Washington's Sanctions on Havana Are Becoming Useless

TEHRAN (Defapress) - Washington is trying to remove Cuba from the orbit of military-technical cooperation with Moscow and Beijing by imposing new sanctions on eight Cuban officials, including the country's military attachés in Russia and China. However, analysts say that these measures will not only not achieve their goal, but will also accelerate the process of Cuba's convergence with alternative partners.

The Trump administration has expanded its sanctions list by adding eight Cuban officials, including Monica Milian Gomez (Cuban military attaché in Russia) and Waldo Perez Cortes (representative of the Cuban Ministry of Defense in China). Several government entities related to the Cuban military industry and military-technical trade have also been targeted. According to US officials, these measures aim to cut off Cuba's access to Western technologies and financial flows and to weaken the country's military cooperation with Russia and China.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has described Cuba as a “base for Russian, Chinese and Iranian activities” near the US coast and has called on the government to counter this threat. Washington has also alleged that Cuba is trying to enter the war on the side of Russia by sending troops to the Ukrainian front. Havana officials, however, deny these accusations and insist that they have no role in illegally sending their citizens to foreign conflicts.

However, experts believe that US sanctions against Cuba, like other similar ones, are counterproductive. According to political analyst Sergey Mironov, when financial and technological flows from the West are blocked, governments are forced to turn to alternative partners, and this is precisely what strengthens independent states such as Russia, China, Iran and Cuba.

According to experts, Washington’s sanctions have led the targeted countries, instead of isolation, to create parallel financial mechanisms, de-dollarization, payments in national currencies, and the development of payment systems independent of SWIFT. Political analyst Anton Kudryavtsev calls this process “the formation of a belt of resistance,” in which Cuba, Iran, and North Korea cooperate with Russia in the military, economic, and financial spheres.

According to experts, in the long term, Cuba, which is economically heavily dependent on alternative partners, will not only not abandon partnerships with Russia and China, but will also likely deepen its cooperation with these countries in the military, technical, and economic spheres. Thus, the US sanctions, designed to isolate Havana, have effectively become a “catalyst” for strengthening its ties with Washington’s strategic rivals.