The escalation between Cuba and the United States crossed a new threshold in May 2026. Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel issued an explicit warning on X, stating that a US military attack on the island would "trigger a bloodbath with incalculable consequences." At the same time, the US Treasury imposed new sanctions targeting Cuba's main intelligence agency along with several senior civilian and military officials.
These measures add to a US oil blockade in force since January 2026, which has caused a severe energy crisis on the island: prolonged daily power cuts and a fuel shortage acknowledged by the Cuban government. A few days before this escalation, CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Havana for meetings with Cuban intelligence services. Havana claims the right to self-defense under the United Nations Charter, while asserting that it poses no aggressive threat to Washington.
The backdrop is a maximum-pressure strategy combining blockade, targeted sanctions and regime-change rhetoric. Weakened by the loss of Venezuelan oil supplies, Cuba's economy is facing its sharpest vulnerability since the fall of the USSR, while regional actors keep humanitarian channels open.
Several points remain disputed or uncertain. The alleged acquisition of 300 military drones from Russia and Iran, attributed to US intelligence sources, is foregrounded by some actors and absent from the account of others. The preparation of an indictment against Raúl Castro, tied to the destruction of civilian aircraft in 1996, is likewise divisive: treated as a major fact by some, ignored by others. The disagreement ultimately extends to the framing itself, between a humanitarian reading of an internal crisis and a security reading centered on the military threat.
