Is Cuba Trump’s next target after Iran?

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0:43Anthony Zurcher:Chicago talks a lot. Hold on, let me step over here. People are talking too much. We debate about food, deep dish, tavern style, who's got the best beef. We yell across rooms, across blocks, across generations. Yes, nice earrings, Grammy. And now we're doing it on our phones, too. Video calls from the L train, group chats that never shut up. Neighbors texting you the score before your TV catches up. Come on! Get a load of this guy. Catch up. On a dog. Yeah, we've got thoughts. Too loud? In Chicago, you're gonna hear it. Because nothing here gets built without conversation. Nothing moves without connection.

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1:45Donald Trump threatened Venezuela, then he pulled the trigger. He threatened Iran, then he pulled the trigger. He has also threatened Cuba. Is he going to pull the trigger? On Saturday, he said this to Latin American leaders. Many of you have come today and they say, I hope you can take care of Cuba because you've had problems with Cuba, right? You mentioned, I was surprised, but four of you said actually, could you do us a favor? Take care of Cuba. I'll take care of it. Okay. What did he mean exactly? A few days later, he said this. It may be a friendly takeover. It may not be a friendly takeover.

2:21It wouldn't matter because they're really in, they're down to, as they say, fumes. They have no energy. They have no money. They're in deep trouble on a humanitarian basis. So after Venezuela and Iran, could Cuba be next? And what would that involve? Welcome to AmeriCast.

2:46Anthony Zurcher:AmeriCast. AmeriCast from BBC News. You hear that sound? Oh, I think when I hear that sound, it reminds me of money. We didn't start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it. This is a big cover-up, and this administration is engaged in it. This guy has Trump derangement syndrome. I have four words for you. Turn the volume up.

3:13Hello, it's Justin in the worldwide headquarters of AmeriCast in London, England.

3:17Anthony Zurcher:And it's Anthony in the BBC Bureau in Washington, D.C. And we're going to talk about Cuba today, Anthony, not just because it's a fascinating place and a place lots of people have an affection for and an interest in, but also because it does appear, as we've just been hearing, it does appear, doesn't it, as if Donald Trump has plans for Cuba and plans in the relatively short term. Yeah, as we heard in those clips earlier, I mean, Donald Trump is talking about his plans for Cuba. It's no secret that he has been pivoting American foreign policy to the Western Hemisphere and views Cuba as an important piece of reasserting American control over its geographic region.

3:59Anthony Zurcher:So it is the next step, the next season of Donald Trump's foreign policy excursions, as he calls them. So I think we can expect Cuba to be in the news not just now, but even more so going forward. And the key to the pressure on Cuba is oil, isn't it? So they used to get all their oil or lots of their oil from what was the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union then collapsed. There were various difficulties that the Cubans went through getting more oil. but they've managed to have a pretty firm source of supply in Venezuela. We know what's happened in Venezuela. Venezuela pretty much cut off, well, completely cut off, actually, isn't it, since the US effective takeover of Venezuela and certainly of its ability to import and export as it sees fit.

4:45So, and we were hearing this, weren't we, on a pub we did recently, specifically on the subject of oil in Venezuela. If you don't have the oil in these nations, you do not have the electricity. So it's not just the fact that the oil's being cut off, Anthony, it's the electricity and just the way in which day-to-day life in any nation depends on electricity. And that is what the Cubans are short of.

5:07Anthony Zurcher:Right. Cuba's an island and they don't have oil wells on their island. So they need to import all of their fossil fuels. And as you mentioned, Venezuela was a key supplier for them. The United States earlier this year imposed a sweeping energy embargo on Cuba that prevented anyone, including, say, Mexico and other nations, not just Venezuela, from exporting oil into Cuba. They've made some exceptions for private businesses, but the vast majority of the oil imports were going to the state and going to power generation. And without that, as you mentioned, there's no power. They've had rolling blackouts, some that have lasted more than a day.

5:50Anthony Zurcher:And the people in Cuba are having to adjust, adapt to this lack of energy supplies. And when you say having to adjust and adapt, what do we know about how difficult life is in Cuba at the moment? Because it's one of those things, isn't it? It is possible. Holiday makers still go there, though I think probably not in the numbers that used to. There is still an ability of the outside world to get into Cuba, but the stories that you hear about it are pretty grim, aren't they? Particularly when it comes to blackouts and rubbish and all the rest of it. Yeah, I mean, the economy is grinding to a halt because without oil to power agriculture, for instance, without it to pay for transport, the entire country will shut down.

