President Trump has re-listed Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism” in one of the first foreign policy moves of his new administration.
The move was included in an executive order Trump signed on Monday that rescinded 78 of President Biden’s executive actions. Biden only removed Cuba from the list last week.
It was essentially guaranteed that Trump would reverse the move since his new secretary of state, Marco Rubio, is very hawkish on Cuba and previously introduced legislation that would have prohibited the president from removing Havana from the list.
US officials in the Biden administration said they decided to lift the designation as part of a deal brokered by the Catholic Church to release Cuban political prisoners. Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said he was freeing 553 prisoners in the spirit of the Vatican’s celebration of a “Jubilee Year” in 2025 and did not specifically tie the releases to the US lifting the designation.
In response to Trump relisting Cuba, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez called the designation a “tool of political coercion.” Iran, North Korea, and Syria are the only other countries listed by the US as “state sponsors of terrorism,” and the designation ensures harsh sanctions will remain.
Cuba was first put on the list under the Reagan administration in 1982. The Obama administration removed Cuba in 2015 as part of its steps toward normalization with Havana, but it was relisted in January 2021 by then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
While Obama took steps toward normalization with Cuba, he never fully lifted the decades-old trade embargo on the Caribbean country, allowing the previous Trump administration to easily reverse the policies.
