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After Venezuela, Trump trains guns at Cuba for regime change: Report
Cuba has long depended on Venezuela for oil supply and has been receiving subsidized oil from around 1999, when Hugo Chávez became Venezuela’s President.
Weeks after a successful military operation in Venezuela to capture their President Nicolas Maduro and followed cooperation by the country’s acting President Delcy Rodríguez, the United States, led by President Donald Trump has now trained its guns towards Cuba.
The officials of the Trump administration are now looking for insiders in the Cuban government who can help broker a deal aimed at ending the Communist regime in the country by the end of this year, reported The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter.
This comes just days after Trump, on January 11, threatened Cuba to make a deal with the US “before it's too late”.
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"THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA - ZERO! I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE," Trump had written in a heavily-worded post on Truth Social, in his signature all-caps style.
According to the people cited above, The Trump administration believes that the Cuban government has become fragile particularly after losing their major ally Maduro and that the country’s economy is close to collapse. According to senior US officials, the military operation in Venezuela leaves behind a blueprint and warning for Cuba, the report said.
A White House official echoed what Trump said and advised Cuba to “make a deal before it’s too late”. “Cuba’s rulers are incompetent Marxists who have destroyed their country, and they have had a major setback with the Maduro regime that they are responsible for propping up,” the report quoted the official as saying.
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‘No oil for Cuba’
Cuba has long depended on Venezuela for oil supply and has been receiving subsidized oil from there from around 1999, when Hugo Chávez became Venezuela’s President.
However, Cuba’s economy now faces a major threat that could cripple it as the US plans on stopping that supply, according to senior US officials. If that happens, economists say that Cuba could run out of oil in a matter of weeks and the country’s economy runs the risk of collapsing.
The Trump administration is also hitting Cuba’s another major stream of hard currency - its overseas medical missions, by imposing visa restrictions on Cuban and other foreign officials who allegedly facilitate the program.
‘Tougher nut to crack’
While Cuba does not yet face a military threat issued by the US publicly, several Trump allies expect the Community regime in the Caribbean country to end. However, the Trump administration faces the risk of a major humanitarian crisis which could follow the ouster of the Cuban government.
Despite its challenges, the Cuban regime has long faced the US pressure but managed to not succumb to it.
“These guys are a much tougher nut to crack,” WSJ quoted Ricardo Zúñiga, a former Obama administration official, as saying. “There’s nobody who would be tempted to work on the U.S. side,” he added.
Zúñiga had helped negotiate the short-lived detente between the US and Cuba from 2014 to 2017, the report said.
Iran also in Trump’s crosshairs
Unlike Cuba, Iran faces a more direct threat by Trump amid the ongoing protests in the country. Speaking in a recent interview with News Nation, Trump warned Tehran that the “whole country is going to get blown up” if the unrest continues.
He also responded to Iran's 'all-out war' warning and said, "I've left notification, anything ever happens... the whole country's going to get blown up."
“If anything happens, we're going to wipe them off the face of the earth,” he added.
