“Iran and Cuba, in cooperation with each other, can bring America to its knees.” – Fidel Castro, Tehran, May 2001
This is a moment of great uncertainty and danger as war rages in the Middle East between Iran and Israel. It is also a time for the United States to be vigilant, especially with threats nearby.
Ninety miles away from the U.S. mainland is a dictatorship openly allied to the Islamist theocracy in Iran.
On June 13, 2025, the Foreign Ministry of the Cuban dictatorship in Havana (Cubaminrex) vigorously condemned ” the attacks perpetrated by Israel against the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
On September 26, 2024 the Israeli military carried out an airstrike while Hezbollah leaders were meeting at their headquarters in Dahiyeh, south of Beirut. Killed in the attack was Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader of the terrorist group.
Miguel Díaz-Canel, Raul Castro’s hand picked president, denounced Israel on X, “We condemn the cowardly targeted assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General of Hezbollah, as a result of Israel’s attack … .”
Neither Diaz-Canel or Cubaminrex condemned Hamas, an Iran proxy, when it invaded Israel on October 7, 2023 killing 1,200, and taking hundreds of hostages, or Hezbollah, another Iranian proxy, began firing rockets into Israel, but Havana did blame the victims.
On October 8, 2023, the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Relations issued a statement condemning Israel’s “impunity,” labeling the Jewish state as an occupier and the US as historically complicit. Their allies in the region, dictators Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, and president and former M-19 terrorist Gustavo Petro in Colombia all failed to denounce the terrorist assaults on Israel.
Havana and Tehran’s allies in the United States
On the same day militant leftists, with ties to the Cuban dictatorship, organized a protest in Times Square to celebrate the killings as an act of resistance and waved signs with anti-Semitic slogans and images. The official Cuban media promoted it. On October 11, 2023, The People’s Forum (TPF) issued a statement defending their October 8th rally in Times Square, doubling down on their support for Hamas.
Manolo De Los Santos, the Forum’s co-executive director, is a longtime researcher at the “Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research” who was “based out of Cuba for many years,” where he “worked toward building international networks of people’s movements and organizations,”
In July 2022, Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, received De los Santos and executive director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, Vijay Prashad with the aim of “elaborating a new consensus, based on theory and according to the different experiences of social movements and countries, on the path of socialism.”
On January 24, 2024 Manolo De Los Santos spoke the quiet part out loud at The People’s Forum in New York City: “When we finally deal that final blow to destroy Israel. When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism.”
Sarah Milgrim and Yarón Lischinsky, two Israeli Embassy staffers, gunned down in Washington DC by a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation..
Sarah Milgrim and Yarón Lischinsky, two Israeli Embassy staffers, were gunned down outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington DC by Elias Rodriguez, a member of the Chicago branch of Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) on the evening of May 21, 2025. PSL was one of the organizations that hosted the pro-Hamas protest on October 8, 2023 in Times Square.
Havana doubles down in its support for Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah
Ali Khamenei and Fidel Castro in Non-Aligned Movement meeting in Zimbabwe, 1986 ( Public Domain )
Havana has been an ally of the Islamic regime of Iran since they Ayatollahs took over in 1979, and the Castro brothers have met with them regularly over the decades. During a May 2001 visit to Tehran, Fidel Castro proclaimed,”Iran and Cuba, in cooperation with each other, can bring America to its knees.”
In December 2023, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei welcomed Cuban president Diaz-Canel to Tehran, stating that their strategic alliance “can take a common and effective position on important international issues such as the Palestinian issue.”
The Islamic regime in Iran does not mince words, and during the Obama Administration, when many were hailing the deal reached with Tehran, the Ayatollah continued to announce the destruction of Israel.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, during a speech at the Imam Khomeini Mosque in Tehran in September 2015, said Israel “will not see (the end) of these 25 years.” This was just three months after the Iran nuclear deal was announced on July 14, 2015 in which Tehran agreed to limit its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.
There is the Islamist – Communist nexus that is both anti-Israel, and anti-American, and it passes through Havana, Cuba to Tehran, Iran.
Their allies in the United States will be holding protests in New York City, and around the country to advance their anti-Israel and anti-American agenda on June 18, 2025 with funding provided by Beijing.
Here is video from a July 24, 2024 protest outside Union Station in Washington DC where American flags were pulled down from flag poles at the entrance, burned, and replaced with Palestinian flags. Graffiti supporting Hamas terrorists sprayed on monuments is also visible in the video.
Notes from the Cuban Exile Quarter, June 16, 2025
The war on the West is undeclared, but is already being fought in Israel and Ukraine
“The era of dictatorships and totalitarian systems has not ended at all.” – Václav Havel, “Freedom and Its Enemies” November 14, 2009.
On February 20, 2014 Russian troops invaded Ukraine, and seized Crimea. Eight years later, on February 24, 2022, Moscow began a new offensive to seize all of Ukraine, but unlike in Crimea, Russian troops were unable to achieve their new objective due to armed Ukrainian resistance.
The war continues to rage today, and Moscow has brought in troops and soldiers from around the world.
Nearly 20,000 Cubans have joined the Russian army since February 2022, with the complicity of the dictatorship in Havana, to fight for Putin in Ukraine. The Islamic regime in Iran began shipping drones to attack Ukraine in 2022, and first confirmed use of of these Iranian weapons was on September 13, 2022. North Korean troops engaged in combat, on behalf of Moscow, in Ukraine on November 4, 2024. There are also unverified reports of Chinese troops and weapons being involved in the war backing Moscow in Ukraine.
