U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday said the United States is “looking into” whether Cuba is stockpiling Iranian drones and suggested that Washington could take action if that’s the case.
“If they do have that, and they might very well have that … we’ll take care of it in short order,” Trump told reporters. “We’re not going to allow that to happen. So, it could be that they’re storing some. We’re looking into it now. It could be so, and it maybe isn’t.”
Foreign Policy has not been able to independently verify whether military drones are present in Cuba, and the White House referred us to Trump’s remarks when contacted for more information. The Cuban Embassy did not respond to a request for comment.
National security and Latin America experts told FP that it’s probable that Cuba has such drones, but they also emphasized that it’s extraordinarily unlikely that Havana is planning on taking offensive actions against the United States. The experts also believe that the recent alarm raised over drones in Cuba is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to establish a pretext for U.S. military action against the island as it works toward the goal of collapsing the government in Havana.
Cuba probably has a few hundred unmanned aerial vehicles in its possession, such as Iranian Shahed drones, Brian Fonseca, vice provost for defense and national security research and director of the Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy at Florida International University, told FP. “The Iranians have proliferated cheap Iranian drone technology wherever they can,” Fonseca said, and Cuba is a “potential market” for such weapons.
Havana also may have speculated on various scenarios involving drones, which the U.S. Defense Department routinely does in its military planning, as well, Fonseca said. But he added that it’s “crazy” to believe that Cuba would plan on taking preemptive action against the United States. “It would be suicidal for the regime, even against the backdrop of what’s going on now,” he said.
Fulton Armstrong, a former national intelligence officer (the U.S. intelligence community’s most senior subject-matter analyst) for Latin America, told FP that during the more than 30 years he worked in intelligence, he often witnessed people beat the drums on a “threat that doesn’t exist” in Cuba to make “political gains.” Armstrong sees the recent warnings on drones, among other issues brought up in relation to Cuba, as a continuation of this tradition.
“People do this because you keep the relationship off balance and you give governments, including Democratic administrations, a pretext for doing aggressive things,” Armstrong said. “It’s been a game for decades. Predict regime collapse, predict regime regression, so that we then can do whatever the hell we want to.”
Though there isn’t concrete public evidence that Cuba has drones, Armstrong said it’s “logical” for Havana to be “looking around for some defensive capabilities” because the United States is “trying assiduously to overthrow their government” and “threatening military attacks.”
“But there has never been, in 63 years since the Cuban missile crisis, any evidence of Cuba [having] offensive intentions against the United States or southern Florida or Guantanamo,” Armstrong said.
Trump’s comments on Monday came as the United States continues to impose a crippling oil blockade on Cuba, which just experienced its third nationwide blackout in two weeks. The blockade is part of an apparent effort to topple the Cuban government—and a dramatic escalation of the decades-long U.S. embargo on the island that has failed to bring down the Communist regime. Trump has also discussed the possibility of using force against the country. “I do believe I [will be] having the honor of taking Cuba,” Trump said in March.
In recent weeks, senior military officials at the Pentagon have been developing options for strikes on Cuba, per a report from CBS News. The Pentagon declined to comment on the report.
Monday was not the first time that the alleged presence of drones in Cuba has come up amid the United States’ pressure campaign against the island. In May, Axios reported that Cuba had acquired roughly 300 military drones and has discussed using them in an attack on the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, U.S. military vessel, and possibly even Key West, Florida. The report was based on classified military intelligence, which has not been publicly confirmed.
On July 8, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who is now the chairman of the nonprofit, nonpartisan policy organization United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), cited that report during an event held in Florida aimed at “highlighting the growing security threat posed by the Iranian regime’s military relationship with Cuba and the global proliferation of Iranian drone technology.”
“Iran has been a consistent threat to the united security interests of our country,” Bush said at the UANI event. “I also want to point out that the press reports that there are 300 of these [drones] in Cuba.”
“I think it’s important to recognize that Iran has consistently been working with Cuba, Venezuela prior to the departure of Maduro from the regime, creating instability in not just in Cuba, but certainly in the region,” Bush added, in reference to former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who was captured by the United States during a military raid in January.
Fonseca said he believes that the release of the classified intelligence on drones in Cuba to Axios “was part of U.S. efforts to lay the foundation for the use of the military as an instrument of national power to affect some change here.” He pointed to a “constellation” of developments that took place around the same time, including CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s visit to Havana and the U.S. Justice Department’s unsealing of indictments of former Cuban President Raúl Castro and alleged co-conspirators.
One day after the indictments were unsealed, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is Cuban American and is considered the architect of the administration’s policy toward Cuba, told reporters that the country poses a “national security threat” to the United States, accusing Havana of being “one of the leading sponsors of terrorism in the entire region.”
This week, the United States also imposed new sanctions targeting “the Cuban Regime’s Sources of Funding and Tools of Oppression.”
And last Sunday, Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Cuba is “a national security threat, and this administration’s not going to stand for it any longer.”
Trump administration officials are making this case even as U.S. policies toward the country exacerbate a dire humanitarian crisis that experts say makes the prospect of Havana taking military action against the United States highly implausible.
Fonseca said a Cuban attack involving 300 drones would also be “quite inconsequential” to the United States and its defenses.
“It’s silly to pretend that Cuba has a meaningful offensive military capability. It’s a relatively small island who, even in its heyday, could not threaten the United States, and its military has been degraded significantly over recent decades. But it’s just part of the case that’s being made that Cuba is a bad actor,” Benjamin Gedan, director of the Stimson Center’s Latin America program, told FP.
This is not to say there aren’t credible concerns for the United States with respect to Cuba, such as the reported presence of Russian and Chinese signals-intelligence gathering sites on the island. But whether even these threats necessitate a military response is open to debate.
The Cuban government is “clearly an appalling regime” when it comes to democracy and human rights,” Gedan said, though this does not appear to be Trump’s main priority.
“All administrations have been uncomfortable with the kind of access Russia and China has to Cuba, given the geography,” Gedan said. “But it would be a real uphill battle to try to persuade the American public that the United States is at risk from Cuban drones. Maybe the base on Guantanamo but certainly not the U.S. mainland.”
The Cuban government has accused the Trump administration of trying to set the stage for military action.
“#CubaIsNotAThreat and U.S. intelligence agencies know it. How could it be a threat to the world’s greatest military and nuclear power? The fabrication of false pretexts against Cuba from South Florida is the perfect business for a group of discredited and corrupt politicians who continue to profit from the suffering of the Cuban people,” Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez posted on X on Thursday.
Trump also has other factors to consider, including his declining public support ahead of the upcoming midterm elections.
“I think it has to be this year,” Fonseca said of possible U.S. military action against Cuba, because if Republicans lose their majorities in the House and Senate in November, then they’re likely to be “more unwilling to give the Trump administration unfettered support.”
Trump also appears to view Cuba as a soft target. “He seems persuaded that Cuba would be easy like Venezuela was and not a quagmire like Iran has become,” Gedan said.
“The Rubio factor means it’s very unlikely that the administration will just forget about Cuba. And because of that, it’s really important to think about the implications of things like the indictment of Raúl Castro and the reports of these Iranian drones in Cuba,” Gedan said. “It is very unlikely the U.S. will just move on and forget about it.”
