of Congress wrote to Trump warning him to rule out military action, The Guardian reported.
Yaffe also pointed to the potential for mass migration to the US following a conflict with Cuba — another political danger point for Trump. “I think he’s got himself in a mess, no doubt about it. Because if he keeps pressuring Cuba or if there’s any kind of military intervention, then you’re gonna spark mass migration.”
This could even be “weaponised” by Cuba as a means of mobilising US public opinion against an attack, argued Charles Larratt-Smith, a University of Texas at El Paso security expert, in a recent analysis.
“Devoid of the military capacity, let alone the basic resources required to defend itself against the United States, the Cuban regime could plausibly open the pressure valve by encouraging outgoing emigration,” he wrote.
A more conciliatory tone
Trump’s militant talk has notably toned down this week, and has been replaced by talk of more conventional diplomatic and economic pressure. This may suggest that the Trump administration knows it would struggle to get public backing for another major foreign intervention.
In a post on Truth Social, the US President said that Cuba “is asking for help, and we are going to talk!!!”
John Ratcliffe, the director of the CIA, has been in Havana this week (Photo: Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images)John Ratcliffe, the director of the CIA, joined Cuban officials in a meeting in Havana on Thursday, at the request of Washington. Cuba provided assurances that it wasn’t a threat to the US and Ratcliffe said he was “prepared to seriously engage” on security and economic issues as long as Cuba showed commitment to “fundamental changes”, an unnamed CIA official told NBC news.
Meanwhile, Rubio – who wrote in his 2012 autobiography An American Son that he’d inherited his anti-communist beliefs from his grandfather and once said, “I would someday lead an army of exiles to overthrow Fidel Castro and become president of a free Cuba” – has made “numerous private offers to the Cuban regime”. This includes $100 million in humanitarian assistance, as he seeks “meaningful reforms to Cuba’s communist system,” the US State Department said on Wednesday.
Rubio said Havana turned down the proposal, something the Cuban government denies. “It’s a broken, non-functional economy, and it’s impossible to change it. I wish it were different,” Rubio told Fox News. “We’ll give them a chance. But I don’t think it’s going to happen.”
For the Trump administration, the temptation to go heavy may be hard to resist, but there are no easy answers right now.
Military intervention could leave Trump in an even stickier mess, Wilkinson said. “If the US tries to occupy Cuba they will find themselves in an intractable war.”
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