Equally disturbing are the links between Cuba and Iran, and their decades long hostility against the United States.
In a transmittal letter accompanying the Defense Department’s May 1998 report, The Cuban Threat to U.S. National Security*, Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen wrote to the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee: ‘‘I remain concerned about Cuba’s potential to develop and produce biological agents, given its bio-technology infrastructure. In its public Executive Summary, the report stated,”Cuba’s current scientific facilities and expertise could support an offensive BW [bioweapons] program in at least the research and development stage.
Cuba’s biotechnology industry is one of the most advanced in emerging countries and would be capable of producing BW agents.’’In the October 2001 issue of the journal Nature Biotechnology, Jose de la Fuente,the former director of research and development at Cuba’s premier Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, wrote he was ‘‘profoundly disturbed’’ that Cuba was selling to Iran technology that could be used to produce biochemical weapons. He wrote, ‘‘No one believes that Iran is interested in these technologies for the purpose of protecting all the children in the Middle East from hepatitis, or treating their people with cheap streptokinase when they suffer sudden cardiac arrest . . ..”
During a May 2001 visit to Tehran, Fidel Castro proclaimed,”Iran and Cuba, in cooperation with each other, can bring America to its knees.”
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, during a speech at the Imam Khomeini Mosque in Tehran in 2015, said Israel “will not see (the end) of these 25 years.” This was just after the nuclear deal between Iran in which they agreed to cut its uranium stockpile.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas, an Iranian proxy, invaded Israel killing 1,200, and taking hundreds of hostages. Hezbollah, another Iranian proxy, began firing rockets into Israel.
China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Cuba are creating an alternative world order hostile to Western democracies and the rule of law.
There are two options. The first is to recognize the challenge, and develop intelligent strategies to counter it within a framework of Western alliances or secondly, ignore it, and pretend there is no threat and surrender to the new configuration of anti-democratic forces. The first is not without risk, but the latter guarantees servitude to tyranny.
However, with the first, there is an alternative to war. Cuban and Venezuelan freedom activists have made the case for it. Nazanin Boniadi, an Iranian-born human rights activist, actress, and 2023 Sydney Peace Laureate, made the same case in an OpEd published in Time today.
For decades, many of us pleaded with world leaders: reject both appeasement and war with the Islamic Republic. There was another path—to strangle the regime and empower the people. Few chose it. Too many asked the question, “Do the people of Iran really want change?” as if they did not hear waves of Iranian protestors chant, “Death to the dictator” and “Death to Khamenei” on the streets. Perhaps now—as these cries echo from the rooftops of Tehran, even under the specter of war—they will finally listen.
Ronald Reagan in his 1964 speech “A Time for Choosing” made the case plainly between the options of resistance and appeasement. “There’s no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there’s only one guaranteed way you can have peace – and you can have it in the next second – surrender,” said the future 40th President of the United States.
*Ana Belen Montes, a senior analyst on Cuba for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), who turned out to be a long term spy for Fidel Castro, participated in the preparation of the 1998 threat assessment.
https://notesfromthecubanexilequarter.substack.com/p/the-war-on-the-west-is-undeclared
Politics and Rights Review, December 6, 2024
Cuba’s Role in Terrorism and Failed Efforts at Detente
Cuba’s ties to terrorism, anti-Israel stance, and historical hostility reveal its global threat, raising concerns over U.S. policy shifts and regional stability.
By John Suarez
The Campaign to Remove Cuba from the Terrorism Sponsor List
The Cuban dictatorship and its allies operating in communist networks in the United States have conducted a sustained campaign to remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, whitewashing Havana’s record and actions that have continued to the present day. It is important to correct the record and provide some context.
In February 1969, Fidel Castro met with Swiss Ambassador Alfred Fischli and asked him to relay a message to the Nixon Administration indicating a willingness to discuss a number of contentious issues. This process led to “a bilateral anti-hijacking agreement between the United States and Cuba in January 1973.” After this “successful” agreement in 1974 the Nixon administration sent a back channel message to Fidel Castro that the United States “in principle prepared to improve relations on the basis of reciprocal measures.”
Castro responded favorably, leading Deputy Under Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger to hold a preliminary meeting on January 11, 1975, in New York City with Ramón Sánchez Parodi, a senior official of the Cuban Communist Party, and Néstor García, first secretary of Cuba’s UN mission.
Less than two weeks later, on January 24, 1975, a bomb exploded at lunchtime in the Fraunces Tavern located in Manhattan, New York City, killing four and wounded over 50. The bomb was placed by the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (FALN), a Puerto Rican terrorist group trained and financed by Havana. William “Guillermo” Morales, a bomb maker for the terrorist group who was later captured, escaped prison and fled the United States, and is harbored today in Cuba by the dictatorship. The group was responsible for over 130 bombings.
According to the FBI, one of the authors of this attack, Filiberto Ojeda Ríos “spent several years in Cuba in the 1960s and received training from the Government of Cuba as an intelligence officer.”
Terrorism, Failed Detente, and U.S.-Cuba Relations
This act of terrorism did not end the effort at detente. On July 29, 1975, the Ford Administration’s representative at the Organization of American States voted for an end to multilateral diplomatic and economic sanctions against Cuba.
Less than a month later, President Ford eased the US embargo.
