{"id":274794,"date":"2026-05-18T04:39:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T04:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/274794\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T04:39:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T04:39:09","slug":"cuba-denies-planning-drone-attack-on-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/274794\/","title":{"rendered":"Cuba denies planning drone attack on Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cuba has denied reports that it has acquired hundreds of drones to attack the US as its foreign minister accused President Trump of building a \u201cfraudulent case\u201d for war.<\/p>\n

As tensions rise in the Caribbean, a report by the news outlet Axios<\/a> suggested that Cuba had gathered more than 300 attack drones to use against the US military base in Guantanamo Bay, American warships or even Key West in Florida, 90 miles from the communist island\u2019s northern coast.<\/p>\n

A US official was quoted as saying that Cuba had bought drones of \u201cvarying capabilities\u201d from Iran and Russia, beginning in 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we think about those types of technologies being that close, and a range of bad actors from terror groups to drug cartels to Iranians to the Russians, it\u2019s concerning,\u201d the official said. \u201cIt\u2019s a growing threat.\u201d<\/p>\n

The CIA director visited Havana last week<\/a>. Cuba had just admitted that its oil reserves had been exhausted by the continuing US blockade.<\/p>\n

John Ratcliffe held talks with Ra\u00fal Castro, known as Ra\u00falito, the 41-year old heir to the revolutionary dynasty widely seen as\u00a0Cuba\u2019s powerbroker. He also met the head of the\u00a0Cuban\u00a0intelligence service and L\u00e1zaro \u00c1lvarez Casas, the interior minister, in Havana on Thursday.<\/p>\n

\"CIAJohn Ratcliffe, left, met Cuban officials last Thursdaycia\/x\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Trump has said he will have the \u201chonour\u201d of taking Cuba, and the US has effectively blockaded the island since overthrowing Nicol\u00e1s Maduro as president of Venezuela in January<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Cuba is suffering from rolling blackouts lasting up to 22 hours a day. Last week the energy minister said the country had run out of oil.<\/p>\n

Appearing to respond to the Axios report, the Cuban foreign minister said that false statements had been leaked to media outlets by the American government.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithout any legitimate excuse whatsoever, the US government builds, day after day, a fraudulent case to justify the ruthless economic war against the Cuban people and the eventual military aggression,\u201d Bruno Rodr\u00edguez said on X. \u201cSpecific media outlets play along, promoting slanders and leaking insinuations from the US government itself. Cuba neither threatens nor desires war.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, he added: \u201cIt defends peace and prepares itself to confront external aggression in the exercise of the right to legitimate self-defence recognised by the UN charter.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Cuban embassy in the US said on X: \u201cThose from the US who seek the submission and, in fact, the destruction of the Cuban nation through military aggression and war do not waste a single moment fabricating pretexts, creating and spreading falsehoods and distorting as extraordinary the logical preparation required to face a potential aggression.\u201d<\/p>\n

Democrats accused Trump of fabricating evidence to build a case for attacking the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo country in the current economic and military situation that Cuba is in would ever pre-emptively strike a super power like the US,\u201d said Ruben Gallego, the Democratic senator for Arizona. \u201cThis is just propaganda to build a case for an invasion of Cuba.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cuba has denied reports that it has acquired hundreds of drones to attack the US as its foreign…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274795,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-274794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274794","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=274794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}