As tensions escalate, the US has accused Cuba of infiltrating top levels of the US government.
Washington: The United States on Monday accused Cuban spies of infiltrating the highest levels of government in Washington, as President Donald Trump pushes to end the island’s communist regime while reviving anti-leftist rhetoric at home.
The US State Department released a report that contained little new information, but came amid a campaign to pressure Cuba that imposed an effective oil embargo and new sanctions by Washington blaming its former President Raul Castro.
It comes as Trump is reviving Cold War-style rhetoric, portraying left-wing US political figures as a communist “threat” that must be eliminated “like cancer”. The United States will vote in midterm elections later this year.
The State Department report charged that Cuba “has infiltrated the highest reaches of the US government, recruited and cultivated generations of US activists (and) supported an unprecedented wave of left-wing terrorism on US soil.”
While the allegations represent an escalation in US-Cuba tensions, espionage between the two countries has long been known.
Since the Cold War, the US has made high-profile arrests of Cuban intelligence officials, including the “Cuban Five”, who were convicted of infiltrating civil society groups in Florida in the 1990s, and Ana Montes, who spied from a senior position within the Defense Intelligence Agency.
In recent cases, State Department intelligence analyst Walter Kendall Myers and former U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia Victor Manuel Rocha pleaded guilty in separate cases to spying for the communist country.
Meanwhile, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Cuban exiles tried to assassinate the late Cuban president and revolutionary leader Fidel Castro more than 600 times, as his ex-intelligence chief, Fabian Escalante, once estimated.
America threatened to occupy Cuba
The report released Monday makes widespread — if unfounded — allegations that Cuba has cultivated ties with left-wing groups around the world and in the U.S. to foster “resentment and fundamental hatred toward the United States and the broader West.”
The State Department said the communist country had influenced “a disproportionate share of America’s most well-known and influential extremist movements” in an effort to “turn America against itself.”
This report points to the latest deterioration in long-standing relationships.
In 2015, then-President Barack Obama attempted to reconcile with the Cuban government, hoping that a more diplomatic approach would lead to better relations after half a century of hostility.
Trump immediately reinstated a hardline stance in 2017, and – upon returning to office in 2025 – reinstated Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism on his first day in office.
Last year, US forces overthrew Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro – a longtime supporter of the Cuban government that had provided the island with subsidized energy.
Since then, the United States has threatened to impose sanctions on countries that supply oil to the island – effectively imposing an energy embargo that has contributed to several full-scale blackouts across the country.
Trump has repeatedly hinted that the Cuban government could succumb to U.S. pressure after Venezuela, and said in June that Washington would “almost immediately” annex the Caribbean island, about 90 miles (145 km) off Florida.
