{"id":316501,"date":"2026-05-25T12:00:45","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T11:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=316501"},"modified":"2026-05-20T20:34:29","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T19:34:29","slug":"the-cia-goes-to-cuba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2026\/05\/the-cia-goes-to-cuba\/","title":{"rendered":"The CIA Goes to Cuba"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Demonstrators set fire in Havana, Cuba, in protest against the lack of energy and blackouts in their neighborhoods hit with widespread power cuts on May 14, 2026.\u00a0 (Yamil Lage \/ AFP via Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

After decades of covert operations, the CIA director has given the Cubans an overt ultimatum for change on the island.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

18 May 2026\u00a0<\/em>– On 14 May, an Air Force Boeing C-40B Clipper jet with \u201cUnited States of America\u201d emblazoned on its fuselage touched down at Jos\u00e9 Mart\u00ed International Airport in Havana. It carried a high-level delegation of CIA officials, headed by CIA Director John Ratcliffe. Ratcliffe and his team soon sat down with the leadership of Cuba\u2019s intelligence community, as well as Ra\u00fal Guillermo Rodriguez Castro\u2014the grandson of Ra\u00fal Castro, who has been conducting back-channel talks with Secretary of State Marco Rubio\u2019s office since February.<\/p>\n

This was hardly a clandestine meeting. The CIA quickly posted photos of the session on X. Both the Cubans and the CIA have issued statements. The discussions, according to the Cuban government, took place \u201cin the context of complex bilateral relations\u2026to contribute to a political dialogue between both nations.\u201d CIA officials stated that Ratcliffe\u2019s mission was \u201cto personally deliver President Donald Trump\u2019s message that the United States is prepared to seriously engage on economic and security issues, but only if Cuba makes fundamental changes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The CIA has a long record of covert regime-change efforts in Cuba: the Bay of Pigs, Operation Mongoose, the ZR\/RIFLE<\/a> assassination plots among them. But this overt CIA mission may well become a capstone to that infamous Cold War history. Ratcliffe\u2019s trip marks a turning point in the protracted, punitive US efforts to force the Cuban leadership to capitulate to Washington\u2019s demands for economic and political regime change.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the official message Ratcliffe carried to Havana was a \u201cdo or die\u201d ultimatum. He reportedly reminded the Cubans of what had happened in Venezuela\u2014US Special Forces quickly killed 32 members of Cuba\u2019s security team and injured dozens more\u2014when President Maduro did not take Trump\u2019s threats seriously. As the CIA director warned the Cubans, the window for diplomatic dialogue will soon close unless they act on US demands for change; and President Trump plans to \u201cenforce his red lines\u201d if negotiations do not produce the results he desires.<\/p>\n

\u201cSubmission Diplomacy\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The CIA mission to Havana comes only one day after Cuba\u2019s minister of energy, Vicente de la O Levy, publicly conceded that the country has, essentially, run out of gas. \u201cWe have absolutely no fuel oil, and absolutely no diesel,\u201d Cuban Minister of Energy Vicente de la O Levy announced on state television last week. \u201cWe have no reserves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Denying the Cuban people gas and electricity, along with the basic economic functions they enable, has been the concerted goal of Trump\u2019s policy of extreme energy deprivation. Since US Special Forces attacked Caracas on January 3, the administration has methodically used threats and coercion to shut down Cuban access to alternative sources of petroleum\u2014with the intent of starving the Cuban people, generating popular unrest, and forcing the Cuban leadership to capitulate. \u201cThe strategy of previous negotiations with Cuba has been to offer Havana carrots,\u201d American University professor William LeoGrande<\/a> said in an interview. \u201cTrump\u2019s strategy is to beat the Cubans with a stick until they cry uncle.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the oil blockade takes a devastating toll on the Cuban people, the Trump administration has turned up the heat of economic warfare on Cuba, targeting foreign investment on the island. On May 1, Trump signed a new executive order broadening restrictions on commercial interactions with Cuban entities and applying \u201csecondary sanctions\u201d to foreign businesses that engage with \u201cblocked\u201d Cuban agencies and officials. On May 7, Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated the Cuban military corporation GAESA, which administers much of the Cuban economy, as a blocked entity along with the Cuban mining company MOA Nickel SA.<\/p>\n

