[News] How Biden Embraced Trump’s Terror Smear Against Cuba

[Anti-Imperialist News]

resumen-english.org
<https://resumen-english.org/2025/01/how-biden-embraced-trumps-terror-smear-against-cuba/>
How Biden Embraced Trump’s Terror Smear Against Cuba
------------------------------

By Alyssa Oursler and Jack McGrath on January 12, 2025

<https://i0.wp.com/resumen-english.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/a_4518.jpg?ssl=1>

2023 protest in front of the White House calling for Biden to take Cuba of
the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism. photo: Bill Hackwell

Four years ago today, Donald Trump baselessly put Cuba on the State
Sponsors of Terrorism list. As president, Joe Biden went along with the lie.

On this day four years ago, a week after the MAGA brigades stormed the
Capitol, Donald Trump’s outgoing administration put Cuba on the State
Sponsors of Terrorism (SSOT) list.

The move irked former and current US officials — there is a broad consensus
<https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/cuba-shouldnt-sponsor-terrorism-list-former-us-officials-say-rcna52728>
in the intelligence community that Cuba does not sponsor terrorism. But Joe
Biden, who was part of the Obama administration’s legacy-making
rapprochement with the island, was expected to promptly reverse it.

*Four years later, Cuba is still on the list.*

“Nobody worth their salt in the world of counterterrorism sees Cuba as a
country that would do the United States harm,” said Jason Blazakis,
director of the State Department’s Counterterrorism Finance and
Designations Office from 2008 to 2018. “The US is willing to negotiate with
the Taliban. Yet here we are with a country ninety miles away, not
committing any acts of terrorism, and taking a hard line.”

Perhaps no single aspect of Joe Biden’s Latin America policy has been as
controversial, confounding, and defining as his refusal to remove Cuba from
the terror blacklist, which has battered Cuba’s economy by cutting it off
from trade, credit, and investment.

“No matter what you think of the Cuban government or the Cuban system . . .
it does not belong on that list,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), ranking
member of the House Rules Committee. “We’re trying to economically strangle
Cuba. . . . Average Cubans are the ones who are paying the price.”

*Victim Blaming*

Cuba was first put on the SSOT list in 1982 by the Reagan administration,
which accused it of funding and arming left-wing revolutionary groups in
Latin America but neglected to provide evidence linking Cuba to specific
acts of terrorism.

Meanwhile, Ronald Reagan was propping up the Contras, the region’s most
notorious insurgency. Human Rights Watch charged
<https://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/1989/WR89/Nicaragu.htm> the right-wing
paramilitary organization with systematic violations of “the most basic
standards of the laws of armed conflict,” including indiscriminate attacks
on civilians and the selective murder of noncombatants.

Cuba’s state sponsor of terrorism designation outlasted nearly all of Latin
America’s leftist insurgencies by two decades, until Barack Obama removed
Cuba from the SSOT list in May 2015 as a part of his historic détente with
the nation.

For more than five years, Cuba remained off the list, even as the Trump
administration rolled back the rest of Obama’s Cuba policy, shuttering the
embassy and levying an array of “maximum pressure” sanctions on the island.

The terrorism designation adds insult to injury for many Cubans, who for
decades were victims of US-backed terrorism.

Then, with eight days left in Trump’s first term, after both his reelection
campaign and the January 6 insurrection had failed, Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo returned Cuba to the list.

The Trump administration’s justifications for the terror designation were even
more of a stretch <https://youtu.be/q3p0Jgz5XIU?feature=shared> than
Reagan’s: the Cuban government’s support of Venezuela; its harboring of
black political fugitives such as Assata Shakur; and its role as a
mediator, along with Norway, in brokering peace talks between the Colombian
government and that country’s National Liberation Army (ELN), considered a
terrorist organization by the US government.

The first two justifications had nothing to do with terrorism. The last
referred to Cuba’s refusal to extradite ten ELN members to Colombia when
the peace talks broke down. Needless to say, Trump did not name Norway a
sponsor of terrorism.

Colombia has since dropped the extradition request and, along with many
other countries, has called for the designation to be revoked.

