Cuba Pressure: Rubio Urges Change, Trump Floats Warships

Washington is pushing Havana on two fronts this week: Secretary of State Marco Rubio urged Cubans to pursue political change while President Donald Trump raised the idea of US warships calling at the island's shore.

Rubio addressed a social media message to those who seek to create positive change, citing broken promises, corruption and the privileged lives of a few. He invited Cubans to work toward the change they want "through a discrete [sic] partnership with the CIA." Rubio's parents left Cuba before the socialist revolution. He appeared to have written "discrete" when he meant "discreet." He said "now is the time." The message landed shortly after Trump's comments at a Friday rally for candidates in south Florida.

Trump first floated the warship idea earlier this year but had not returned to it in months. A question shouted from the crowd about the island brought it back. He described ships passing Cuba on their return from the Iran war, with one stopping about 50 yards off the coast. "We'll do a little stopover," he said. He added that the ships would raise their hands, then said: "And then we're going to send Marco Rubio in to finish up the deal."

Havana answered the same day. Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio wrote on X that Washington was "resorting to public recruitment for the CIA." He said: "There must be a great deal of desperation or misery within the agency for it to be forced to sell its services like a tube of toothpaste."

Timeline of how the two governments reached this point:

Trump had said Cuba would "be next" for intervention abroad once the Iran war winds down, a scenario he has predicted repeatedly but which has not happened. In May, Trump and Rubio raised the possibility of military action. The threat followed the administration's announcement of criminal charges against former Cuban leader Raúl Castro. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that earlier presidents had weighed intervention for decades, but added that "it looks like I'll be the one that does it." Rubio called Cuba a longstanding national security threat because of ties to US adversaries. He said the administration sought a peaceful resolution and doubted one was possible with the current government.

Rubio had not spoken about Cuba in depth publicly for several weeks. In a 29 September interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, he said "Cuba has already fallen," describing a country without a functioning economy, run by people preaching a revolution that has been dead for 20 years. He said he hoped Cuba would choose a different path and that the United States would never permit it to become a base of operations against American interests. He did not mention any CIA operation.

Talks between the two countries have gone unevenly. Rubio and other senior aides met Cuban officials in recent months to explore better relations, but the US side left unimpressed, and more sanctions followed. In his address to the UN general assembly last month, Trump said Rubio was "deep into negotiations with Cuba." Days later, he told reporters he expected the two countries "will make a deal" and did not think the military would be needed. Earlier this week, the governments clashed at the UN as Washington sought to build opposition to an upcoming annual vote condemning the US economic embargo.

Cuba's economy has been in crisis since 2020. Gross domestic product has contracted, and the country's 10 million residents have dealt with blackouts, food shortages and inflation. Protests have broken out repeatedly, and hundreds of thousands of Cubans have left the country, many bound for the United States.

What is scheduled next: the annual UN vote on the US economic embargo is set to come up, and Trump has said he expects a deal with Cuba.