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Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush is raising concerns over reports that Cuba has obtained roughly 300 Iranian-made kamikaze drones, a stockpile that would put Florida within striking range.
Some shit you should know before you dig in: If you’re unaware, Iran is often considered a pioneer of cheap, one-way attack drones, with its Shahed family, including the Shahed-136, becoming the poster child. These are “kamikaze” weapons: they’re loaded with over 100 pounds of explosives, fly at speeds up to 115 miles per hour, and simply crash into their targets and detonate. What makes them so effective isn’t sophistication; it’s economics and swarm tactics. They’re dirt cheap to produce, so they can be launched in clusters that overwhelm even advanced air defense systems, where only one or a handful getting through is enough to do serious damage. Russia has come to rely on them heavily in its war against Ukraine, where Iranian-supplied Shaheds have become a potent weapon. Iran put them to use in this year’s war with the US and Israel, raining them down on American bases and allies across the Middle East, killing US troops.
What’s going on now: Bush made the warning Wednesday at a United Against Nuclear Iran event at the Biltmore Hotel in Miami, standing next to one of the drones in question, an Iranian Shahed-136. “Iran has been a consistent threat to the united security interests of our country, certainly of Israel,” Bush said. “And now, we see that it’s not just Israel and the United States, but the Gulf region as well. I also want to point out that the press reports that there are 300 of these in Cuba.”
The reports Bush referenced trace back to May, when Axios, citing classified intelligence, revealed that Cuba had taken delivery of over 300 of the drones and had gamed out possible strikes on the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay and Key West, Florida, with one senior US official calling the buildup a “growing threat.” The drones reportedly arrived in Cuba years before the recent US-Iran war. Last month during a visit to Guantánamo, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said US forces were “postured for any possible contingency.”
Bush stressed the US has “very good defense capabilities” and said the event was “not a press conference to scare the bejesus out of people,” but called the Shahed responsible for the “most loss of life of the US military than any single weapon that exists over the last 15 years.”
This all comes amid the US ramping up pressure in Cuba, where Trump’s oil blockade has sparked an energy crisis, nationwide blackouts, and street protests. Despite the deteriorating situation, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel has vowed “impregnable resistance” and warned any US attack would trigger a “bloodbath with incalculable consequences.”