Fidel Castro’s response was to send thousands of Cuban troops to Africa to fight in wars to advance communist objectives, and renewed calls for Puerto Rican independence, an objective of the terrorists who had carried out the attack in New York City.
Cuba’s Military Interventions and Continued Subversive Activities
The Republican administration’s attempt at detente ended as a result, but subsequent Democratic administrations tried with often worse outcomes.
When Havana was implicated in using money obtained from drug trafficking to provide weapons to the Colombian M19 terrorist organization, Cuba was first listed as a state sponsor of terrorism in 1982.
During the Obama Administration, Raul Castro issued a public ultimatum, stating that US and Cuban Interests Sections could only be renamed embassies and relations normalized if Cuba was removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.
The Obama Administration complied in 2015, but Havana’s sponsorship of terrorism did not end.
Cuba’s Ongoing Inclusion on the Terrorism Sponsors List
Cuba was returned to the list of state sponsors of terrorism in 2021 for three main reasons provided in a statement released by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“On May 13, 2020, the State Department notified Congress that it had certified Cuba under Section 40A(a) of the Arms Export Control Act as “not cooperating fully” with U.S. counterterrorism efforts in 2019. In addition to the support for international terrorism that is the basis for today’s action, the Cuban regime engages in a range of malign behavior across the region.
The Cuban intelligence and security apparatus has infiltrated Venezuela’s security and military forces, assisting Nicholas Maduro to maintain his stranglehold over his people while allowing terrorist organizations to operate. The Cuban government’s support for FARC dissidents and the ELN continues beyond Cuba’s borders as well, and the regime’s support of Maduro has created a permissive environment for international terrorists to live and thrive within Venezuela.”
This pattern of support for terrorism continued in subsequent years.
One year ago, on October 7, 2023, Iranian proxies Hamas and Islamic Jihad invaded and attacked Israel, murdering over 1,200 Israelis and other citizens (including 46 Americans), while also kidnapping 251 hostages. These Islamist terrorists deliberately targeted civilian women, including the killing, abduction and abuse of women, as well as the desecration of women’s bodies, and sexual violence. This was the largest mass murder of unarmed Jewish civilians since the Holocaust. Hezbollah, another Iran proxy, began launching rockets into northern Israel on October 8, 2023.
Cuba’s Anti-Israel Stance and Promotion of Antisemitism
On October 8, 2023, the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Relations issued a statement condemning Israel’s “impunity,” labeling the Jewish state as an occupier and the US as historically complicit. Their allies in the region took an equally anti-Israel line.
Dictators Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, and President and former M-19 terrorist Gustavo Petro in Colombia all failed to denounce the terrorist assaults on Israel.
Leticia Martínez, chief of communications for Miguel Díaz-Canel, and Cuban journalist Pedro Jorge Velázquez, known as “El Necio” on X, celebrated a “Free Palestine” and justified the attacks on social media. On October 8, 2023, El Necio retweeted a post from The People’s Forum calling to dismantle the Israeli state, featuring the slogan “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free!”
Since the October 7 Hamas terror attacks on Israel, El Necio has been repackaging antisemitic tropes from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and disseminating blood libels against the Jewish people over X thread. The dictatorship’s official journalist described this crime against humanity as “Palestinian resistance” launching an” unprecedented offensive in Israeli territory.”
On November 23, 2023, the Cuban dictatorship organized a mandatory 100,000-person pro-Hamas march with banners and placards supporting the Hamas terrorists.
These actions were not limited to Cuba or the internet.
Group with ties to Havana carries out pro-Hamas protests after terror attacks
On October 8, 2023, one day after the terror attacks in Israel, militant leftists held a protest in Times Square to celebrate the terrorist attack as a form of resistance, yelling anti-Semitic slogans and waving banners and posters. On October 11, 2023, The People’s Forum (TPF) released a statement justifying their October 8th demonstration in Times Square and reaffirming their support for the rampage. Manolo De Los Santos, the group’s co-executive director, is a researcher at the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, with links to the Cuban dictatorship, and he was “based out of Cuba for many years.”
https://politicsrights.com/cubas-role-terrorism-failed-efforts-detente/
South Florida Sun Sentinel, June 2, 2024
Opinion, Commentary
Concern about Cuban officials visiting MIA is well-founded | Opinion
By John Suarez
June 2, 2024 at 6:00 a.m.
The column by WLRN Americas Editor Tim Padgett in the May 26 edition of the Sun Sentinel (“What’s outrageous in Miami is the outrage — and TSA’s Cuba optics”) discusses identity politics and cultural sensitivity, but fails to address legitimate security concerns about the five-hour tour by Cuban officials to secure areas of Miami International Airport (MIA) on May 20, 2024.
Padgett left out important context. Leaked Cuban intelligence in 2018 showed that Cuban spies had stolen security codes and other confidential information from MIA.
Concern about Cuban diplomats touring security facilities at an American airport is not an example of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but a sensible response.
Consider the following on the dictatorship currently ruling Cuba. The Castro brothers came to power through a campaign of urban terrorism carried out by the July 26th Movement in the 1950s against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.
Throughout the 1950s, Castro’s July 26th Movement carried out multiple bombings, terrorizing and killing Cuban civilians. Raul Castro, considered by some as the father of the modern crime of skyjacking, plotted several skyjackings. One skyjacking resulted in the deaths of 17 civilians on November 1, 1958.
The many innocent victims and millions of property losses demonstrate without a doubt the mendacity of Fidel Castro’s claim that “the Cuban revolution never engaged in terrorism.”
