Cuba warns of ‘bloodbath’ if US attacks, as Washington adds pressure with sanctions

Cuba's President Miguel Diaz-Canel said that the country had a legitimate right to defend itself against a US attack. Photo / Adalberto Roque, AFP

Cuba’s leader has warned that an American attack on the island would result in a “bloodbath”, while the United States Treasury sanctioned Cuba’s main intelligence agency and top leaders as tensions spiked between the arch-foes.

President Miguel Diaz-Canel stressed Cuba’s right to defend itself a day after US news site Axios reported that Havana had more than 300 military drones from Russia and Iran - and was planning to use them against US targets.

The report, which quoted US intelligence officials, came amid growing speculation that the US was weighing military action to topple Cuba’s Government.

Axios quoted unnamed US officials as saying that Havana was considering drone strikes on the US base at Guantanamo Bay in eastern Cuba, on US military vessels - and possibly targets in Florida.

Writing on X, Diaz-Canel repeated that Communist Party-run Cuba “poses no threat” to the US or any other country and warned that a US attack would “trigger a bloodbath with incalculable consequences”.

He did not directly address Cuba’s alleged stockpiling of attack drones but said the island had “the absolute and legitimate right to defend itself against a military onslaught”.

Cuba’s ambassador to the United Nations struck a similarly defiant note.

Ernesto Soberon Guzman told AFP in New York: “If someone tried to invade Cuba, Cuba will fight back, no doubt about it. In the 60s, they [the US] tried to invade Cuba, and they were defeated. Of course, everybody can say this is a different situation. Yes, it is. But the will of the people of Cuba has not changed.”

Washington ramped up pressure on the Caribbean island nation by announcing sanctions on its intelligence agency and nine Cuban nationals, including the country’s ministers for communications, energy and justice.

Several top Communist Party officials and at least three generals were also among those sanctioned, according to a statement from the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.

The US has heaped pressure on Cuba since January, with US President Donald Trump musing about overthrowing the country’s leadership, as US forces did in Venezuela that month.

Washington cut off one of Cuba’s last economic lifelines by halting oil shipments from Venezuela, its main fuel supplier, and threatening tariffs on any other country that attempted to make up the shortfall.

Trump’s oil blockade has exacerbated a severe humanitarian and energy crisis in Cuba, marked by ever more frequent blackouts.

The Cuban Government has accused Washington of trying to create a pretext for a military intervention after first trying to “strangle” Cuba’s economy.

Havana says the oil blockade has caused the country to run out of diesel and fuel, needed to power the generators that supplement the electricity production of its dilapidated power plants.

On Monday, the island received a new shipment of humanitarian aid from Mexico - its fifth from Mexico’s left-wing government since February.

Unlike the previous shipments, which were carried by the Mexican Navy, the aid consignment was transported by a merchant ship, sailing under a Panamanian flag.

Cuba’s Minister for the Food Industry, Alberto Lopez, said that it included powdered milk and beans for children and the elderly.

- AFP