6:40Anthony Zurcher:And so I believe it is a dire situation there, not one that they aren't able to handle. They've been in these sorts of situations before, I suppose, but it is still a really pressing concern for them and a change from the vast supplies of oil they were getting from Venezuela just last year. You say they've been in this situation before. It's interesting, isn't it? They've been a thorn in the side of the United States and president after president after president after president. I mean, going back decades and decades and decades. And you think of the Bay and Pigs and all the rest of it at the beginning of the 1960s.

7:17And yet they've always managed somehow to keep going. And so this is a big moment, isn't it? If the loss of the Venezuelan oil essentially seems to be potentially, are we saying, the thing that does for them? It could be.

7:34Anthony Zurcher:They've had remarkable staying power, like you say. I mean, they have been around, despite their proximity to the United States, just 90 miles, I believe, from one part of Cuba to the U.S. state of Florida. But it is still one of these holdouts, one of these relics of the Cold War, like North Korea, that is still kind of exists the way it had even during the height of the Cold War. The fact that that this nation has been able to persevere in this family, the Castro family, has been able to keep control of this island for going on upwards of 80 years. This is a fairly remarkable achievement. But you're right, this could be the moment.

8:19Anthony Zurcher:And I think there are people in the Trump administration, particularly Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, who is the child of Cuban immigrants, who see this as a generational opportunity to change that and to make Cuba more a part of America's orbit in a way that it was prior to the Castro revolution. Yeah. And it's so tantalizing, isn't it? Because as you say, it is incredibly close. And I remember when there were rumors about Fidel's death. This is before he died, but there were rumors about it. I remember going down to Miami with BBC colleagues and doing deals with people to buy space on their speedboats because they were going to, these are wealthy emigres, they were going to, the moment his death was announced, I can remember doing this deal.

9:09I don't think any money actually changed hands, but, you know, there was talk of quite big payments to get us, news crews, onto the boats, which would sort of hurtle across that waterway and put us into Havana within, you know, a couple of hours. And the expectation was, wasn't it, that as soon as Fidel went, the whole thing would be over. And it wasn't. It just didn't happen. Right.

9:38Anthony Zurcher:I had a friend who was very anti-Castro who had a cigar. He was ready to smoke when Fidel died, and he smoked it, but the country didn't change. Raul took over. Raul is still, in theory, running the country, although I think it's members of his extended family now because he's quite old. But they have managed to persevere in the face of, as you mentioned, continued pressure by the United States in different levels, depending on different presidents. Some have tried to put the pressure on more. Some have tried to find new diplomatic ways. Obviously, Barack Obama and what he did in 2016 was the notable American outreach to Cuba.

10:20Anthony Zurcher:And it felt like things might be on the verge of changing there. But then Donald Trump came back in and changed course again and upped the pressure on Cuba. Biden didn't really touch it, I don't think, not as much after what Trump did in his first term. But now here we are, Trump's back, and it is maximum pressure once again. And this time it's maximum pressure with the precedent that we see now in Venezuela and now in Iran. I mean, that is a very different place now than we were in the past in dealing with Cuba, I think. Well, let's hear a bit more about what Donald Trump is saying at the moment about Cuba and about what ought to happen there.

10:58So as these situations in Venezuela and Cuba should make clear under a new doctrine, and it is a doctrine, we will not allow hostile foreign influence to gain a foothold in this hemisphere. That includes the Panama Canal, which we talked about. We're not going to allow it. As we achieve a historic transformation in Venezuela, we're also looking forward to the great change that will soon be coming to Cuba. Cuba's at the end of the line. They're very much at the end of the line. They have no money. They have no oil. They have a bad philosophy. They have a bad regime that's been bad for a long time.

11:42I wanted to wait a couple of weeks, but we'll be together again soon, I suspect, celebrating what's going on in Cuba. They want to make a deal so badly you have no idea. Mr.

