Cuba’s Leader Vows ‘unbreakable Resistance’ If Us Tries To Take Over Island

Cuba’s leader on Tuesday said the US would face “unbreakable resistance” if it tries to take over the impoverished island nation, as communist authorities scrambled to fix a nationwide electricity blackout.

Cuba’s government has been under increasingly crushing pressure, with Washington enforcing an oil blockade and openly stating it wants to end the nearly seven-decade-old US stand-off with the one-party communist state.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Cuba’s decision announced this week to let exiles invest and own businesses did not go far enough to allow free-market reforms that the Trump administration demands.

“What they announced yesterday is not dramatic enough. It’s not going to fix it. So they’ve got some big decisions to make,” Rubio, a Cuban-American and vociferous critic of the country’s ruling party, told reporters at the White House.

Havana as power was being restored on Tuesday. Photo: Reuters

US President Donald Trump, who has heaped pressure on Cuba’s communist government, said Monday he would “take” Cuba, adding: “We’ll be doing something with Cuba very soon”.

But his Cuban counterpart Miguel Diaz-Canel was defiant in the face of Washington’s threats.

“Faced with the worst-case scenario, Cuba has one guarantee: any external aggressor will encounter an unbreakable resistance,” he wrote in a statement on X.

Cuba was open to broad talks with Washington and allowing more investment, but it will not discuss changing its political system, an envoy told Agence France-Presse on Tuesday.

Tanieris Dieguez, Cuba’s deputy chief of mission in Washington, said the two neighbouring countries “have a lot of things to put on the table” but that neither should ask the other to change its government.

“Nothing related with our political system, nothing with our political model - our constitutional model - is part of the negotiations, and never will it be part of that,” she said.

The US embassy in Havana. Photo: AFP

“The only thing that Cuba asks for any conversation is respect to our sovereignty and to our right to self-determination.”

The New York Times, quoting unnamed US officials, said the Trump administration has called for Cuba to sack Diaz-Canel, who was seen as resistant to change.

Rubio denied the report late Tuesday, writing on X that the article was “fake” and was among media reports that relied on “charlatans and liars claiming to be in the know” as sources.

A total electricity breakdown Monday underscored the parlous state of Cuba’s economy.

The country lost Venezuela as its chief regional ally and oil supplier this January after a US military operation toppled Venezuela’s socialist leader Nicolas Maduro.

Power was restored to two-thirds of the country early Tuesday, including to 45 per cent of the capital Havana, home to 1.7 million people.

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel speaking on national television last month. Photo: AFP

Adding another scare, a 5.8-magnitude earthquake struck off Cuba’s coast early Tuesday. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.

Cuba’s ageing electricity generation system is in shambles, with daily power outages of up to 20 hours the norm in parts of the island, which lacks the fuel needed to generate power.

But since Maduro’s January 3 ousting, the island’s economy has been further hammered by a de facto US oil blockade.

No oil has been imported to Cuba since January 9, hitting the power sector while also forcing airlines to curtail flights to the island, a blow to its all-important tourism sector.

And Trump has been explicitly saying he wants the Cuban government to fall.

“You know, all my life I’ve been hearing about the United States and Cuba. When will the United States do it?” Trump told reporters Monday.

“I do believe I’ll be... having the honour of taking Cuba,” Trump said.

“Whether I free it, take it - think I could do anything I want with it, you want to know the truth. They’re a very weakened nation right now.”