The President of the United States, Donald Trump, assured this Monday that his government is investigating a possible presence of Iranian drones in Cuba and warned that, if this information is confirmed, Washington will act to prevent it.
From the Oval Office, the president made the statements after being asked by the press about reports pointing to a possible deployment of Iranian unmanned aerial vehicles on the Caribbean island.
“If they have them, and it is very possible that they have them, we will take care of it. Marco (Rubio) is right in the next room. And if they have them, we will take care of it shortly,” he said, referring to the U.S. Secretary of State.
Trump went further and stated that his administration is also analyzing the possibility that Cuba is storing Iranian weaponry.
“It could be” that the island “was storing some” Iranian missiles, the president said, adding that “we are investigating it right now” and emphasizing that the United States will not allow that to happen.
The new controversy arises amid the growing confrontation between Washington and Tehran, following a new military escalation in the Middle East, and in a context of renewed tensions between the U.S. and the Cuban government.
Hours earlier, Secretary of State Marco Rubio had stated that the Trump administration will continue using “all the tools at its disposal” to promote political and economic reforms in Cuba and put an end to what he called “decades of repression and economic incompetence” of the communist regime.
Added to this are the statements made on Sunday by the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz, who hinted that Cuba would host military and intelligence facilities of Russia and China.
According to him, Moscow and Beijing would maintain on the island “intelligence posts, signal collection posts, and military officers,” which, in Washington’s view, would represent an additional factor of concern for regional security.
Trump’s new warning also coincides with the tightening of U.S. policy towards Havana. To more than six decades of economic embargo, the current administration has added since the beginning of the year an energy blockade that, according to Cuban authorities, has contributed to worsening the national electrical system crisis.
Last Friday, the Cuban government confirmed a new nationwide blackout, the fourth recorded so far this year, amid the difficulties the country faces in guaranteeing energy supply.
So far, Cuban authorities have not commented on Trump’s statements regarding a possible presence of Iranian drones or missiles on the island.
