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President Trump told a campaign rally in Fort Myers, Fla., on Friday that once the war with Iran is over, he would put a U.S. warship off Cuba: American ships would pass the island on their way home, and one of them would stop about 50 yards off the coast — a show of force, he said, that would be followed by sending Secretary of State Marco Rubio to finish up a deal with Havana.
“They’ll raise up their hands,” Mr. Trump said, in an apparent reference to Cuba’s Communist leadership, as the crowd at Florida Gulf Coast University’s Alico Arena roared.
The president offered no timeline, did not say whether any order had been given to the Navy and did not describe what a deal with Havana would involve. The remarks revived an idea he had floated earlier this year but had not raised in recent months, The Associated Press noted: that Cuba’s turn will come once the conflict with Iran is settled.
“We’re going to come back from Iran. Those beautiful ships will pass Cuba. We’ll have one of them stop about 50 yards off the coast. They’ll raise up their hands. And then we’re going to send Marco Rubio in to finish up the deal.”
President Trump at the Fort Myers rally, as quoted by The Associated Press and Reuters
A question from the crowd
Mr. Trump raised Cuba after a member of the audience asked about the island. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll take care of Cuba on our way back from Iran. We’ll do a little stopover.”
The rally, held 11 days before the Nov. 3 midterm elections, took place in a state that is home to the largest Cuban American community in the United States, where policy toward Havana remains a potent political issue.
Mr. Trump praised Mr. Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, and suggested that he would be the one to resolve the situation, reinforcing the secretary of state’s role as the administration’s point man on Cuba.
Rubio: ‘Now is the time’
Shortly after the president spoke, Mr. Rubio addressed Cubans directly in a post on X. “To those who seek to create positive change in Cuba — now is the time,” he wrote, urging them to “seize this opportunity” through what he called “a discrete partnership with the CIA.”
Mr. Rubio has also told reporters that Cuba has been a national security threat for years because of its ties to U.S. adversaries, The Associated Press reported. He said the administration wanted to resolve its differences with Havana peacefully — “We are hopeful that Cuba will choose a different path,” he said — but expressed doubt that a diplomatic solution was possible with the current government.
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Last month, Mr. Trump predicted that the two countries would reach an agreement and said he did not believe military action would be necessary, according to Reuters. His administration has said its goal is a change in Cuba’s Communist government. Cuba’s foreign minister told the United Nations General Assembly in September that Havana would always be open to dialogue with Washington.
Maduro as a reference point
Mr. Trump’s warnings to Havana have carried added weight since January, when U.S. forces captured Nicolás Maduro, the former Venezuelan leader, who is now in American custody awaiting trial in New York on drug trafficking charges.
The president has repeatedly pointed to the Venezuela raid as a demonstration of American military reach when speaking about Cuba.
A message repeated all year
Friday’s remarks extended a pattern. On March 27, at an investment forum in Miami Beach, Mr. Trump said Cuba would be next (in Spanish) after the U.S. operations in Venezuela and Iran, then told the audience to pretend he had not said it. On April 13, he again spoke of stopping at the island (in Spanish) once the war with Iran ended.
On May 1, he described an aircraft carrier approaching (in Spanish) the Cuban coast on its return from the Middle East, and three days later he named the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln (in Spanish) as the ship that might carry out such a show of force.
On May 20, the Justice Department unsealed a superseding indictment charging Raúl Castro, Cuba’s former leader, and five other defendants over the 1996 downing of two Brothers to the Rescue planes, which killed four men; the counts include murder and conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals. This month, a Florida judge signed a state arrest warrant against him over the same shootdown.
In June, Mr. Trump said again that his administration would turn to Cuba once the Iran conflict was resolved (in Spanish), adding that it had “very good plans” for the island and needed to get rid of the regime.
And on Sept. 22, addressing the U.N. General Assembly, he called Cuba “an absolutely failed state” and said Mr. Rubio was “deep into negotiations” with Havana. The Cuban delegation walked out of the hall during the speech.
What remains unclear about a warship off Cuba
The White House has not said whether the scenario the president described on Friday reflects an actual plan or campaign-trail rhetoric. No order to station a U.S. warship off Cuba has been announced, and neither Washington nor Havana has disclosed the terms of any deal.
For now, the administration has placed Mr. Rubio at the center of its Cuba policy, and the president continues to tie the future of Cuba’s Communist government to the end of the war with Iran.
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