[News] State Department Stuns Congress, Saying Biden Is Not Even Reviewing Trump’s Terror Designation of Cuba

[Anti-Imperialist News]

theintercept.com
<https://theintercept.com/2023/12/14/cuba-terror-biden-state-department/>
State Department Stuns Congress, Saying Biden Is Not Even Reviewing Trump’s
Terror Designation of Cuba
Ryan Grim - December 14, 2023
------------------------------

As one of his final foreign policy acts as president, in January 2021
Donald Trump added Cuba to the list of “State Sponsors of Terror,” reversing
<https://theintercept.com/2017/06/16/trump-cuba-embargo-reverse-obama-opening/>
the Obama administration’s 2015 determination that the designation was no
longer appropriate.

The incoming Biden administration pledged to Congress it would start the
process of overturning Trump’s redesignation, which by statute requires a
six-month review process. Yet in a private briefing last week on Capitol
Hill, State Department official Eric Jacobstein stunned members of Congress
by telling them that the department has not even begun the review process,
according to three sources in the room.

In the briefing, Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., inquired as to the status of
the review. In order to remove Cuba from the list, statute requires at
least a six-month review period. The news that the State Department had not
even launched the review came as a surprise to McGovern and others in the
room, and meant that the delisting couldn’t occur before mid-2024 at the
earliest. McGovern pressed Jacobstein, noting that Congress had previously
been assured that a review was underway. Jacobstein, according to sources
in the room, said that perhaps there had been some misunderstanding around
a different review of sanctions policies that State was undertaking.

“I don’t think they were prepared to respond to how upset members were,”
said one Democrat, who was granted anonymity to discuss the private
meeting. “They were furious.”

Vedant Patel, a spokesperson for the State Department, declined to comment
on a closed-door meeting in Congress, and additionally declined to directly
confirm or deny whether a review was ongoing. “We’re not going to comment
on the deliberative process as it relates to the status of any
designation,” said Patel. “Any review of Cuba’s status on the SST list —
should one ever happen — would be based on the law and criteria established
by Congress.”

McGovern, however, had already been told that such a review was ongoing,
according to multiple sources who heard directly from McGovern about the
State Department’s messaging.

Biden’s refusal to even review Cuba’s status marks a strong rebuke of one
of the Obama administration’s signature foreign policy achievements, the
move toward normalizing relations with Cuba.

The Trump administration’s rationale for redesignating Cuba as a sponsor of
terror relied heavily on the country having hosted representatives from
FARC and ELN, two armed guerrilla movements designated by the U.S. as
terror groups. But in October 2022, Colombian President Gustavo Petro
<https://theintercept.com/2022/06/24/colombia-elections-gustavo-petro/>, in
a joint press conference with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, noted that
Colombia itself, in cooperation with the Obama administration, had asked
Cuba to host the FARC and ELN members as part of peace talks. The move by
the Trump administration was “an injustice,” he said, and ought to be
undone. “It is not us [Colombia] who must correct it, but it does need to
be corrected,” added Petro, himself a onetime guerrilla.

“When it comes to Cuba,” Blinken said at the press conference, “and when it
comes to the state sponsor of terrorism designation, we have clear laws,
clear criteria, clear requirements, and we will continue as necessary to
revisit those to see if Cuba continues to merit that designation.”
Blinken’s public claim — “we will continue as necessary to revisit” the
designation — coupled with private assurances from the State Department
left members of Congress certain that a review was underway.

Blinken was also asked about Cuba’s status in a hearing in March 2023
<https://www.c-span.org/video/?526772-1/state-department-foreign-policy-priorities-fiscal-year-2024-budget-request>
and said that Cuba had yet to meet the requirements to be removed from the
list. “In both of these instances the Secretary was reiterating what we’ve
said previously — should there be rescission of the SST status, it would
need to be consistent with specific statutory criteria for rescinding a SST
determination,” Patel said.

The terror designation makes it difficult for Cubans to do international
business, crushing an already fragile economy. The U.S. hard-line approach
to Cuba has coincided with a surge in desperate migration, with Cubans now
making up a substantial portion of the migrants arriving at the southern
border. Nearly 425,000 Cubans have fled for the United States
<https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/24/record-breaking-numbers-of-cuban-migrants-entered-the-u-s-in-2022-23-00123346>
in fiscal years 2022 and 2023, shattering previous records. Instead of
moving to stem the flow by focusing on root causes in Cuba, the Biden White
House has been signaling support in recent days for Republican-backed
border policies.

Hopes for a shift on Cuba policy have not just been fueled by the State
Department’s misleading pledges about a review, but also by a semi-public
moment picked up by a hot mic ahead of the previous State of the Union, in
which Biden approached New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, one of the chamber’s
leading Cuba hawks, and told him the two needed to chat. “Bob, I gotta talk
to you about Cuba,” Biden told him
<https://oncubanews.com/en/cuba-usa/biden-to-bob-menendez-i-gotta-talk-to-you-about-cuba/>.
Menendez has since been indicted
<https://theintercept.com/2023/09/22/menendez-indictment-egypt/> as an
alleged intelligence asset
<https://theintercept.com/2023/09/27/menendez-indictment-egypt-intelligence/>
of Egypt, and there is no indication the two have talked about Cuba.
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