Castroism views terrorism as a legitimate tactic to advance its objectives. Havana published the “Minimanual of the Urban Guerilla” by Brazilian militant communist Carlos Marighella. Translated into many languages, it contains a chapter on terrorism that states: “Terrorism is a weapon the revolutionary can never relinquish.”
In 2021 the State Department cited Havana’s “support for FARC dissidents and the ELN” and the creation of a “permissive environment for international terrorists to live and thrive within Venezuela” as one of the reasons for returning Cuba to the terror sponsor list. Today, the Cuban intelligence and security apparatus continues to infiltrate Venezuela’s security and military forces, and remains what OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro describes as an occupation army.
Cuba was first placed on the list of state terror sponsors on March 1, 1982. The U.S. State Department confirmed Havana was using a narcotics ring to funnel arms and cash to the Colombian terrorist group M-19.
Today, Havana has re-created this dynamic on a much larger scale in assisting in the creation of the Soles Cartel in Venezuela that has flooded the United States with narcotics and provided Caracas and Havana profits to destabilize the region.
It is a perverse irony that the election of former M-19 terrorist Gustavo Petro to the Colombian presidency, and his subsequent request to rescind extradition requests for ELN guerillas harbored by Cuba for a 2019 terrorist attack in Colombia is the main reason that the State Department is now saying that Havana is fully cooperating in anti-terrorism efforts.
Havana has collaborated with Iran for decades, and today continues to provide intelligence, coordinate funding efforts, and facilitate the travel of Tehran’s proxies Hamas and Hezbollah in Latin America.
Havana’s embrace of terrorism causes blowback. According to the dictatorship, the Oct. 6, 1976 bombing of Cubana airlines flight 455 that Padgett cites, caused the deaths of 73 passengers. Not mentioned is that the two persons credited by Havana for the terrorist attack had first been members of Castro’s July 26th Movement carrying out terrorism against Batista.
The Cuban dictatorship has carried out acts of state terrorism against Cuban nationals, including killing 37 men, women and children on July 13, 1994. The regime then defended and celebrated the men responsible for the massacre declaring their actions to be “exemplary.” They have not stopped. On Oct. 28, 2022, a Cuban coast guard ship purposefully rammed and sank a boat just north of Bahía Honda, killing seven refugees.
Padgett is wrong. This is not a question of slighting an ethnic group, or PTSD, but of lax protection of U.S. national security by Washington, allowing Cuban officials to visit secure areas of our ports and airports gathering intelligence that they can share with other terror states, and enemies of America — and that is an outrage.
John Suarez is executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba in Falls Church, Virginia.
Real Clear Defense, December 22, 2023
Cuba and Iran Are Still State Sponsors of Terrorism
By Joseph M. Humire & John Suarez
December 22, 2023
After the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel, the Cuban Foreign Ministry issued a statement blaming the violence on the “impunity of Israel” and calling the Jewish state an occupying power. Missing was any condemnation of the Hamas terrorists. Perhaps, that’s because Havana has been providing intelligence to Hamas for decades and holding high level meetings with them, and their main sponsor, the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Cuba, of course, is on the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism (SST). But not everyone wants to keep that designation intact.
A number of Latin American politicians are calling on the Biden administration to remove Cuba from the list. And that has become a real possibility now that Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., no longer chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. A fierce critic of the Cuban regime, Menendez resigned the post following his Sept. 22 indictment on corruption charges. His replacement, Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., does not share Menendez’ antipathy toward the Cuban regime. Neither does Rep. Jim McGovern, who has called on Biden to remove Cuba from the SST list earlier this year.
The list of State Sponsors of Terrorism is a useful foreign policy tool for pressuring rogue regimes. It’s important to keep Cuba on the list. Let’s review how Cuba got there and why it should remain.
Cuba was initially designated as a state sponsor of terror on March 1, 1982, after the State Department confirmed Havana was using a narcotics ring to funnel arms and cash to the Colombian terrorist group M-19. Three years later, M-19 members stormed Colombia’s Palace of Justice, killing 11 of the Colombian Supreme Court’s 25 justices in one of the worst terrorist acts in the country’s history. (Among those asking Biden to drop Cuba from the list, is Colombian President Gustavo Petro, a former member of the M-19 terrorist group himself.)
In 2015, with Sen. Cardin serving as ranking minority member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations , President Obama removed Cuba from the list. But Havana’s behavior did not improve:
- In 2016, US and Canadian diplomats in Cuba suffered brain damage from an unexplained illness known as the “Havana Syndrome.”
- In 2017, Cuban troops marched in a parade, presided by Raul Castro, chanting they would repeatedly shoot President Barack Obama in the head so many times they’d make a “hat out of bullets.”
- In 2020, Havana refused Colombia’s requests to extradite 10 leaders of the National Liberation Army (ELN), Colombia’s most active terrorist group, living in Cuba today. The ELN had “claimed responsibility for the January 2019 bombing of a Bogota police academy that killed 22 people and injured more than 87 others.”
For these reasons and more, the Trump administration placed Cuba back on the state sponsor of terrorism list in 2021. This pleased our democratic partners in the hemisphere who understand that Cuba has evolved from simply supporting Latin American terrorist networks to helping international terrorism, particularly from the Middle East.
Iran, the largest state sponsor of terrorism, has developed a close relationship with the regime in Cuba. When Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi visited Havana earlier this year, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel observed, “This visit reinforced our conviction that we have in Iran a friendly nation in the Middle East, with which to confide… and talk about the most complex global issues.”
