Cuba's Foreign Minister, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, responded this Sunday to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, calling the assertion that the island poses a threat to Washington a “ridiculous and clumsy lie.”
Through a message published on the social network X, the Cuban chancellor stated that Rubio is trying to build an argument to harden U.S. policy towards Havana.
"The Secretary of State insists on the ridiculous and clumsy lie, which neither he nor his corrupt colleagues believe, that #Cuba could pose a threat to the greatest nuclear power on the planet," Rodríguez wrote.
The official also accused the head of U.S. diplomacy of using that argument to justify the sanctions policy against the island.
"It is a desperate attempt to justify the current genocide against the Cuban people through collective punishment, and a fanciful pretext for military aggression that would result in a bloodbath of Cuban and American citizens," he added.
Rodríguez's statements come a day after Rubio defended on Fox News, during the program My View with Lara Trump, the State Department report titled "Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism", published on July 20th.
During the interview, Rubio stated that Cuba has developed over decades a sophisticated espionage capability against the United States.
"It is the only country that has systematically implanted and concealed spies within the U.S. system, without even paying them," said the Secretary of State, who described the island as a "superpower in espionage and influence operations," despite its small size and geographic proximity to U.S. territory.
The report, which is approximately 100 pages long, asserts that Cuban intelligence services managed to infiltrate institutions such as the Department of State, the National Security Council, and the Department of War of the United States. Additionally, it attributes to Cuba the operation of 18 signals intelligence facilities with participation from China and Russia.
To support these conclusions, Rubio mentioned the cases of Ana Belén Montes, a former analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency convicted of espionage on behalf of Cuba, and former U.S. ambassador Víctor Manuel Rocha, sentenced in 2024 after admitting he worked for decades as an agent of the Cuban regime.
The Secretary of State also dismissed criticisms from those who believe that the report aims to justify a military intervention against the island.
"Everything in that report is factual, and frankly, I don't think they can refute it," he stated.
The exchange adds to a series of public confrontations between the two officials. Since the publication of the State Department report, Rodríguez has described the document as a "fallacy" and "slanderous pamphlet", in addition to accusing Rubio on multiple occasions of promoting a confrontation between the two countries.
During the interview, Rubio also questioned sectors of the press and academia in the United States for, according to him, downplaying the intelligence activities of the Cuban regime due to ideological motivations. He also linked Havana to influence operations related to the 2020 protests in the United States and to political activism movements in the country's universities.
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