President Donald Trump said Friday that the United States would "take care of Cuba" once its war with Iran winds down, warning at a campaign rally in Florida that American warships returning from the Middle East would stop off the Cuban coast — remarks Havana immediately denounced as a new military threat.
"We'll take care of Cuba on our way back from Iran ... then we're going to send Marco Rubio in to finish up the deal," Trump told a cheering crowd in Fort Myers, Florida, during a 90-minute rally aimed at boosting Republican turnout ahead of the November 3 midterm elections.
Morro Castle guards the entrance to Havana harbor, with the Malecón skyline across the water. Photo: Cheng keun li / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Trump said one of the naval vessels would "stop about 50 yards off the coast," adding: "They'll raise up their hands." Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a former Florida senator of Cuban descent, has been handling much of the administration's Cuba portfolio.
Cuba's Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez responded within hours on X, rejecting "any threat regarding US ambitions toward Cuba." In a message in Spanish, he wrote that Cuba's shores have "beautiful beaches, but also diente de perro" — the jagged coral rock lining the island's coast — "inhospitable to those who arrive with hostile aims and a thirst for domination."
Rodríguez, along with President Miguel Díaz-Canel and other senior officials, has denounced what Havana describes as escalating US threats of military intervention since early 2026, insisting on the island's sovereignty and right to self-defense.
The exchange is the latest turn in a pressure campaign that has intensified through Trump's second term. In September, the president labeled Cuba a "failed state" before the UN General Assembly and declared that "freedom will be coming to Cuba," prompting the Cuban delegation to walk out. Earlier this year, Washington imposed an oil blockade on the island that has left it struggling with severe fuel shortages and rolling blackouts, worsened by failing infrastructure. The United States has maintained a trade embargo on Cuba for more than six decades.
The administration's stated goal is to change Cuba's communist government, and the pressure follows the US military's seizure of then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a deadly raid in January. Trump, who won 68% of the Cuban American vote in Florida in 2024, has made Cuba a signature cause — and South Florida's Cuban American voters are among the most reliable Republican constituencies in the country.
Trump's comments were notably tougher than his prediction last month that Washington and Havana would reach an agreement and that military action would not be necessary. Rodríguez told the UN General Assembly around the same time that Cuba would always be open to dialogue with Washington.
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The Florida rally was intended to boost the campaign of Republican Representative Byron Donalds, who is running for governor against Democrat David Jolly. Trump's remarks ranged across his usual themes — crowd sizes, his White House renovations, and his renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America — while he repeated warnings that more military action against Iran may lie ahead as he tries to contain an oil-price spike that has put Republicans on the defensive ahead of the midterms.
While the Iran war has no clear end in sight, the Cuba remarks underscore how the administration is linking its Middle East military posture to its hemisphere agenda. For Havana, already under severe economic strain, the prospect of American warships parking 50 yards off its coast is the clearest signal yet that the pressure campaign may be entering a new phase.