The Trump administration has been escalating its pressure campaign against Cuba’s communist regime, using sanctions, surveillance, legal action, and public warnings to push Havana toward major political and economic change.
President Donald Trump has also been signaling for months that Cuba could become a major focus of U.S. action. In March, he openly floated the possibility of “taking” the island nation via direct American involvement. And now Axios is out with a new report that could signal the convoluted way the United States government plans to justify military action.
The Axios Report
As reported on Monday’s AM Update, Axios – which has been repeatedly used by the Trump administration to front reporting on, for example, the Iran War and its imminent end that turns out not to be true – reportedly viewed classified intelligence showing Cuba has acquired more than 300 military drones from Iran and Russia and is discussing how they could be used against U.S. targets, including the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, U.S. military vessels, and, possibly, Key West, Florida, which is just 90 miles from Cuba.
U.S. officials told Axios they do not believe Cuba is preparing an imminent attack but say the drone buildup, combined with the presence of Iranian military advisors in Havana, is changing the way Washington views the threat from the island.
Axios conceded the intelligence “could become a pretext for U.S. military action.”
Cuba’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, pushed back on the reporting Sunday night. “Without any legitimate excuse whatsoever, the US government builds, day after day, a fraudulent case to justify the ruthless economic war against the Cuban people and the eventual military aggression,” he wrote on X. “Specific media outlets play along, promoting slanders and leaking insinuations from the U.S. government itself.”
“Cuba neither threatens nor desires war,” he added. “It defends peace and prepares itself to confront external aggression in the exercise of the right to legitimate self-defense recognized by the UN Charter.”
Cuba’s Decline
The Axios report comes as the communist government faces one of its most serious internal crises since taking power in 1959. U.S. sanctions, the Trump administration’s oil blockade, and decades of economic mismanagement have left Cuba dangerously short on fuel and power, leading to widespread blackouts and frequent protests from the Cuban people.
Last Thursday, CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to the country for an unusually public warning to the regime. He reportedly told Cuban officials in a bilateral meeting that the island can no longer be used as an alleged staging ground for America’s enemies, namely China and Russia. The CIA director demanded the regime shut down Chinese and Russian intelligence stations on the island, outposts the U.S. claims are used by the adversarial nations to capture communications.
Cuban officials said they used the meeting to argue that they pose no threat to the United States, as the country faces crippling repercussions from the U.S. oil embargo.
Legal Chatter
The pressure campaign has also turned legal, with the Department of Justice reportedly preparing to indict former Cuban leader Raul Castro on charges over Cuba’s downing of planes run by a humanitarian aid group 30 years ago.
Castro was serving as Cuba’s defense minister in 1996 when the Cuban military fired on two small aircraft operated by Brothers to the Rescue, a Miami-based group that searched for Cuban refugees stranded at sea. The planes went down over the waters between Cuba and Florida, killing all four men – three U.S. citizens and one legal permanent resident – on board.
Havana defended the attack by claiming the aircraft had entered Cuban airspace, but that claim was later rejected by international aviation authorities. The looming indictment is not particularly subtle in its warning for Cuban officials. Earlier this year, the Trump administration used a federal indictment against former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro as the legal justification for the January raid that removed him from power.
The impending Castro indictment, however, dates back to an event more than 30 years ago, as opposed to the Maduro indictment which was handed down in 2020 and outlined decades of drug-related crimes. Castro also left power in 2021.
The Analysis
On Monday’s edition of The Megyn Kelly Show, Megyn dove deeper into the Axios reporting that she believes “is not getting enough attention today.” Watch:
You can get all the day’s headlines by tuning into the AM Update with Megyn Kelly on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch AM Update on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111).