Following the Oct. 7 terrorist attack, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei welcomed Diaz-Canel to Tehran, stating that their strategic alliance “can take a common and effective position on important international issues such as the Palestinian issue.”
Iran has been building an asymmetric presence in Latin America and the Caribbean for several decades and counts on Cuba to strengthen its regional network. More than 20 years ago, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro visited Tehran and expressed the hope that “Iran and Cuba, in cooperation with each other, can bring America to its knees.”
Indeed, the Castro brothers have supported Middle Eastern terrorist groups since 1966, when they hosted the leaders of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat subsequently visited Havana eight times. In the 1970s, it was common for Cuba’s Intelligence Directorate to send agents to PLO camps in Lebanon and vice versa. Between 1976 and 1982, the CIA estimated that 300 Palestinians were training in Cuban military camps.
Today, Cuba’s presence remains strong in Lebanon, and the communist dictatorship has formalized its relationship with US-designated terrorist groups, Hamas, and Hezbollah. In July 2021, Hezbollah’s head of international relations, Ammar Al-Moussawi, visited the Cuban embassy in Beirut to show solidarity during the height of anti-regime protests spreading throughout the island. Hezbollah and Cuba have both helped Venezuela’s Maduro regime and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad remain entrenched in power.
Removing Cuba’s designation as a terrorist sponsor would have multiple negative effects on U.S. national security. Chief among them is it would provide legitimacy to the longest-running dictatorship in the Western Hemisphere at a time when authoritarianism is on the rise in Latin America.
The Biden administration’s National Security Strategy, published last October, states that “the most pressing strategic challenge facing our vision is from powers that layer authoritarian governance with a revisionist foreign policy.”
You don’t fight against authoritarianism by rewarding an authoritarian regime. This is what happened in 2015, creating a moral hazard for US-Cuba policy that established perverse incentives for the Cuban regime, instead of penalties for malign activities.
Counterterrorism is not a partisan issue. Maintaining pressure on the regimes in Havana, and Tehran, and enforcing sanctions on Hezbollah and Hamas are good policy decisions. Keeping Cuba on the U.S. state sponsor of terrorism list reflects the long track record of bad behavior of the Cuban regime. Turning a blind eye to this from 2015 to 2021 was bad policy, and it put Americans at risk. The U.S. Congress should ensure that the Biden administration does not make this mistake.
Joseph M. Humire is the executive director of the Center for a Secure Free Society and a visiting fellow in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation.
John Suarez is the executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba and a human rights activist.
Miami Herald, December 12, 2023
In courting U.S.’ enemies, hemisphere’s dictators are a threat to our security | Opinion
December 12,2023
Coverage of Miguel Diaz-Canel’s visit to Iran has been almost exclusively viewed through the prism of economic engagement. This includes the Miami Herald’s Dec. 7 story “Cuba leader meets Iran’s supreme leader, opens up the island to Iranian investors.”
The story highlights the four high-level meetings between Cuban and Iranian officials. Diaz-Canel’s visit to Iran on Dec. 4 was “the first time in 22 years that a Cuban leader has visited Iran since Fidel Castro went to Tehran in 2001.”
Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi visited Cuba in June, and Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian visited in February. The leaders also met on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in September.
But this economic framing ignores broader national-security issues.
In his novel “The Ground Beneath Her Feet,” author Salman Rushdie observed that, “The only people who see the whole picture are the ones who step outside the frame.”
In addition to Cuba, Iran’s president visited Venezuela and Nicaragua in June. If the issue were forging an economic alliance among countries sanctioned by Washington, Venezuela and Cuba would make sense, but Nicaragua has a free trade agreement with the United States. What do Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba all have in common? They are all dictatorships hostile to the United States and the existing world order. Nicaragua has purchased Russian tanks, permitted a Russian base on its territory and, like Cuba, backed Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine on diplomatic and propaganda fronts.
We should also listen to what they are saying.
In Venezuela, according to The Jerusalem Post, Iran’s Raisi met with Nicolas Maduro and “spoke about the need to confront the U.S. and overturn the U.S.-led world order that has existed since the end of the Cold War.” In Nicaragua, he repeated the themes of “the resistance of the people contributes to change in the world order” and bringing “an end to the hegemonic projects of the United States.”
Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, welcomed Iran’s Raisi and first lady Jamileh-Sadat Alamolhoda at Managua’s Non-Aligned Square, where Ortega recalled that Nicaragua and Iran had “twin revolutions,” which both triumphed in 1979 and are twinned in a permanent struggle against the empires and their arbitrary sanctions.
Iran and Cuba are state terror sponsors, and the tactics of their respective intelligence agencies have been applied against dissidents in Nicaragua and Venezuela to consolidate both dictatorships.
Cuban soldiers are training in Belarus and fighting in Russian uniforms on the front lines in Ukraine. Moscow is using Iranian drones against Ukrainian targets.
In addition, China is expanding its espionage capabilities against the United States with bases in Cuba.
The current international system, which has been ruled by democracies since 1945, has an alternative challenging it, led by Beijing, Moscow and Tehran, with allies in Havana, Caracas and Managua.
The Cuban intelligence service has a history of sharing and selling information with actors hostile to the United States. The cases of accused secret agent Ambassador Manuel Rocha, who had access to the National Security Council, Ana Belen Montes at the Pentagon in the Defense Intelligence Agency, Walter Kendall Myers at the State Department and others working for the Castro regime’s Intelligence Directorate have passed on top-secret information to America’s enemies in Beijing, Moscow and Tehran, shaping U.S. policy against America’s interests and costing both lives and treasure.
