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The Embassy of the United States in Cuba spread a strong warning on its social media this Tuesday from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who accused the Cuban regime of opening its doors to adversarial powers of Washington to operate on the island against U.S. national interests, and made it clear that the Trump administration will not tolerate it.
"They have rolled out the red carpet for the adversaries of the United States so they can operate within Cuban territory against our national interests with complete impunity," Rubio stated in an interview with Fox News, later amplified by the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana.
The words of the U.S. Secretary of State left no room for ambiguity: "We will not allow a foreign army, nor an intelligence or security apparatus, to operate with impunity just 90 miles from the shores of the United States. That will not happen under President Trump."
The statements were also published on X by Jeremy Lewin, a senior official at the State Department, from his verified account with the official insignia of the institution.
Rubio emphasized the geographical dimension of the threat: Cuba is "literally 90 miles from Key West, just over 100 miles from Mar-a-Lago", which makes the island a top strategic point for any power seeking to monitor or pressure the United States.
The central accusation points to China and Russia. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has identified at least 12 Chinese signal intelligence facilities in Cuba, located in Bejucal, El Salao, Calabazar, and El Wajay, with confirmed expansions through satellite images in 2024 and 2025.
The site of El Salao, in Santiago de Cuba, is particularly sensitive: it is located just 70 miles from the Guantanamo Naval Base and has the capability to track signals thousands of kilometers away.
The new satellite images confirm the expansion of these facilities in recent years, representing a sustained modernization of foreign espionage infrastructure on Cuban soil.
Russia, for its part, maintains on the island what Rubio described as its largest intelligence base outside of its own territory, and has recruited up to 20,000 Cubans to fight in Ukraine since 2022.
In February 2026, RC-135V Rivet Joint spy planes from the United States Air Force flew over the entire Cuban coast to monitor these foreign surveillance systems, an unmistakable sign that Washington is closely watching activities on the island.
These warnings are part of the maximum pressure strategy from Trump against Cuba, intensified since January 2026 with Executive Order 14380, which declared Cuba an "unusual and extraordinary threat" to national security and imposed tariffs on countries that supply oil to the island.
Since then, the United States has enacted more than 240 new sanctions against the regime and intercepted at least seven tankers bound for Cuba, in what The New York Times described as the first effective energy blockade since the Missile Crisis of 1962.
On April 10th, a bilateral meeting took place in Havana between officials from both countries, during which Washington demanded the release of political prisoners and economic reforms, while the regime prioritized the end of the energy blockade.
Trump himself opened a door on April 13 by declaring that “maybe we will stop in Cuba” after resolving other issues, and he promised a “new dawn” for the island, although the conditions imposed by Washington remain unfulfilled.
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