11:51Anthony Zurcher:Cuba, you said that Cuba wants to make a deal. Yes. What would the United States get in return for that? And why should Americans trust Marco Rubio to negotiate it? Well, Marco Rubio is doing a great job. I think he's going to go down as the greatest secretary of state in history. Look at what we've done as a presidency. Look at what we've done as an administration. They trust Marco. And so do the American people trust. He's been successful no matter where he's been. he also speaks the language which is always nice and always helpful but he's dealing and it may be a friendly takeover it may not be a friendly takeover it wouldn't matter because they're really in they're down to as they say fumes they have no energy they have no money they're in deep trouble on a humanitarian basis and we don't want to see that but they were very very bad to a lot of people, as you know, and a lot of people living on the Cuban-American vote, which I got at record levels.

12:58So Anthony, when we hear all of that, does a game plan emerge to you?

13:03Anthony Zurcher:I don't know. I mean, you know, what he said there at the top about a doctrine and focusing on the Western hemisphere and tying it in to Venezuela and to Panama, we've heard that before and we talked about it before on this podcast. Now, the idea is that this is the point where Cuba is desperate. It has been cut off from any allies. You know, the Soviet Union is long gone. Now Venezuela is gone. It is truly alone. And they're going to be coming to the United States begging for a deal, in his view. And I think the goal here is to make life as difficult for Cuba as possible. And then they will eventually relent, whether that's a reality or not.

13:45Anthony Zurcher:You know, Cubans, as we discussed, have been very determined in the past. But maybe this time finally is different. Yeah. And finally, with Marco Rubio, because of his background, and as Trump says, he speaks the language. That's not in itself enough. But of course, it's more than that. He's of Cuban heritage. And you wonder, does that give him potentially a kind of deeper sensitivity to all of this than Donald Trump is interested in having? I think it definitely has put Cuba higher up on the priority list than it would have been. Donald Trump, as we have discussed before, his kind of views of the world were formed in the 70s and 80s and kind of the Cold War and anti-communism.

14:30Anthony Zurcher:So I'm sure Cuba was on his radar and he understands how important Cuba has been in American foreign policy and how frustrating U.S.-Cuba relations have been for American presidents in the past. So I think I think he's aware of it that way. But having Marco Rubio, who came up in South Florida, was involved in Florida politics before he joined the national stage. He was a foreign policy hawk, particularly on Cuba. I think having him as the point person on this, I think that sharpens it a bit. And I think that that gives Donald Trump's kind of instincts more more focus here. So I think you could make the case that the move against Venezuela, the reorientation of American foreign policy towards the Western Hemisphere, all of that is kind of directed towards what is the ultimate goal, which is flipping Cuba away from its kind of position as a rebel country and making it part of the American sphere once again.

15:29Politically, when you think of what's going on in Iran and whether or not, however that ends, we don't know how that's going to end. But, you know, at the moment that it is having consequences that could be politically difficult for Donald Trump. Let's just put it like that. Does this take people's attention off that? Does it does it add to the level of risks that the administration has? I mean, it's it's interesting, isn't it? You wonder now what the balance is between those who say, no, let's plow on. Let's go for another country. And those who say, no, no, no, let's do the opposite.

16:02Anthony Zurcher:Yeah, I don't think they can plow on right now just because so much of America, America's military force attention has been redirected towards Iran. And as we discussed in previous episodes, there's no sign that that's going to end anytime soon, despite what Donald Trump says. Now, you know, he might be able to reach some sort of a diplomatic agreement with Cuba that that short of parking an aircraft carrier off the coast and threatening them the way that we threatened Venezuela. But the type of amassing of forces that we saw outside of Venezuela and that run up that we saw for months on end before we finally made our move against Maduro.

16:41Anthony Zurcher:I don't think the United States is capable of that at this moment because we have two carrier strike groups in the Middle East and a third one possibly on the way and ongoing military campaign there. It would take some time before we get to that point with Cuba, unless it's one of these ones where the diplomats take over and they finally, because of the economic pressure, they strike some sort of an agreement. I think MAGA would be fine with that. And MAGA might even be fine with the military threatening of Cuba the same way they were with Venezuela, since it's much closer to home. But I think Iran is the one that stands out.

17:19Anthony Zurcher:And Iran is going to be the one that's very divisive if it keeps going the way it has been. And for the Democrats, what's the politics of Cuba for them now? Yeah, it's tricky, right? It used to be even trickier, I suppose, when Florida, they were very concerned about trying to win Florida in presidential elections. Now Florida seems to be solidly Republican, at least in the near term. So maybe they're a little more liberated from having to worry about the electoral consequences of angering Cuban Americans. But you still see when you listen to Democrats a fair amount of sympathy for the Cuban people, for the suffering that they have experienced under the Cuban government, human rights abuses, documented human rights abuses that the Castro regime has had in Cuba, whether they're as bellicose as the Trump administration.