MOA was established as part of a joint venture with the Canadian mining giant Sherritt International, one of the largest foreign investors on the island, which for decades has managed Cuba\u2019s nickel and cobalt mining operations. The new secondary sanctions immediately forced Sherritt to announce that it would close its mining operations on the island\u2014and request the Cuban government buy out its stake for $277 million. Two international shipping companies, which have contracts through GAESA to transport goods and supplies from China, Europe, and the Middle East to Cuba, this week also announced they would have to suspend operations because of the new sanctions. Analysts believe that the Spanish hotelier interests on the island, Melia and Iberostar, will soon terminate their operations as well.<\/p>\n

For weeks, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has demanded that Cuba open its doors to much needed investment from abroad to stimulate economic development. But US policy is now explicitly designed to push major investors off the island and scare others from coming\u2014further depressing the Cuban economy while clearing a path for US corporate interests to dominate Cuba\u2019s economic future once Trump\u2019s \u201ctakeover\u201d is complete.<\/p>\n

Setting the Stage for a US Attack<\/strong><\/p>\n

To advance that goal, the Trump administration has also stepped up its threat of military intervention against the island. Earlier this month, CNN reported<\/a> that \u201cUS military intelligence-gathering flights are surging off the coast of Cuba,\u201d and that \u201cthe US Navy and Air Force have conducted at least 25 such flights using manned aircraft and drones\u201d in recent weeks. During a recent visit to Florida, President Trump mused that he might soon position the USS Abraham Lincoln<\/em> aircraft carrier 100 yards off the coast of Havana. In his gunboat-diplomacy fantasy, the president predicted that the Cuban leadership would be scared into submission and simply surrender: \u201c\u2018Thank you very much,\u2019 they would say. \u2018We give up.\u2019\u201c<\/p>\n

There is little doubt that the US military is preparing for some form of aggression, should the president decide that Cuba\u2019s leadership has not sufficiently capitulated to his imperial demands. Just yesterday, sources leaked classified information on Cuba\u2019s limited supply of drones, and how they might be deployed in a conflagration with the United States. The intelligence, Axios<\/em> reported<\/a>, \u201ccould become a pretext for US military action.\u201d The very end of the article noted the reality: \u201cUS officials don\u2019t believe Cuba is an imminent threat, or actively planning to attack American interests.\u201d But the damage has been done. Headlines such as \u201cIntelligence report suggests drone attacks planned by Cuba,\u201d and \u201cCuba stockpiles drones and creates list of American targets,\u201d are now circulating around the globe.<\/p>\n

Moreover, this week the Trump administration is planning to use Cuban Independence Day to further set the stage for an attack. Only hours after CIA Director Ratcliffe left Havana, Department of Justice sources let it be known that Ra\u00fal Castro will be indicted on May 20 for his role as defense minister in the February 24, 1996, shootdown of two Cessna planes that had, once again, penetrated Cuban airspace.<\/p>\n

The destruction of the planes, which took the lives of four young Cuban American pilots, was unwarranted and wrong; the pilots of the Cuban MiGs that fired heat-seeking missiles at the Cessnas followed none of the international protocols for warning, intercepting, and escorting unarmed civilian aircraft. But the declassified historical record (revealed in the book Back Channel to Cuba<\/a><\/em>) shows that the shootdown was not unprovoked. It followed more than a year of overtly provocative penetrations of Cuba\u2019s airspace by the exile group Brothers to the Rescue\u2014led by a Bay of Pigs veteran, Jose Basulto, who tried to assassinate Fidel Castro in the early 1960s\u2014dropping insurrectionist leaflets over the Cuban countryside and Havana. \u201cIt was so humiliating,\u201d Fidel Castro would later tell Time<\/em> magazine. \u201cThe US would not have tolerated it if Washington\u2019s airspace had been violated by small airplanes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cuba\u2019s leadership, including Fidel, repeatedly warned Washington that the overflights constituted a threat to its territorial security that no nation could tolerate; they used every channel of communication to press the Clinton administration to halt the flights. Both White House and State Department officials repeatedly pushed the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to ground Basulto\u2014orders the FAA resisted for bureaucratic reasons. \u201cState is increasingly concerned about Cuban reactions to these flagrant violations. They are also asking from the FAA what is this agency doing to prevent\/deter these actions by Brothers to the Rescue,\u201d a FAA e-mail recorded only a month before the fatal flight. \u201cWorst case scenario is that one of these days the Cubans will shoot down one of these planes and the FAA better have all its ducks in a row.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the Trump administration, indicting the last surviving leader of the Cuban revolution on trumped-up charges makes perfect political, psychological, and military sense. Pegged to Cuba\u2019s Independence Day, the indictment of Ra\u00fal Castro will be a public relations boon as well as a political bone to the hard-line anti-Castro community in Miami that has for years demanded that he be prosecuted for authorizing shooting down those planes. Since the administration used the same blueprint of an indictment to justify its raid on Caracas to seize Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, an indictment of Castro significantly escalates the psychological warfare directed at the Cuban leadership to force their capitulation. And creating the fig leaf of legal proceedings will enable Trump to bypass the War Powers Act, as he did in Venezuela, by claiming to Congress that military operations in Havana are for law enforcement purposes, rather than an act of warfare to overthrow the Cuban government.<\/p>\n

