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When CIA Director John Ratcliffe visited Havana last week for a rare meeting with senior Cuban officials, he brought along one of the operatives involved in the United States special operation to capture then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro earlier this year, CBS News reported on May 22, citing multiple people familiar with the matter.
According to the news channel, Ratcliffe introduced the figure during talks with senior Cuban officials and identified him as one of the operatives involved in the January mission targeting Maduro.
Cuba, a close ally of Venezuela before Maduro’s capture, has said 32 of its military and police personnel were killed during the operation, which took place in the heart of Caracas.
The reports said that the move was viewed as a message to Cuba amid growing tensions between Havana and Washington.
Ratcliffe’s visit came after months of increasing pressure by the administration of President Donald Trump on Cuba. Right after the operation in Venezuela, Trump vowed to starve Havana of oil, amid one of the worst energy crises in the history of the communist-ruled nation.
Trump renewed his threats to Cuba on May 22, saying that several past U.S. presidents considered intervening there for decades but that “it looks like I’ll be the one that does it.”
“Other presidents have looked at this for 50, 60 years, doing something,” Trump told reporters when asked about Cuba during an environmental event in the Oval Office. “And, it looks like I’ll be the one that does it. So, I would be happy to do it.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters separately on the same day that Cuba has been a national security threat for years because of its ties to U.S. adversaries and that Trump is intent on addressing it.
Rubio added that the Trump administration wants to resolve differences with Cuba peacefully. Still, he doubted that the U.S. could reach a diplomatic resolution with the island’s current government.
Trump’s “preference is always a negotiated agreement that’s peaceful. That’s always our preference. That remains our preference with Cuba,” Rubio said in Miami before boarding a plane to attend a NATO meeting in Sweden and then visit India.
“I’m just being honest with you, you know, the likelihood of that happening, given who we’re dealing with right now, is not high,” he said.
Ratcliffe’s visit to Cuba was meant to explore possible improvements in relations. However, according to several reports, the CIA director came back unimpressed from those talks.
All recent developments suggest that the Trump administration is nearing a decision to intervene militarily in Cuba. This could happen at any moment. A special operation in the island nation could come faster than we saw in Venezuela, without much preparations to be noticed by observers, due to its proximity to the U.S. mainland.
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