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Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced this Thursday new sanctions against the Cuban military conglomerate GAESA, its director Ania Guillermina Lastres Morera, and the mining company Moa Nickel S.A., while the Trump administration keeps the possibility of military action against the island open.
Additionally, the announcement comes days after the State Department began highlighting personnel to the U.S. Southern Command in Miami in anticipation of possible hostilities with Cuba, while also reinforcing its disaster preparedness logistics center in South Florida.
Similarly, the announcement comes on the same day that Rubio travels to the Vatican to meet with León XIV, with Cuba being one of the topics on the agenda, including humanitarian aid to the island.
The sanctions imposed this Thursday were enacted under the executive order signed by Trump on May 1 against "those responsible for the repression in Cuba and threats to national security and U.S. foreign policy."
Rubio described GAESA as "the heart of the kleptocratic communist system of Cuba," a conglomerate controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces, which dominates between 40% and 70% of the formal Cuban economy, with estimated assets of over 18 billion dollars.
Regarding the mining company Moa Nickel S.A., Rubio stated that it "has exploited Cuba's natural resources to benefit the regime at the expense of the Cuban people" and that it "gains profits from assets that were originally expropriated by the Cuban regime from American citizens and corporations."
On the same day of the announcement, the Canadian mining company Sherritt International —partner of Moa Nickel since 1994— suspended all its operations in Cuba and began to repatriate its expatriate employees, depriving the regime of its largest mining partner.
Last Tuesday, Rubio was photographed alongside General Francis L. Donovan in front of a map of Cuba at the Southern Command headquarters in Doral, Florida. The following day, the Secretary of State explained the image at a press conference at the White House: "Cuba is within Southern Command, it's the closest point to the U.S. I thought it would be good to take the photo in front of that map."
In that same press conference, Rubio harshly described the Havana regime: "The only thing worse than a communist is an incompetent communist. They don't know how to fix it."
Last Monday, Trump stated at a private dinner that the U.S. "will take Cuba almost immediately" after concluding military operations in Iran, and on Tuesday, he reiterated the threat of deploying the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln "a few hundred meters" off the Cuban coast.
The regime responded with defiant rhetoric. Last Sunday, Díaz-Canel warned delegates from 36 countries about "the imminence of a military aggression" and invoked the doctrine of the "War of All the People," stating that "every Cuban woman and every Cuban man has a rifle" and an assigned position for defense.
This escalation occurs in the context of accumulated pressure since January 2026: over 240 sanctions against the regime and the interception of at least seven oil tankers, which has reduced energy imports by between 80% and 90% and caused power outages of up to 25 hours a day in more than 55% of Cuban territory.
Rubio warned that the pressure is not over: "Additional appointments can be expected in the coming days and weeks," and the Pentagon has accelerated plans for a possible intervention in the island, according to sources cited by U.S. media.
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