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The Trump administration imposed sanctions on multiple top Cuban officials and three Cuban government agencies (including the country’s main intelligence service) amid intensifying tensions between the US and Cuba.
Getting into it: The new Monday sanctions were jointly imposed by the State Department and Treasury Department and target 11 individual Cuban officials along with three government bodies: the Ministry of Interior (MININT), which runs Cuba’s entire internal security apparatus, from its police and intelligence services to its prison system; the Policía Nacional Revolucionaria (PNR), a police force that’s been accused of running mobile prisons and violently cracking down on protesters; and the Directorate of Intelligence (DGI), Cuba’s primary state intelligence agency.
The 11 sanctioned officials notably include several of the most senior figures in the Cuban government and Communist Party, such as National Assembly President Juan Esteban Lazo Hernández, Communications Minister Mayra Arevich Marín, Energy and Mines Minister Vicente de la O Levy, Justice Minister Rosabel Gamón Verde, Politburo member Roberto Tomás Morales Ojeda, and a number of top military figures including Deputy Defense Minister Joaquín Quintas Solá, military counterintelligence chief José Miguel Gómez del Vallín, and the chiefs of Cuba’s Central and Eastern Armies.
The sanctions formally block any US-based property or assets belonging to those designated and make it off-limits for US companies and individuals to do any business with them (though it’s considered unlikely that most of the targeted Cuban officials actually hold any significant US assets).
Secretary of State Marco Rubio framed the designations as a direct response to the regime’s treatment of its own citizens. “Regime-aligned actors such as those designated today bear responsibility for the suffering of the Cuban people, the failing Cuban economy, and the exploitation of Cuba for foreign intelligence, military, and terror operations. Today’s designations further restrict the Cuban regime’s ability to suppress the will of the Cuban people.”
These sanctions are part of a sprawling, months-long Trump administration campaign to economically and politically suffocate the Cuban government, which has run the island since the 1959 revolution. The administration has effectively imposed a fuel blockade on Cuba by blocking oil shipments from Venezuela (Cuba’s main supplier, whose President Nicolás Maduro the US removed from power in a January raid) and threatening sanctions against any other country that supplies Cuba with fuel**. The blockade has** dragged the island into long, grinding blackouts that now leave even the capital Havana without electricity for up to 22 hours at a stretch.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, who separately warned Monday of a “bloodbath” if the US were to militarily attack the island, has framed the entire series of escalating US actions as illegitimate, denying that Cuba poses any threat to the US while asserting the island’s right to defend itself. “Cuba poses no threat, nor does it have aggressive plans or intentions against any country. Cuba, which already endures a multidimensional aggression from the US, does have the absolute and legitimate right to defend itself.”