“Cuba is helping us to make peace,” Colombian president Gustavo Petro told
<https://www.democracynow.org/2023/9/21/petro_immigration> *Democracy Now!*
last fall. “It’s just the opposite of what that [sponsor of terrorism] list
is all about.”

The terrorism designation adds insult to injury for many Cubans, who for
decades were victims of US-backed terrorism.

The 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner, which killed seventy-three people,
was one of the deadliest acts of terrorism in the Western Hemisphere. The
attack is believed to have been masterminded by two former CIA operatives,
Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch Ávila, both of whom lived into their
eighties in South Florida without being prosecuted for the crime in the
United States.

In the 1990s, US-based extremists financed and carried out terrorist
attacks on Cuba, including bombings at hotels and speed boats strafing
beach resorts with machine gun fire.

Disgraced former Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), a Cuban-American hard-liner whom
Biden deferred to on Cuba policy until he was convicted of bribery last
year, had ties to Cuban-American terrorist
<https://www.bellyofthebeastcuba.com/hardliner>*s*.

Menendez supported the legal defense
<https://youtu.be/PfRTNTWkPgY?feature=shared&t=647> of Cuban-American
terrorists, including a gunman belonging to Omega 7, an armed group of
anti-Castro Cubans responsible for bombings and assassinations in New
Jersey and New York. In the late 1970s, the FBI regarded Omega 7 as “the
most dangerous terrorist group
<https://youtu.be/PfRTNTWkPgY?feature=shared&t=498>” in the United States.

*“I’m a Tourist, Not a Terrorist”*

The SSOT designation is one of the most damaging components of the United
States’ economic war on Cuba
<https://www.bellyofthebeastcuba.com/the-war-on-cuba>.

Former deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes, who played a leading
role in negotiations with Havana, called SSOT “the most punishing sanction
<https://theworld.org/stories/2024/12/18/ten-years-after-washingtons-historic-deal-with-havana-cuba-remains-adrift>
.”

He condemned Biden’s approach as “doubling down” on the Trump
administration’s reversal of the Obama thaw, asking, “Why would any Cuban
official ever, ever negotiate anything with America ever again after this?”
He also charged the Biden administration with “legitimizing” Trump’s
destruction of détente and “gaslighting” Cuba.

Business people in Cuba say
<https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/where-to-watch-the-debateand-a-dispatch>
that the designation’s extraterritorial implications have locked the nation
out of the global banking system, amplifying the impact of the raft of
sanctions known as *el bloqueo*, or “the blockade.”

The designation has grown sharper teeth in recent years as banks have
expanded their compliance departments in the wake of several
money-laundering scandals, according to economists.

“US rules create such a tangle of legal snags that it is simply not worth
the time, money, and effort to challenge or circumvent them,” said Emily
Morris, a development economist at University College London.

The designation impedes academic and scientific collaboration
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLvzSyD3_LA> between Cuba and other
countries — something Morris and other academics based in Europe have
experienced firsthand. It also impacts tourism, one of Cuba’s primary
sources of foreign currency.

In the first ten months of 2024, about 1.7 million tourists visited Cuba, 48
percent fewer than in 2019
<https://www.latintimes.com/cuba-staring-down-major-economic-crisis-tourism-island-drops-nearly-fifty-percent-566945>.
Old Havana, which was bustling with visitors from the United States and
around the world after the Obama opening, now looks like a ghost town.

The decline in tourism is attributable, in part, to the SSOT designation,
which punishes travelers from third countries for vacationing in Cuba.

Citizens of countries who qualify to travel to the United States without a
visa under the Electronic System for Travel Authorization waiver program
are stripped of that privilege if they visit Cuba. This includes most of
Europe, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, and
Chile, among other countries.

Peter Dentry, a British citizen, recently got stuck at Havana’s José Martí
International Airport after vacationing in Cuba. As he tried to check in
for his return trip to London via Miami, an American Airlines
representative told him they couldn’t let him board because of the terror
designation.

“But I’m a tourist,” said the bewildered Dentry. “Not a terrorist.”

