Tensions are escalating between Cuba and the United States. On Thursday, June 11, the U.S. government announced new sanctions against Cupet, the Cuban state-owned oil and gas company, and all of its assets in the United States have been frozen. According to Marco Rubio, the U.S. Secretary of State who was born in Miami to Cuban parents, the Cuban company’s assets were “illegally expropriated from their American owners years ago.”
He also claims, without providing evidence, that Cuba “sells countless barrels of energy that has become scarce on the secondary market, hoards energy reserves for its military, intelligence, and repressive forces, and rations energy as a tool of social control.”
A Detrimental Situation
Meanwhile, on the island, gasoline sales to the public by CUPET are virtually nonexistent and effectively rationed. The island’s economy had already been bled dry over the past five years following decades of embargo. Power outages have been commonplace since President Trump announced last January that he would impose tariffs on any country supplying oil to Cuba. As the Spanish hotel group Melia ceases operations in Cuba, the island has announced that it will welcome Cuban investors—whether living in Cuba or elsewhere—to take over management of these hotels. Trump, who has been threatening Cuba with military action since the capture of former President Maduro in Venezuela, believes that “Cuba has sort of collapsed” and has stated that “we’ll deal with it as soon as we’ve finished our military operations in Iran.”
The Influence of the Castros
On the island, former leader Raúl Castro celebrated his 95th birthday on June 3. In 2006, following his brother Fidel’s withdrawal from political life for health reasons, Raúl Castro assumed the presidency through internal succession and governed the country in a more liberal manner, allowing foreign companies to establish operations there. He negotiated the near-total cancellation of Cuba’s debt to Russia and secured the lifting of certain sanctions by Barack Obama. In 2015, the United States and Cuba reestablished diplomatic relations, and in 2016, the U.S. president visited the island. Commercial flights between the two countries were able to resume. However, the Trump and Biden administrations, from 2017 to the present, have reversed many of these relaxations, significantly tightening financial, trade, and travel sanctions.
Since 2018, the country has been led by Miguel Díaz-Canel, but it appears that Raúl Castro continues to wield influence in Cuban politics. In fact, it was his grandson who met with Marco Rubio at a summit last year.
In late May 2026, the United States put pressure on the Castro family and charged Raúl Castro with murder for the destruction of two American planes in… 1996—30 years ago. The 95-year-old remains very popular in his country, and his birthday was celebrated by the Cuban Communist Party, the general public, and on social media.
In an interview on June 9, however, the Cuban ambassador to Washington, Lianys Torres Rivera, stated:
“We view the sanctions against our leaders as a pretext intended to make the American people believe that we pose a threat. We are not a threat to the United States, and we do not want confrontation.” She asserts that any efforts to overthrow the Cuban government by force will meet with strong resistance: “Raúl is sacred,” she further emphasizes.
Translated by Deepl
