US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday denied that Washington is imposing an oil blockade on Cuba, despite US threats to impose tariffs on any nation that sells oil to the island nation.
“There’s no oil blockade on Cuba, per se,” he told reporters at the White House.
“Cuba used to get free oil from Venezuela, used to give them a bunch of free oil. They would take, like, 60% of that oil and resell it for cash. It wouldn’t even go to benefit the people. So the only blockade that’s happened is the Cubans have decided, I mean, the Venezuelans have decided, we’re not giving you free oil anymore,” he added.
Cuba is facing a fuel crisis following US President Donald Trump’s decision to impose an oil embargo on Jan. 29. Trump’s order explicitly threatens to impose US tariffs on any country “that directly or indirectly sells or otherwise provides any oil to Cuba.”
Trump has repeatedly said the island nation is “next” after the military operation against Iran concludes, and has claimed the communist-run island would fail “soon.”
“On the way back from Iran, we’ll have one of our big, maybe the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, the biggest in the world, we’ll have that come in, stop about 100 yards offshore,” he said Friday. “They’ll say ‘thank you very much. We give up.'”
Rubio is slated to visit Catholic Pope Leo this week in a visit the State Department said will seek to “advance bilateral relations” between Washington and the Holy See amid tensions following the pontiff’s criticisms of the president’s war on Iran.
Rubio said that during the sit-down he will address the provision of US humanitarian assistance to Cuba, potentially via the Catholic Church.
“We’re willing to give more humanitarian aid to Cuba, by the way, distribute it through the church, but the Cuban regime has to allow us to do it,” he said. “They won’t allow us to give their own people more humanitarian aid, and we’re willing to do it through the church. So there’s a lot to talk about.”
