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US Secretary of State Marco Rubio continued his tour yesterday, visiting the islands of St. Kitts & Nevis, where Rubio took the time to address both the Cuban boat incident and the current situation with Iran.
First speaking about Cuba, Rubio said: “The majority of the information we still possess is what Cuban authorities are providing both the public and the US government – we have our embassy on the ground in Havana working on this as we speak, asking for access to people that were on those vessels if they were American citizens or permanent residents.
“We will know shortly, and we will know quickly, many more facts about this incident than we know right now, and as we gather more information, then we’ll be prepared to respond accordingly,” Rubio added.
Rubio continued: “The humanitarian crisis is getting out of hand because the Cubans don’t know how to run an economy, they’re incompetent – they have a military-controlled holding company named GAESA, which controls 40% of their GDP, and none of the money that that company has generated flows to the coffers of the government – none of that money goes to schools, none of that money goes to roads, none of that money goes to feeding the population.
“You have a country that has fertile farmland that imports sugar – this was one of the world’s leading exporters of sugar, and now they import sugar – they import almost all of their food, it’s a dysfunction, it’s just not even an economy, it’s a total dysfunction, and that’s their fault.”
Rubio continued: “The reason why things are as bad as they are is because they have an economic model that does not exist, that does not work, it doesn’t exist anywhere in the world – the only way Cuba is going to have a better future is if it has a different economic model.”
According to Rubio: “Cuba needs to change, it doesn’t have to change all at once, it doesn’t have to change from one day to the next – everyone is mature and realistic here – it needs to change dramatically because it is the only chance that it has to improve the quality of life and not lose 15% of its population since 2021.
“15% of the people of Cuba have left since 2021, that is not a system that is working, that’s a system that’s in collapse, and they need to make dramatic reforms – if they want to make those dramatic reforms that open the space for both economic and eventually political freedom for the people of Cuba, obviously the United States would love to see that and would be helpful.”
“If they decide they’re not going to dig in and just continue forward, then I think they’re going to continue to experience failure, and the people of the country are going to continue to suffer, and it’ll be the regime’s fault,” Rubio added.
Turning his attention to Iran, Rubio said: “After their nuclear program was obliterated they were told not to restart it, and here they are, you can see them always trying to rebuild elements of it – they’re not enriching right now, but they’re trying to get to the point where they ultimately can.
“Iran possesses a very large number of ballistic missiles, particularly short-range ballistic missiles that threaten the United States and our bases in the region, and our partners in the region, and all of our bases in the UAE, in Qatar, in Bahrain,” Rubio stated.
Rubio continued: “They also possess naval assets that threaten shipping and try to threaten the US Navy – so I want everyone to understand that beyond just the nuclear program, they possess these conventional weapons that are solely designed to attack America and attack Americans, and Iran refuses to talk about the ballistic missiles – that is a big problem.”
Continuing about the missiles, Rubio said: “They are trying to achieve intercontinental ballistic missiles, for example, you’ve seen them try to launch satellites into space – they are heading on a pathway to one day being able to develop weapons that could reach the continental US – they already possess weapons that could reach much of Europe, already now as we speak.
“The ranges continue to grow every single year exponentially, which is amazing to me for a country that’s facing sanctions, whose economy is in tatters, whose people are suffering, and somehow they still find money to invest in missiles of greater and greater capacity every year – this is an unsustainable threat.”
Rubio warned: “Already now, they possess missiles that threaten American interests – as we speak, they possess thousands of short-range ballistic missiles that can reach US bases located in the region, in Saudi Arabia, in Qatar, in Bahrain, in the United Arab Emirates, throughout the entire region – it’s a threat that exists already.
“Eventually, we’ll have to have conversations about more than just the nuclear program, but if you can’t even make progress on the nuclear program, it’s going to be hard to make progress on the ballistic missiles as well.”
Rubio continued: “If in fact, what you’re interested in is a peaceful nuclear program, you can do it like most of the countries in the world do it, which is they have above-ground reactors and they import the fuel – we have deals now to do that with countries.
“If what they really wanted was energy, they could do small modular reactors, which is something quite affordable and achievable for a lot of countries – but when you say ‘we want to enrich, and we want to enrich deep underground,’ and you have a history in the past of enriching to 20 and even 60 percent, plus you’re building missiles that could potentially carry warheads, that doesn’t sound to me like a country that’s not interested in building weapons.”
“Rubio said: “They don’t need to enrich in order to have nuclear energy, they don’t need nuclear energy by the way, they have plenty of natural gas – but if they wanted nuclear energy, they could have it the way other countries have it.
“The fact that they refuse to get it that way, the fact that they insist not just on enrichment, but on enrichment in locations located inside mountains… I think you would have to lack common sense to know what that means or what that could mean.”
In closing, Rubio said: “We think ultimately in the 21st century, for there to be a true arms control agreement, it has to involve China, [because] their stockpiles have increased dramatically.
“Their position that they would argue is that they’re still way behind the United States and Russia, but we think that’s irrelevant, they certainly have the capacity to catch up and are well on their way to doing so.
“President Trump strongly believes that for any sort of agreement, a nuclear agreement in the 21st century to be legitimate, it has to involve these three countries: the United States, Russia, and China.”
