U.S. President Donald Trump reiterated this Thursday that, after Iran, his administration will “take care of” Cuba, on a day when he continued his interventionist plan with the announcement of more illegal unilateral sanctions against the island — this time targeting President Miguel Díaz-Canel, social and civil society organizations, and relatives of the Cuban leadership.
“We’re going to take care of that [Cuba] as soon as we’re done [with Iran]. I like to do one thing at a time,” stated the White House occupant, who since last January has repeatedly threatened military intervention against the Caribbean nation while expanding the framework of unilateral coercive measures that reinforce the blockade.
In his remarks, which typically include violent threats or addressing serious issues in a flippant or anti-presidential tone, he added: “We’ll take care of the Islamic Republic of Iran. And as soon as we’re done, on our way back, we’ll make a brief stop [in Cuba]. We’ll take care of it. We want to lend them a hand.”
He stated that “we have some very good plans for Cuba” and that “we have to get rid” of the government in Havana, also alluding to an electoral angle by noting that “95% of Cubans [in the U.S.] voted for me.”
The resolution from the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposes sanctions on the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (neighborhood organizations), the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (a civil society organization), and Amistur, its travel agency, as well as on family members of President Díaz-Canel and Raúl Castro, former president and leader of the Cuban Revolution, whom it includes on the “Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List.”
In May, the U.S. government had already fabricated a legal case against Raúl Castro, in yet another instance of politically motivated prosecution, manipulating the February 1996 downing in Cuban airspace of two aircraft belonging to the Miami-based terrorist organization Brothers to the Rescue.
In response to this latest aggressive move by Washington, aimed at “strengthening the conflict scenario,” President Díaz-Canel posted on X that “this political blindness adds to the coercive measures applied in recent weeks against our country, designed to harm the Cuban people. The aggression and perversity of the U.S. government will clash with our determination to face the worst-case scenarios and resist the imperialist onslaught.”
The new round of sanctions, denounced Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla on the same social media platform, “represents the latest evidence of the U.S. interventionist plan to portray Cuba as a threat to U.S. national security.”
The Cuban Foreign Minister emphasized that “every U.S. action aimed at creating a conflict scenario between our two countries is doomed to failure” and will face “even greater unity and determination from our people.”
On the same day he was “sanctioned” by the Trump Administration, President Miguel Díaz-Canel attended the opening of a new outpatient treatment unit at the National Institute of Oncology and Radiology (INOR) in Havana.
“Despite the intensification of the blockade by the United States and the enormous challenges imposed by the energy siege, we will not waver in our determination to protect the health of our people,” he posted on X.
Last April, the head of the pediatric oncology service at INOR outlined in a social media post the obstacles and lack of supplies caused by U.S. coercive measures in the treatment of children with cancer at that institution.
By offering data and describing daily scenes, the specialist also revealed that the “decline in the survival rate of our children with cancer corresponds with astonishing accuracy to the hardest years for Cuba, with the suffocating measures that have been increasing.”
Regarding the energy blockade, he wrote that “without electricity or transportation, it is impossible to provide medical assistance. A child’s life should not be jeopardized in the name of anything. Doctors don’t perform miracles. Infrastructure, resources, medicine, and fuel are needed.”
That same month, Francisco Piñón, the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Cuba, warned that “after several months of a profound energy crisis in Cuba, the consequences are no longer abstract: they are evident in the rhythm of daily life,” and that the most serious cost of the U.S. blockade “is not measured in inconveniences, but in health.”
Piñón was referring specifically to the effect of the economic embargo on the operation of hospitals and critical services such as dialysis and cancer treatment, neonatal care and incubators, and the thousands of patients on surgical waiting lists.
The United Nations official noted that doctors and nurses are struggling to keep the health system functioning “under conditions that would pose a challenge to medical care anywhere,” while patients “wait with uncertainty, searching for a date to resume their treatment, as if the disease could be suspended.”
This situation, generated by increasing external restrictions and limited internal resources, has worsened to extreme levels with the oil embargo decreed by Trump last January, which prevents fuel from reaching the island and has severe consequences for electricity generation, economic activity, and, in addition to health, other sectors such as education, transportation, food distribution and water supply, and even the United Nations’ humanitarian efforts.
Only one oil tanker, the Anatoly Kolodkin, from Russia, has delivered crude oil to Cuba so far in 2026.
The oil embargo, decreed by executive order based on a declaration that labeled Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat,” was compounded in May by new “sanctions” with a strong extraterritorial character (which, through coercion or blackmail, indirectly involve third countries in the embargo). These sanctions have led international companies such as Sherritt, Iberia, Meliá, Iberostar, and Blue Diamonds to partially or completely shut down their operations on the island.
[ SOURCE: teleSUR ]
