{"id":229384,"date":"2026-04-13T06:30:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T06:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/229384\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T06:30:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T06:30:10","slug":"cubas-president-says-we-will-defend-ourselves-against-any-us-invasion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/229384\/","title":{"rendered":"Cuba’s president says ‘we will defend ourselves’ against any US invasion"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico \u2014 Cuban President Miguel D\u00edaz-Canel<\/a> said the U.S. has no valid reason to carry out a military attack against the island or to attempt to depose him.<\/p>\n

Speaking in an interview<\/a> on NBC News’ Meet the Press program, the president said an invasion of Cuba would be costly and affect regional security. But should it happen, D\u00edaz-Canel said, Cubans would defend themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the time comes, I don\u2019t think there would be any justification for the United States to launch a military aggression against Cuba, or for the U.S. to undertake a surgical operation or the kidnapping of a president,\u201d D\u00edaz-Canel said, speaking through a translator.<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cIf that happens, there will be fighting, and there will be a struggle, and we will defend ourselves, and if we need to die, we\u2019ll die, because as our national anthem says, \u2018Dying for the homeland is to live’.\u201d<\/p>\n

His comments come as tensions between Cuba and the U.S. remain high despite both sides acknowledging talks<\/a>, although no details have been shared.<\/p>\n

D\u00edaz-Canel has accused the U.S. government of implementing a \u201chostile policy\u201d against Cuba and said it has \u201cno moral to demand anything from Cuba.\u201d He noted that Cuba is interested in engaging in dialogue and discussing any topic without conditions, \u201cnot demanding changes from our political system as we are not demanding change from the American system, about which we have a number of doubts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cuba blames a U.S. energy blockade for its deepening woes<\/a>, with a lack of petroleum affecting the island’s health system, public transportation and the production of goods and services.<\/p>\n

Cuba produces only 40% of the fuel it consumes, and it stopped receiving key oil shipments from Venezuela after the U.S. military attacked the South American country in early January, seized President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro and took him to New York to face drug trafficking charges. Then, with cooperation from ruling party leaders<\/a>, the Trump administration began implementing a phased plan to end Venezuela’s entrenched crisis.<\/p>\n

The arrival of a Russian tanker carrying 730,000 barrels of crude oil in Cuba in March<\/a> marked the island’s first oil shipment in three months. Russia has promised to send a second tanker.<\/p>\n

Despite threatening tariffs in January<\/a> on countries that sell or provide oil to Cuba, the Trump administration allowed the tanker to proceed.<\/p>\n

\u201cCuba\u2019s finished,\u201d President Donald Trump said at the time. \u201cThey have a bad regime. They have very bad and corrupt leadership and whether or not they get a boat of oil, it\u2019s not going to matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

D\u00edaz-Canel said his government takes Trump\u2019s words as a warning.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou hear that Cuba is next, that Cuba is going to be next, that there are, there\u2019s a way out, that they\u2019re going to take over Cuba,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, from the position of responsibility within the leadership of the country, that is a warning. And we need to responsibly protect our people, protect our project and protect our country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico \u2014 Cuban President Miguel D\u00edaz-Canel said the U.S. has no valid reason to carry…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":229385,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[8128,103009,26757,477,103011,116,118,117,14828,103010,99,80758,10645],"class_list":{"0":"post-229384","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-assault","9":"tag-cuba-diaz-canel-trump-nbc-interview","10":"tag-energy-industry","11":"tag-general-news","12":"tag-international-incidents","13":"tag-jacksonville","14":"tag-jacksonville-headlines","15":"tag-jacksonville-news","16":"tag-military-and-defense","17":"tag-oil-and-gas-industry","18":"tag-politics","19":"tag-u-s-venezuela-conflict","20":"tag-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}