No one knows what will come next in Iran. Will it be democracy, will the people have more freedom, or will the repressive Iranian regime survive?
Regardless of the uncertainty, Iranians all over the world have taken to the streets to celebrate the death of Ayatollah Khamenei. By decapitating the Iranian government leadership, the joint Israeli and American operation in Iran might have ripple effects 90 miles away from Florida.
Sebastion Arcos, Florida International University’s Cuba expert who leads its Institute for Cuban Studies, agreed that the events in Iran impact Cuba.
“And I think the message for the Cuban regime is, if we can do this to Iran, a country that is 10 times bigger than Cuba, has its own military industry, on the other side of the planet, imagine what we can do in Cuba,” Arcos said.
U.S. Representative Carlos Gimenes, Republican of Miami, agrees.
“So I would recommend to the Cuban regime, go ahead and negotiate with President Trump now while you still have the chance,” Gimenez said.
Arcos thinks the time is ripe for the Cuban public to rise up against the regime if there’s a big enough catalyst.
“What happened in Iran is a shock, what happened in Venezuela on Jan. 3 is a shock, and I think the Cubans will need a shock,” Arcos explained.
He said the Cuban regime’s legitimacy has never been lower with the Cuban people, which is why he thinks last week’s deadly shootout between Cuban forces and a boat from Florida is part of a long Cuban tradition of fabricating military incursions.
“When they need to reactivate Cuban nationalism and anti-imperialism, this is one of those times,” Arcos said. “It has all the marks of a false flag operation by the Cuban regime.”
For example, Arcos wonders why the Cubans listed a man who is alive and well in Florida as captured by its forces. Arcos believes a spy in the group gave them names of men who were supposed to be on the boat, and the Cubans did a sloppy job of verification.
From a legal perspective, the president of the Cuban American Bar Association, Jordi Martinez-Cid, agrees with Arcos that the Cuban government cannot be trusted.
“It’s a regime built on lies, on deceiving its own populace, so it’s not surprising that we have very little faith in their official reports of what occurred,” Martinez-Cid said.
He said in any legal case, facts are always paramount, so no one can evaluate if the Cuban forces were justified in firing on that boat and killing four people when they control the narrative. Martinez-Cid points out that the Cuban regime has a long history of lying. Just like Iran, Russia, Venezuela, Hamas and every other despotic dictatorship.