The Donald Trump administration hopes to execute a regime change in Cuba by the end of 2026, according to sources cited by the Wall Street Journal. The report comes just weeks after the US military kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on dubious drug charges.
The newspaper said Washington is now “searching for Cuban government insiders who can help cut a deal to push out the Communist regime by the end of the year,” with senior US officials holding regular meetings with Cuban exiles and pressure groups in recent months.
The administration believes the Cuban government is more “fragile” than ever and its economy “close to collapse,” the Journal added. While there is currently no “concrete plan” to topple the Cuban state, the paper said the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro earlier this month serves as a “blueprint” for US officials.
Maduro’s January 3 kidnapping was reportedly helped along by “an asset within the Venezuelan leader’s inner circle,” an outcome the White House hopes to repeat in Cuba. Dissidents and exiles have been used in a number of prior US regime change operations – including in Cuba itself – with opposition activists playing a major role in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Asked whether Cuba was “the Trump administration’s next target” during an appearance on Meet the Press the day after Maduro’s capture, Secretary of State Marco Rubio refused to answer directly, only saying that the country’s socialist government was “a huge problem.”
“I’m not going to talk to you about what our future steps are going to be and our policies are going to be right now in this regard. But I don’t think it’s any mystery that we are not big fans of the Cuban regime, who, by the way, are the ones that were propping up Maduro,” Rubio said.
An unnamed White House official said much the same to the Journal, and warned that Havana should “make a deal before it’s too late,” echoing a recent social media post by Trump verbatim. While it’s unclear what kind of deal the administration is seeking, in the same post the president insisted that Cuba stop receiving oil and subsidies from Venezuela.
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel rejected that demand, saying that “Cuba is a free, independent and sovereign nation. No one tells us what to do.” He added that his country was “ready to defend the homeland to the last drop of blood.”
The United States attempted to overthrow the Cuban government in the disastrous 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. More than 1,200 Cuban exiles armed and trained by the US were captured by Cuban forces during the botched operation, with over 100 more killed. In the decades since, Washington has maintained a trade embargo on the Caribbean nation and has repeatedly threatened its government with regime change.