Cuba and Iran have long-term relationships with terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah, and a decades-long hostility toward Israel, a U.S. ally in the Middle East. Since Oct. 7, Iran and Cuba have publicly backed Hamas and refused to condemn its terrorist attacks against Israel. Hamas is also receiving support from Beijing and Moscow.
First Ukraine, then Israel. Who will be the next democracy friendly to the United States to be targeted?
The whole picture is disturbing, but needs to be recognized and countered to defend democracy and human rights.
John Suarez is executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba.
https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article282961503.html
The Hill, October 25, 2023
Cuba’s dictatorship has a serious problem with Jews
by John Suarez
On Oct. 7 Hamas terrorists killed more than 1,300 Israelis, wounding over 3,360, and launching over 6,300 rockets. Hamas raiders entered Israel, murdering, raping, and kidnapping civilians.
In a formal statement released that same day, the Cuban Foreign Ministry blamed Israel and its “accomplice,” the U.S., for the violence. In so doing, it continues to spread a false narrative that originates in Soviet-era anti-Israel propaganda.
Cuban officials have been meeting over the last year with high-ranking officials from Iran and Hamas. Iran’s Foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian visited Cuba and met with Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel on Feb. 5 “for talks on issues of mutual interest and international topics,” according to a statement from the Islamic Republic’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
On Feb. 25, Middle East Monitor reported that a Hamas delegation publicly visited the Cuban Ambassador in Lebanon. In that meeting, Ambassador Jorge Leon Cruz recognized “the legitimate right of the Palestinians to defend their land….The Palestinians are fighting for a just cause.”
On June 15, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi publicly met with his Cuban counterpart, Miguel Diaz-Canel, in Havana.
In short, both the terrorist group Hamas and its chief patron, Iran, have close relations with Cuba’s communist regime. The Cuban dictatorship aids terrorists in the Middle East, allows Hezbollah to maintain a base in Cuba, and provides intelligence to Hamas.
The Cuban dictatorship also has a history of domestic antisemitism. Cuban officials in 2019 barred Jewish children from wearing kippahs in school. Fidel Castro in 1994 prohibited the importation of kosher meat into Cuba, despite allowing Halal food, which complies with Islamic dietary laws. Castro supported the 1975 UN resolution equating Zionism with racism and opposed its repeal in 1991.
From 1959 through 1973, Havana maintained diplomatic relations with Israel while supporting terrorism against Israelis. Castro hailed the establishment of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1965 and established ties with the Palestinian Fatah in Algiers and Damascus. Castro introduced PLO members at the Tri-Continental Conference in Havana in January 1966. This conference backed revolutionary and terrorist organizations across Europe, the Americas, and Asia with the objective of changing the world order in an authoritarian direction.
The Soviet Union assisted the Arab states in the run-up to the Six Days War in 1967. In the aftermath of their defeat, the Soviets initiated an active-measures campaign that proved effective in creating a false narrative harmful to Israel and the U.S. Eli Cohen and Elizabeth Boyd explained one part of this campaign in a must-read 2019 paper, titled “The KGB and anti-Israel propaganda operations.”
Operation SIG was a KGB active measure designed to sow worldwide disapproval for the U.S. and Israel. SIG is the Russian acronym for Sionistskiye Gosudarstva, or “Jewish (or Zionist) Government.” This involved Soviet propaganda and military support on behalf of terrorist groups declaring Israel their enemy. This included increasing anti-Israel sentiment by disseminating anti-Zionist propaganda and using anti-Semitic tropes from Western culture.
This narrative is the one that the dictatorship in Havana continues to repeat right up to the present day.
Fidel Castro, for example, compared Israel to Nazi Germany on October 15, 1979. “From the bottom of our heart, we repudiated the merciless persecution and genocide that the Nazis once visited on the Jews,” he said. “But there is nothing in recent history that parallels it more than the dispossession, persecution and genocide that imperialism and Zionism are currently practicing against the Palestinian people.”
In 2014, Castro called Israeli efforts to defend themselves from Hamas terrorism “a repugnant new form of fascism,” and a “macabre genocide against the Palestinian people.”
The Cuban dictatorship’s hostility to Israel was not limited to rhetoric and its assistance to terrorists. Cuba also involved itself in direct military action.
Castro severed diplomatic ties with Israel on September 10, 1973, just days before the Yom Kippur War began. During that war, 3,000 Cuban soldiers participated in the attack on Israel, alongside forces from Egypt and Syria, and expeditionary forces from Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Jordan, Iraq, Libya, Kuwait, Tunisia, Morocco, and North Korea.
The publication Noticias de Israel provided an in-depth description of the role played by Cuba in this war. Havana conducted a secret operation to send military support to Syria. A tank brigade, helicopter pilots, communications agents, and intelligence and counterintelligence officers took part. The brigade was under General Leopoldo Cintra Frías’s command.
Soldiers left Cuba bound for Syria, dressed in civilian clothes, with forged passports identifying them as university students. Soviet military equipment, including T-62 tanks and SAM rocket artillery, were provided to them. In all, 3,000 Cubans took part in the war. Cuban tank crews fought alongside Syrian troops in their war of aggression.
