Mr. Rubio, in Havana, there are also clerics in power—just without turbans

In February, at the Munich Security Conference, Marco Rubio explained with a clarity seldom heard from a diplomat why negotiating with Iran is so challenging: on the other side of the table sit radical Shia clerics who make geopolitical decisions based on pure theology. He added that no one has ever successfully reached an agreement with Tehran. In July, he went further: whenever those in power in Iran sign something, they either break it or want to change it. And in April, he described the underlying problem: American negotiators are not negotiating with the Iranians, because those Iranians then have to negotiate with other Iranians, the ones who truly make the decisions.

It is an impeccable diagnosis. That is why it is so difficult to understand that the Secretary of State himself, a child of the Cuban exile, who knows Castroism better than any U.S. official in recent decades, continues to treat the regime in Havana as if it were a distinct interlocutor.

It is not. It is the same kind of power. The prayers change, not the liturgy.

Mr. Secretary: you already know how a regime that decides by dogma negotiates.

A theocracy without God

Fundamentalism does not need a religion. It requires a dogma that stands above the nation, an infallible prophet, a sacred book, and a mechanism ready to punish heresy. The Cuban dictatorship has all four.

It has its prophet, Fidel, whose words are quoted as scripture even though he has been dead for ten years. It has its sacred text: a Constitution that declares socialism "irrevocable," meaning that it legally prohibits Cubans from changing their minds. It has its clergy, the Communist Party, and its Revolutionary Guard, known in Cuba as FAR, MININT, and GAESA. And it has its own Council of Guardians: the Castro family, which does not hold visible positions but decides what gets signed and what does not.

Rubio describes Iran as a country where the president speaks but the Supreme Leader commands. In Cuba, Díaz-Canel speaks and Raúl Castro commands. Real conversations, as has been reported this year, do not go through formal channels but rather through Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, "El Cangrejo," the grandson of the general and colonel of MININT. If that isn't negotiating with some so they can negotiate with others, it certainly resembles it closely.

The same technique: buying time

What Rubio says about Iran, that he signs to break or to rewrite, is exactly the history of Washington's dealings with Castroism.

With Obama, the dictatorship achieved in two years what it had not attained in half a century: removal from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, an embassy, flights, cruises, unlimited remittances, and a U.S. president strolling through Havana. In return, it released around fifty political prisoners, many of whom were arrested again later. Repression did not decrease; it increased. And just a few days after Obama’s visit, Fidel stated that Cuba did not need anything from the empire. The regime kept everything that was given to it and did not relinquish anything of significance.

It wasn't an accident. It's the method. Castroism negotiates like the ayatollahs: it agrees to sit down when the pressure threatens its survival, stretches timelines, demands payment in advance, and when the air begins to flow again, reopens what seemed closed. It did this with Mariel, during the raft crisis, and with the prisoners of the Group of 75, whom it released in exchange for exiling them to Spain. Each concession was a transaction to breathe, never a change of course.

What they say themselves

There's no need to interpret. Just listen to them.

On September 8, Chancellor Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla emphasized that there have been no negotiations with the United States, nor any agreements or roadmaps. On Tuesday, while Trump confirmed at the UN that Rubio is personally handling discussions with Havana, the Cuban delegation walked out of the plenary session. Then on Thursday, Deputy Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío explained that it is impossible to talk about progress while Washington continues to impose sanctions, which in his words means: first lift the pressure and then we will see.

That is the complete script. Deny in public what is done in private. Demand concessions as a prerequisite. Declare sovereignty, the political system, and political prisoners as non-negotiable, which is precisely the only thing that should be negotiated. Pezeshkian said this week in New York that any future conversation is contingent on Washington first meeting Iran's conditions. Change the name and the accent, and it is Fernández de Cossío.

The error of the technocrats

On Wednesday, Rubio stated that the Cuban regime "is quite intransigent" and that there are figures with blood on their hands with whom the United States will never be able to work. However, he also spoke about people with whom collaboration is possible if they are willing to lead the country towards political and economic freedom. In June, he had already mentioned "technocrats" within the apparatus before Congress.

There lies the risk. With Iran, no one in Washington buys the tale of the moderate ayatollah anymore: Rubio himself dismissed the distinction between moderates and hardliners. In Cuba, the story of the reformist technocrat is the same trap dressed in a different suit. A technocrat of the Castro regime is an official who has survived decades within a sect that punishes heresy. If he has made it that far, it is because he has never been a heretic. And a grandson of Raúl Castro in a MININT uniform is not a transition: it is continuity with a surname.

What Washington already knows how to do

The lesson from Iran is simple: with a fundamentalist regime, one does not negotiate based on promises, but on verifiable facts, and in the correct order. First they give, then they receive.

Applied to Cuba, this means that there can be no relief from sanctions, nor any gesture, before certain irreversible actions occur: the release of all political prisoners without exile, the legalization of independent parties and press, an electoral calendar with international oversight, and the dismantling of GAESA as the power's cash box. Any other sequence is just repeating 2014, and we already know how that ended.

Rubio summarized it well in February when speaking about Iran: it's complicated, no one has succeeded, but we will try. With Cuba, we must also try. But we need to attempt it knowing who we sit at the table with. A sect that has written in its Constitution that it will never change is not seeking an agreement. It is seeking time. And the time that the dictatorship gains is paid for by millions of Cubans in the dark, without food and without medicine.

Mr. Secretary: you already know how a regime that decides based on dogma negotiates. You have explained it better than anyone else. Now it just remains for you to apply it to the island of your parents.