To their credit, Democrats in Congress, and a few Republicans, have tried to preempt Trump\u2019s quest to conquer Cuba militarily. A war powers resolution<\/a> sponsored by Senators Tim Kaine (D-VA), Adam Schiff (D-CA), and Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) \u201cto direct the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities within or against the Republic of Cuba that have not been authorized by Congress,\u201d failed by a vote of 51 to 47 on April 28. In a May 12 letter to Secretary of Defense Hegseth and Secretary of State Rubio, 33 members of Congress called on the administration to \u201clift the coercive economic measures\u2014including the fuel blockade and related sanctions\u2014that are contributing to the humanitarian crisis in Cuba,\u201d and \u201cabandon reported plans for US military action against Cuba.\u201d According to the signatories, \u201cthe United States must not respond to a crisis it is creating with policies that deepen suffering, undermine the rule of law, and repeat the gravest failures of its past.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it is clear that Congress has neither the votes nor the power to stop Trump\u2019s regime-change efforts in Cuba.<\/p>\n

That leaves the Cuban government to defend itself, even as the country has reached a tipping point of deprivation and frustration. As a sense of imminent attack pervades Cuba, this past weekend authorities began distributing a nine-page civil defense booklet titled \u201cFamily Guide for Protection Against Military Aggression: Protect, Resist, Survive, and Overcome\u201d to prepare the citizenry for US military hostilities. Among its instructions were how to seek shelter during an aerial attack, first-aid training, and the concept of guerrilla-style resistance if US troops occupy the island. \u201cWe are preparing to defend ourselves,\u201d Cuba\u2019s ambassador to Washington, Lianys Torres Rivera, said in an interview with The Hill<\/em><\/a> last week. \u201cWe don\u2019t want Cubans dying in Cuba,\u201d she added, nor \u201cany American soldier.\u201d<\/p>\n

_____________________________________________<\/p>\n

Peter Kornbluh, a longtime contributor to <\/em>The Nation on Cuba, is co-author, with William M. LeoGrande, of\u00a0<\/em>Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana. Kornbluh is also the author of <\/em>The\u00a0Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – thenation.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

18 May 2026\u00a0– After decades of covert operations, the CIA director has given the Cubans an overt ultimatum for change on the island–\u201cSubmission Diplomacy\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":316502,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[3143,2642,1473,417,133,1559,1854,530,3281,2242,1126,1966,1050,1049,950,541,3324,2571,4047,779,880,2200,70],"class_list":["post-316501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latin-america-and-the-caribbean","tag-anti-hegemony","tag-anti-imperialism","tag-blockade","tag-bullying","tag-cia","tag-collective-punishment","tag-crimes-against-humanity","tag-cuba","tag-evil-empire","tag-famine","tag-hegemony","tag-hunger","tag-imperialism","tag-inhuman-punishment","tag-invasion","tag-latin-america-caribbean","tag-north-america","tag-official-lies-and-narratives","tag-raul-castro","tag-sovereignty","tag-state-terrorism","tag-us-empire","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316501"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":316503,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316501\/revisions\/316503"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/316502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}