According to Foreign Report, 180 Cubans were killed and 250 were injured in that conflict. The surprise factor resulted in significant losses for Israel, both in lives and military equipment. Civilian areas were also hit, with 2,800 Israelis killed and 8,800 wounded.
In short, the Castro regime has spent decades seeking the destruction of Israel, in both its rhetoric and its actions. Cuban officials have also discriminated against Cuban Jews, and spread anti-semitic tropes.
Havana has had and continues to have a problem with Jewish people.
John Suarez is executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba, and a human rights activist.
Reuters, June 15, 2023
Cuba, Iran presidents meet in Havana, vow to confront ‘Yankee imperialism’
Nelson Acosta
Thu, June 15, 2023 at 3:33 PM EDT
By Nelson Acosta
HAVANA (Reuters) -Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi met with Cuban counterpart Miguel Diaz-Canel on Thursday, his last stop on a three-nation Latin American tour aimed at shoring up support among Latin American allies saddled, like Iran, by U.S. sanctions.
Raisi told reporters at a trade forum in Havana early on Thursday that Cuba and Iran would seek opportunities to work together in electricity generation, biotechnology, and mining, among other areas.
“The conditions and circumstances in which Cuba and Iran find themselves today have many things in common,” Raisi said in a conversation with Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel. “Every day our relations grow stronger.”
Top officials signed administrative agreements vowing to boost cooperation between the countries’ ministries of justice, and customs agencies, as well as in telecommunications.
Raisi earlier this week visited with leaders of fellow oil-producer Venezuela, where he pledged to ramp up bilateral trade and expand cooperation in petrochemicals. Prior to arriving in Cuba, the Iranian president also met with Nicaragua´s Daniel Ortega in the Central American country.
“Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Iran are among the countries that have had to heroically confront sanctions (…) threats, blockades and interference by Yankee imperialism and its allies with a tenacious resistance,” Diaz-Canel told his Iranian counterpart.
“This visit reinforced our conviction that we have in Iran a friendly nation in the Middle East, with which to confide … and talk about the most complex global issues.”
Asked earlier this week about Raisi’s tour of Latin America, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said the Iranian president could speak to his own agenda.
“We don’t ask countries in this hemisphere or any other to choose who they’re going to associate with or who they’re going to talk to or who they’re going to allow to visit,” Kirby said. “That’s for them to speak to. We’re focused on our own national security interest in the region.”
Raisi´s visit comes as Cuba also moves to bolster ties with distant, but critical, allies like Russia and China, both subject to U.S. sanctions.
Diaz-Canel last year also met with the presidents of Russia and China, firming up relations and signing deals to ease the country´s debt burden and secure aid following the devastating impacts of Hurricane Ian, which ravaged the island last fall.
Communist-run Cuba has been under a wide-reaching U.S. trade embargo since shortly after Fidel Castro´s 1959 revolution. Those restrictions, reinforced by then-U.S. President Donald Trump, have contributed to a nearly unprecedented economic crisis that has led to shortages of food, fuel and medicine.
Raisi called his visit with Iran´s key Latin American allies a “turning point” in relations.
(Reporting by Nelson Acosta; editing by Dave Sherwood and Jonathan Oatis)
https://news.yahoo.com/cuba-iran-presidents-meet-havana-193300905.html
Jerusalem Post, 15 June 2023
“Iranian President Arrives In Cuba As Part Of South America Trip”
In Venezuela, he spoke about the need to confront the US and create a “new world order” that would overturn the US-led world order that has existed since the end of the Cold War.
Published: JUNE 15, 2023 08:45
Iran’s President arrived in Cuba overnight, according to Trabajadores, a Cuban pro-government newspaper. He was met at the airport by Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and foreign minister. Riasi is on a five-day trip to South American countries.
In Venezuela, he spoke about the need to confront the US and create a “new world order” that would overturn the US-led world order that has existed since the end of the Cold War.
Raisi arrived at the José Martí International Airport in Havana, where he was met by Iranian Ambassador to Cuba Mohamad Hadi Sobhan. “During his stay, the distinguished visitor will hold talks with Cuban authorities and carry out other activities of interest,” the Cuban media said. Raisi was expected to meet with President Miguel Diaz-Canel on Thursday.
“The current president of Cuba was retained in his position for the second five-year term by the National Assembly of this country in April this year. Earlier in April 2018, he was elected president and succeeded Fidel Castro’s brother Raul,” the report added.
This is a major trip for Raisi and important for Iran’s global influence. “Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, Oil Minister Javad Oji, Defense Minister Mohammad Reza Qaraei Ashtiani, Health Minister Bahram Ainullahi and Mohammad Jamshidi, political deputy of the President’s Office, are among the President’s companions on this trip,” Iran’s pro-government media said.
https://www.jpost.com/international/article-746359
From the archives
Israel Defense, February 29, 2016
Clinton E-Mails: Hezbollah Set Up Base in Cuba – to Avenge the Death of Imad Mughniyeh
Hillary Clinton’s E-mail documents revealed that Hezbollah previously established an operational base in Cuba to support operations in South America. According to the report, the information came from the Israeli Mossad
Ami Rojkes Dombe | 29/02/2016
The publication of US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s E-mails revealed that Hezbollah had set up and operated a base in Cuba. These are E-mail correspondence made from Clinton’s private computer and contained classified information. (Side note: Do not worry; nothing to do with Israel was authorized to publish.)
According to jewishpress website, several years before Obama’s tenure, Israeli Mossad informed the Americans of that base, that is set to serve as a base for terrorist activities in Latin America. (Original document can reach the State Department website.)