The SSOT designation is one of the most damaging components of the United
States’ economic war on Cuba.

“What the Hell Is Blinken Talking About?”

When pressed by journalists and members of Congress to explain why Cuba is
still on the SSOT list, officials in the Biden administration have given a
variety of contradictory answers. Depending on the day, the designation is
“under review,” or Cuba “hasn’t met the requirements,” or there is no plan
to review Cuba’s status.

According to Blazakis, the former counterterrorism official, starting a
review of the terrorism designation would take minutes and invariably
conclude that Cuba does not support terrorism.

First, Secretary of State Antony Blinken would ask the Bureau of
Counterterrorism to conduct a “rescission” request to determine if Cuba had
sponsored terrorism in the previous six months. The intelligence community
would be given two weeks to contribute any relevant information, explained
Blazakis.

Next, the Cuban government would be asked to provide letters of assurance —
diplomatic notes that demonstrate Cuba does not sponsor terror — in which
it would likely cite Cuba’s ongoing cooperation
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAD2ZZDmZ00> with US security forces in
counterterrorism and counternarcotics efforts.

Due to this collaboration, the Biden administration removed Cuba last year
from another blacklist that includes those countries considered to not be
“fully cooperating” in counterterrorism efforts.

As a result, the US government simultaneously considers Cuba a sponsor of
terrorism and a partner in the fight against it.

“That’s a perfect example of the incoherence of the policy,” said William
LeoGrande, a professor of government at American University and an expert
on US-Cuba relations.

Removing Cuba from the not fully cooperating list riled hard-liners, who
worried the SSOT designation would be next.

In a hearing on the issue, Cuban-American hard-liner Rep. María Elvira
Salazar (R-FL) asked Blinken
<https://x.com/RepMariaSalazar/status/1639002724220928004> if the Biden
administration had begun the required review for removing the designation.
Blinken responded with a word salad that Salazar interpreted as “no.”

While the Biden administration hasn’t repeated Trump’s far-fetched
justifications for the terrorism label, it has spun its own.

“The regime has a long track record of egregious human rights abuses,
suppression of a free press, suppression of civil society, and other key
factors that continue to keep them in that list,” State Department
spokesperson Vedant Patel told *Belly of the Beast*
<https://youtu.be/XaKB3pSLmGU?feature=shared&t=1969> journalist Liz Oliva
Fernández at a press briefing in 2023 after she asked about SSOT.

When Oliva Fernández pointed out that human rights abuses are distinct from
supporting terrorism, Patel brushed her off. “I’m going to work the room a
little bit,” he said.

“When Blinken says, ‘they haven’t done what they need to do to get off the
terrorism list,’ I don’t even know what the hell he’s talking about,” McGovern
told <https://youtu.be/XaKB3pSLmGU?feature=shared&t=1714> a group of
activists on Capitol Hill in 2023. “Cuba’s on there for political reasons.
It has nothing to do with the merits.”

Last month, when Salazar again pressed Blinken
<https://x.com/bellybeastcuba/status/1867202736564953441> on whether Cuba —
or in her words, “those bastards” — would be removed from the SSOT list
during Biden’s final weeks as president, he said, “I don’t anticipate any
changes in our policy during this administration.”

*Salazar stood up and clapped.*

“I find it ironic that the people who are cheering Cuba staying on the list
and for even harsher sanctions against Cuba are the same people that
constantly bitch about immigration into this country,” said McGovern.

“Cubans are not coming here fleeing persecution,” he said. “They’re coming
here because they can’t feed their families, because of the shortages,
because of all of the implications of being on this list.”

*“Pure Political Cowardice”*

In recent weeks, a bevy of organizations and individuals — including
members of Congress, former diplomats, and Obama administration officials —
have made one last push to convince Biden to take Cuba off the terrorism
blacklist.

Ben Rhodes and a group of former officials, including former Havana chief
of mission Vicki Huddleston, penned a letter
<https://thehill.com/latino/5045016-bush-obama-biden-harris-trump-cuba-rules/>
to Biden urging a reversal of US policy toward the island, including
removing Cuba’s SSOT designation.