18:14Anthony Zurcher:I think they would view the proper way of going the way Barack Obama followed, which was open relations, try to try to win Cuba over by normalizing trade, by exerting cultural and economic influence on the country and not by threatening war. Yeah. And of course, the central claim Donald Trump is making now, they want to make a deal so badly you have no idea. In other words, there are people there who are being talked to and who could now be persuaded that they need to take a different course. That is very much the Trump line, isn't it? And on that, we've had this voice note, which I think is fascinating.

18:56It's a voice note from an AmeriCaster, and an AmeriCaster in a particularly important place, given this conversation. Hi, I'm Juan Carlos in Havana, Cuba. Well, President Trump is always saying we are talking, we are in conversations with Cuba, but with who? Where? What are these conversations about? because nothing is said here about having talks with the US government. So what is the president talking about? Well, we got just the person to answer that because Peter Kornbluh is in the DC branch office of AmeriCast. He knows a lot about those secret talks that have been taking place or perhaps they haven't through the decades between DC and Havana.

19:39Peter is co-author of Back Channel to Cuba, the hidden history of negotiations between Washington and Havana. He's also a senior analyst at the National Security Archive. Peter, hi. Good morning. It's nice to see you. Well, it's very nice to talk to you. Answer that question, Juan Carlos's question. What is going on? What are the conversations that are happening and what are they about? What is happening right now is that they are talking to high-ranking Cubans. Those talks have been categorized as conversations and not necessarily negotiations, but I think that's quite semantical, really, just semantics.

20:21And the fact is that there's a back-channel dialogue going on between the Trump White House, Marco Rubio and his office, and relatives and people around Raul Castro, the historic only surviving leader, really, of the Cuban Revolution. His son has been identified for some talks and his grandson, Raulito, also known as El Congrejo because he has a broken finger, has also been reportedly in talks with Rubio and Rubio's office. That is fascinating. What are they being offered? I mean, what's in it for them? You know, the contours of any deal, which is Donald Trump's favorite word, are just starting to emerge.

21:09If you listen closely to Marco Rubio, he has more than once actually been asked about what the United States wants from Cuba. And he's actually given what I would consider a somewhat moderate response. Cuba needs to modernize its economy, get the Communist Party out of centralized control over investment, allow foreign investment, etc. It's not going to happen overnight, Rubio has said. It's not going to be immediate regime change and evolution, rather, politically. So the focus has been on the U.S. side has been kind of a Trump-style transactional approach of pushing for opening Cuba up to U.S.

21:56interests, U.S. business interests and U.S. investment, pushing out all the other investors who have interests in Cuba like China and Russia, and basically turning Cuba once again into a country completely dependent on U.S. support, U.S. economic control. What does Cuba get out of it? It's what Cuba doesn't get out of it. Cuba doesn't get attacked. Cuba doesn't have the U.S. military occupying its shores. Cuba doesn't have its leadership assassinated, captured, seized by U.S. special forces. So in some ways, he has Cuba under a vice grip. He has cut off all oil shipments to Cuba, to the Cuban state.

22:38He cut off Venezuela's oil shipments to Cuba, and then he threatened all other oil suppliers not to send tankers to Cuba, and so far none of them have. So Cuba is facing a kind of a coercive situation in which Trump is demanding their economic capitulation, at least, forcing them to the negotiating table.

23:00Anthony Zurcher:So you travel to Cuba fairly regularly. You were just there, what, 10 days ago. You talk about that oil embargo. How is that affecting Cuban life right now? You know, you go to Cuba, now you don't see any cars really on the streets. More and more people are riding bicycles. There's tricycles, these kind of three-wheeled contraptions. Some of them are electric, more electric scooters for youth. It's becoming reminiscent of the special period after the collapse of the Soviet Union where there was no oil like now. Cars were completely off the street and the Chinese came in and built a bicycle factory and Cubans were riding one million bicycles.

23:43Cuba has not arrived at that point yet, but it's certainly heading towards that point. And you see a kind of a step-by-step turning off the lights. So it's a progressive squeezing suffocation of the Cuban economy.