It was revealed that Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, was concerned that Hezbollah wanted to carry out attacks against Israeli targets in Latin America and the Caribbean. “Also, (Hezbollah) was instructed (it’s pretty obvious by who) to start forming a targets list within the United States and Britain, including diplomatic missions, major banks, and businesses”, so stated said document.
According to the report, Nasrallah himself conducted the negotiations with the Cuban security service – Dirección General de Inteligencia Cuba, or DGI for short. He promised Cuba that Hezbollah will remain low profile and will not leave any traces of any operation conducted. There is no evidence that the DGI has assisted Hezbollah in any way.
Nasrallah believed that a terror attack in South America in honor of Mughniyeh would be a symbolic act, because of Mughniyeh’s major role in the bombing of Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992. In this context, the operational base in Cuba was to provide support for Hezbollah cells in Paraguay, Brazil and Venezuela.
By now, 46,000 documents from Clinton’s correspondence were released, out of 56,000 in total. For more interesting documents in the State Department database: Foia.state.gov
Defense Secretary, 1998
Text of Transmittal Letter
The Honorable Strom Thurmond
Chairman, Armed Services Committee
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510-4001
Dear Mr. Chairman:
Pursuant to the requirement set out in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1998 (section 1228), I directed the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to prepare a review and assessment of the Cuban threat to United States national security. In preparing this assessment, DIA coordinated with the National Intelligence Council, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the Intelligence and Research Bureau at the State Department. My office coordinated with the Joint Staff, the United States Southern Command, the National Security Council, and the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs at the Department of State.
The assessment looks specifically at Cuban military capabilities and the threat to national security that may be posed by Cuba. In reviewing the threat, the assessment addresses unconventional threats, such as the potential for the encouragement of mass migration and attacks on citizens or residents of the United States while engaged in peaceful protests in international waters or airspace. The intelligence community also looked into the potential for Cuban development of chemical and biological weapons and reviewed possible internal strife in Cuba that could involve citizens or residents of the United States or the armed services of the United States.
While the assessment notes that the direct conventional threat by the Cuban military has decreased, I remain concerned about the use of Cuba as a base for intelligence activities directed against the United States, the potential threat that Cuba may pose to neighboring islands, Castro’s continued dictatorship that represses the Cuban people’s desire for political and economic freedom, and the potential instability that could accompany the end of his regime depending on the circumstances under which Castro departs. Although the report assesses as unlikely the near-term risk of attacks on United States citizens or residents engaged in peaceful protests in international waters or airspace, Cuban authorities have miscalculated in the past and have not expressed remorse at their killing of four peaceful protesters in February 1996. Finally, I remain concerned about Cuba’s potential to develop and produce biological agents, given its biotechnology infrastructure, as well as the environmental health risks posed to the United States by potential accidents at the Juragua nuclear power facility.
The Department of Defense remains vigilant to the concerns posed by Castro’s Cuba. I have reviewed our contingency plans and they are appropriate for the level and nature of the Cuban threat to U.S. national security. We will continue to monitor developments in all these areas and will continue to update our intelligence and threat assessments in response to developing situations.
Sincerely,
signed
William S. Cohen
cc:
Honorable Carl Levin
Ranking Democrat
https://irp.fas.org/dia/product/980507-thurmltr.htm
DATE=4/2/98 TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT NUMBER=2-229139 TITLE=COHEN/CUBA (S) BYLINE=JIM RANDLE DATELINE=PENATGON CONTENT= VOICED AT: INTRO: DEFENSE SECRETARY WILLIAM COHEN DENIES A PUBLISHED ACCOUNT HE IS TRYING TO CHANGE A REPORT ON CUBA FOR POLITICAL PURPOSES. CORRESPONDENT JIM RANDLE REPORTS, MR. COHEN SAYS HE IS ONLY TRYING TO MAKE THE PUBLIC SUMMARY OF THE SECRET REPORT MORE ACCURATE. TEXT: THE NEW REPORT IS WIDELY EXPECTED TO SAY CUBA POSES LITTLE OR NO THREAT TO THE UNITED STATES. THE DOCUMENT WAS SCHEDULED TO BE DELIVERED TO MEMBERS OF CONGRESS LAST TUESDAY, BUT MR. COHEN SAYS IT WILL STAY ON HIS DESK FOR A WHILE. EARLIER, AN UN-NAMED NATIONAL SECURITY OFFICIAL WAS QUOTED AS SAYING THE REPORT WAS BEING REVIEWED TO MAKE SURE IT FIT THE TONE OF OVERALL U-S POLICY TOWARD CUBA. /// COHEN /// I HAVE NO INTENTION OF TRYING TO CHANGE THE LANGUAGE, OR CHANGE IT IN A WAY THAT WOULD SEEK TO POLITICIZE IT FOR ANY OTHER OBJECTIVE. IT IS AN INTELLIGENCE ANALYSIS AND IT SHOULD NOT BE POLITICIZED. /// END ACT /// SOME CUBAN AMERICAN MEMBERS OF CONGRESS INSIST CUBA’S BIOTECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY AND PARTLY-COMPLETED NUCLEAR REACTOR MEAN IT STILL MENACES THE UNITED STATES. (SIGNED) NEB/RAE 02-Apr-98 2:09 PM EST (1909 UTC) NNNN Source: Voice of America
https://irp.fas.org/news/1998/04/980402-cuba.htm