The President of the United States, Donald Trump, stated yesterday that his country will "take Cuba almost immediately" and threatened to deploy an aircraft carrier a hundred meters off the island's coast to force the regime's surrender, according to comments reported by El País during a private dinner at the Forum Club in West Palm Beach, Florida.
"Upon our return from Iran, we will send one of our aircraft carriers, perhaps the Abraham Lincoln, to come close, halt a hundred meters off the shore, and they will respond: thank you very much, we surrender," Trump declared before the event attendees.
The president conditioned the action on first concluding military operations in Iran: "We'll finish this first; I like to complete tasks."
Trump made a mistake when describing the Abraham Lincoln as "the greatest in the world"; that title belongs to the USS Gerald R. Ford, which is currently operating in the Middle East alongside the Abraham Lincoln and the USS George H.W. Bush as part of Operation Epic Fury against Iran.
The statements were made on the same day that Trump signed a new executive order that expands and tightens sanctions against Cuba, blocking all assets in U.S. territory belonging to individuals linked to key sectors of the Cuban economy: energy, defense, mining, and financial services.
The measure, which takes effect immediately without prior notice to prevent the transfer of funds, also prohibits entry to the U.S. for officials, collaborators, and adult family members of the designated individuals, and extends secondary sanctions to foreign banks that facilitate transactions with those affected.
The document signed by Trump states that the policies of the Cuban regime "continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States" and that they "are repugnant to the moral and political values of free and democratic societies."
The new order complements Executive Order 14380 from January 29, 2026, which declared a national emergency by considering Cuba a threat to the security of the U.S. and imposed an energy embargo. Since then, the Trump administration has accumulated over 240 sanctions against the regime and intercepted at least seven tankers, cutting between 80% and 90% of Cuban oil imports.
The threats from Trump are not new. In February, he stated that he would have the honor of taking Cuba and that a military operation "wouldn't be very difficult." In March, he declared to CNN that "Cuba is going to fall pretty soon" and that "Cuba is ready, after 50 years." On April 27, Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that Cuba "only has two destinies: none of them good".
The congresswoman María Elvira Salazar celebrated the new executive order on the social network X: "The era of appeasement politics has ended: we will not allow a regime aligned with our enemies to operate just 150 kilometers from our shores."
The regime responded to the escalation by moving the May 1st parade to the Anti-Imperialist Tribune in front of the U.S. embassy in Havana, under the slogan "The Homeland is Defended", presided over by Raúl Castro and Díaz-Canel. On April 29, Díaz-Canel had already declared that "there is no excuse to justify aggression against the island," in the context of the U.S. military exercise Flex2026 involving drones, artificial intelligence, and naval patrols from Key West.
The Cuban economy is experiencing its worst crisis in decades, with power outages of up to 25 hours a day affecting more than 55% of the territory and a projected contraction of 7.2% for 2026, totaling a decline of 23% since 2019.
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