OPINION:
President Trump says that when the fighting in the Persian Gulf ends, perhaps one of our returning warships should pay a call on Cuba.
Why fight an enemy 7,000 miles away and ignore one just 90 miles off our coast?
It is true that unlike Iran, Cuba does not have nuclear weapons, but it is allied with rogue nations that do, such as Iran, China and Russia. Cuba plays a key role in gathering intelligence for our enemies and in spreading revolution.
People were interested in these podcasts
Iran’s revolutionary regime has been a thorn in our side since 1979. Cuba has been a cancer since the 1959 communist revolution.
Iran and Cuba have striking similarities. One is an Islamic dictatorship; the other is a communist state. Both practice brutal repression. Iran murdered as many as 36,000 protesters, by some estimates, at the start of the war.
Havana operates a string of gulags across the island with an estimated 1,200 prisoners. Adjusted for population size, that figure would be equivalent to 40,000 prisoners in the United States.
The Castro regime has ruined the nation’s economy just as surely as if it were at war.
Without Venezuelan oil, there are rolling blackouts. Garbage piles up in the streets. The average Cuban worker earns the equivalent of $16 a month. In what was once one of the most prosperous nations in Latin America, the average Cuban exists on half a pound of chicken and 10 to 12 eggs every 10 days.
Both Iran and Cuba do their best to spread revolution directly or through proxies. Tehran is allied with Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. At various times, Cuba has sought to spread revolution in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Peru and Bolivia.
Despite everything that has happened since the start of the war, Iran remains determined to have nuclear weapons. In the 1960s, the Soviet Union put missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads in Cuba. It took a blockade of the island to get them out.
Tehran feigns an interest in a negotiated settlement but is just playing for time. Periodically, Havana says it wants talks with the United States, but never about anything substantive, such as restoring civil liberties or holding free elections.
Close to 70 years is long enough for Cuban communists to oppress their own people and threaten freedom everywhere in the hemisphere. One way or another, this madness must end.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.