Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel joined Russia and Iran in condemning what he called the “cowardly killing” by Israeli forces of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, the Lebanese political party and militia deemed a terrorist organization by the U.S., even as Cuba spearheads a campaign to get itself removed from the U.S. list of states that sponsor terrorism.
Nasrallah, who led Hezbollah since 1992, was killed in Beirut in an airstrike by the Israeli military on Friday. President Joe Biden said in a statement that “Nasrallah and the terrorist group he led, Hezbollah, were responsible for killing hundreds of Americans over a four-decade reign of terror” and called his death “a measure of justice for his many victims, including thousands of Americans, Israelis, and Lebanese civilians.”
But Cuba, which has increasingly aligned with U.S. adversaries, is among the few countries that publicly criticized the killing.
“We condemn the cowardly targeted assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General of Hezbollah, as a result of Israel’s attack on residential buildings in the southern suburbs of Beirut, causing destruction and death of innocent civilians,” Díaz-Canel, the country’s handpicked president, said on X.
He accused Israel, “with the complicity of the United States,” of threatening “ regional and global peace and security.”
The Communist Party newspaper Granma reported the Cuban leader’s statement in a story, and several official social media accounts, including those of the Cuban Women’s Federation and the Ministry of Finances and Prices replicated his posting on X or published similar messages.
Few governments have publicly denounced the killing of the leader of Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Islamic militant group formally designated as a terrorist organization by more than 60 countries, including the European Union, the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council. In Latin America, Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro also shared his “solidarity” with Hezbollah.
Cuba has a strong political alliance with Iran, which created Hezbollah to act as a proxy against Israel. The island’s government has long-established diplomatic ties with Hezbollah’s political wing. In 2021, the Cuban ambassador in Lebanon hosted the group’s international relations chief, Ammar Al-Moussawi, who railed against U.S. “conspiracies” and aggressive policies to sow “chaos and hunger” around the world, according to a statement by the Cuban Foreign Affairs Ministry.
But Díaz-Canel’s public condemnation of Nasrallah’s killing comes at an odd moment when the island’s diplomats have been lobbying foreign governments to pressure the Biden administration to remove Cuba from the list of sponsors of terrorism.
Just last week, Cuban diplomats publicized clips of foreign dignitaries who included the call to remove Cuba from the list in their speeches at the United Nations General Assembly session in New York. In an interview with Newsweek, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said the island’s inclusion is “unjustifiable” and pleaded with the Biden administration to remove it.
President Donald Trump included the country back on the list before leaving office in Jan. 2021. President Biden has kept it there despite removing other restrictions on travel and remittances imposed by his predecessor.
Though Cuba’s inefficient, centrally planned economy is widely understood as the central cause of the island’s economic debacle, Cuban officials blame U.S. sanctions for the crisis and have said that its inclusion on the terrorism-sponsor list has restricted the government’s ability to conduct financial transactions abroad.
Yet Cuba’s messaging about the terror list and assurances that the island’s leadership wants better relations with the U.S. has clashed with the government’s embrace of vitriolic anti-American rhetoric, its strengthened ties with U.S. adversaries and its reluctance to discuss the release of hundreds of peaceful anti-government demonstrators imprisoned after protests in 2021.
Building on longstanding ties with the Palestinian Authority and later with Hamas, the Cuban government has also become a vocal critic of Israel’s military operation in Gaza and has recently used the issue to attack the U.S. government on social media frequently. Wearing a keffiyeh headdress, Díaz-Canel led a pro-Palestinian demonstration in front of the U.S. Embassy in Havana in November 2023.
Díaz-Canel also declared his support for Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and welcomed a Russian nuclear submarine to Havana Harbor for the first time since the Cold War.
Russian warships, nuclear submarine enter Havana Harbor under watch of U.S. destroyers
The gestures have not gone unnoticed. U.S. officials have told their Cuban counterparts the constant “poking in the eye” goes against chances to improve relations. The Cuban delegation that traveled to New York for the U.N. meeting did not score any bilateral meetings with U.S. officials last week.
Experts also wonder what benefit comes from antagonizing its rich neighbor 90 miles away, home of the largest Cuban community abroad, which keeps the island afloat with money and food sent to relatives. The Cuban leadership has also recently cracked down on private businesses — which had been rapidly growing with the support of the Biden administration — and has yet to approve U.S. investment in private enterprises.
“The Díaz-Canel administration not only wants it both ways, it wants it all ways,” said John Kavulich, a long-time observer of U.S.-Cuba relations who heads the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council. Cuban officials say they want to improve relations with the U.S. while “saying just about everything that might be included on a how-to-list specifically drafted to antagonize the White House and U.S. Congress.”
But because the Cuban government “recoils” from economic and political reforms, he added, it “must genuflect… to seek disguised charity from governments whose interests are unaligned with the United States. So this means the Díaz-Canel administration can be counted upon to criticize Israel but not Hamas and Hezbollah.”
