Iran war may be ending but humiliated Trump could hit Cuba next

The disastrous Iran war may be ending. But a humiliated US may look to Cuba as the next victim with Trump’s crony Marco Rubio applying heavier sanctions. The Americans have been making their aggressive intentions clear for months.

US outlet The Hill reported on 11 June that the US State Department:

announced that it will sanction Cuba’s state-owned oil and gas company Unión Cuba-Petróleo (CUPET) amid escalating tensions between the U.S. and the island country.

At the centre of the move was Trump’s Cuban-American henchman and secretary of state Marco Rubio. Rubio said:

the latest sanctions are pursuant of President Trump’s May 1 executive order expanding sanctions on government officials, agents “or material supporters of the Cuban government,”.

The sanctions concern Cuba’s oil and gas company Unión Cuba-Petróleo (CUPET).

Defence secretary Pete Hegseth was at the US military colony Guantanamo Bay on 10 June. As the Canary reported, Hegseth:

told a captive audience of American soldiers that Cuba had better not try and get long-range weapons. The US has been ramping up threats against the island state.

Rubio accused the Cuban government of:

diverting its energy resources “to line their own pockets: reselling countless barrels of scarce energy on the secondary market, hoarding energy supplies for its military, intelligence and repressive forces, and rationing energy as a tool of social control.”

Which is a bit rich coming from an openly far-right government committed to denying its citizens even basic healthcare while spending billions on a failed war in Iran.

An Iran deal could mean US move on Cuba

Meanwhile, a Pakistan-brokered deal to end the US attack on Iran looks close. Al Jazeera reported on 12 June that Pakistan’s PM Shehbaz Sharif had said:

Pakistan is now working closely with both sides to finalize the next steps. Peace has never been this close as it is now.

As the Canary has reported, the US was looking to bring the Americas to heel before it blundered into the Iran war.

Trump’s 2025 national security strategy said as much. The US wants to ensure:

the Western Hemisphere remains reasonably stable and well-governed enough to prevent and discourage mass migration to the United States.

And that those pliable governments:

cooperate with us against narco-terrorists, cartels, and other transnational criminal organizations.

Trump and his cronies want:

a Hemisphere that remains free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets, and that supports critical supply chains.

Cuba is the closest dissenting nation to the US in the Americas. And for Trump’s generation it is an unresolved problem. He would return to it to the status of a mafia-run US vassal state. It will be a happy day when the war against Iran ends. But a humiliated US empire is still a dangerous beast. And the people of Cuba may be the first to feel Trump’s post-Iran wrath.

Featured image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

By Joe Glenton