The US government simultaneously considers Cuba a sponsor of terrorism and
a partner in the fight against it.

“As you are aware, the country’s energy grid is failing, child malnutrition
is on the rise, basic services are deteriorating and most Cubans have lost
hope, precipitating the largest exodus of migrants from Cuba in its
history,” they wrote.

Two
<https://www.welch.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/20241217-Letter-to-President-Biden-re-Cuba-Policy.pdf>
letters
<https://www.legistorm.com/stormfeed/view_rss/2436797/member/334/title/representatives-lee-mcgovern-meeks-and-castro-lead-congressional-letter-to-president-biden-urging-sanctions-relief-for-cuba-amid-humanitarian-crisis.html>
from members of Congress have made the same demand, while civil society
groups, elected officials, local governments <https://nnoc.org/resolutions/>,
labor unions, religious groups, and world leaders — nearly six hundred
lawmakers from seventy-three countries
<https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/09/20/nearly-600-parliamentarians-from-73-different-countries-call-on-the-us-to-take-cuba-off-the-state-sponsor-of-terrorism-list/>
— have spoken out against the designation as well.

In October, the designation was cited repeatedly during the annual United
Nations (UN) General Assembly vote to condemn the US embargo — for the
thirty-second year. This year, only the United States and Israel
<https://www.bellyofthebeastcuba.com/rogue-states-united-nations> opposed
the UN resolution.

Instead of listening to world leaders and prominent members of his own
party, Biden has pandered to hard-liners like Salazar, Menendez, and Rep.
Mario Díaz-Balart (R-FL).

Cuba’s persistence on the SSOT list is the result of “pure political
cowardice,” Rhodes said recently.

The designation “was a deliberate, cynical thing by the Trump people, who
correctly calculated that the Biden people were too sissy to take it off,”
said Fulton Armstrong, a former CIA analyst who served as national
intelligence officer for Latin America.

The Biden administration, he said, convinced themselves they could
“out-Trump Trump” on Cuba to win Florida, an approach that was “doomed to
fail.”

Meanwhile, hard-liners are working to make the designation irreversible.
Representative Salazar has reintroduced the FORCE Act, legislation that
would prohibit the president from removing Cuba from the SSOT list until
the Cuban government is overthrown.

Díaz-Balart has drafted a spending bill that would prohibit the State
Department from reviewing the designation at all.

*Stuck in the Cold War*

On December 20, exactly one month ahead of Donald Trump’s return to the
White House, Cuban flags waved in the air outside the US embassy in Havana.
Tens of thousands — some brought in buses and others present out of
conviction — marched to the embassy
<https://www.youtube.com/shorts/CvppWTtM9_g>, a brutalist-style building
that towers over El Malecón, to protest the terrorism designation and
Washington’s economic war on their nation.

“It affects us enormously,” Nereida González, a librarian who was marching
with her granddaughter, said of the designation. “It has caused us to have
many scarcities.”

Iván Barreto López, a twenty-eight-year-old state employee, held a sign
that read, “This embassy supports terrorism.”

“Whatever one thinks of the Cuban government’s mismanagement, the hostile
policies of the US against Cuba have no moral or legal justification,” said
Barreto López.

There is no indication the Biden administration will remove Cuba from the
terrorism list in his final days.

Instead, Biden is set to hand back the reins of a policy that has proven
counterproductive to US interests — one that has driven Cuba into
unprecedented economic collapse, fueled the mass migration of over 850,000
Cubans
<https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-09-24/more-than-850000-cubans-have-arrived-in-the-us-since-2022-in-the-largest-exodus-in-cuban-history.html>
to the United States, and pushed Havana into ever-closer alliances with
Beijing and Moscow, all while failing to produce a single tangible
political or electoral benefit to Democrats, even in Florida.

“It makes no sense,” said McGovern. “It’s like we’re stuck in the Cold War,
and it’s really an embarrassment.”

Source: Jacobin
<https://jacobin.com/2025/01/biden-cuba-terrorism-trump-embargo> in
collaboration with *Belly of the Beast
<https://www.bellyofthebeastcuba.com/>*.
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