Cuba has acquired more than 300 military drones from Russia and Iran since 2023 and held internal discussions about potential strikes on the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay, American naval vessels and possibly Key West, Florida, according to classified intelligence cited by Axios.

The report lands at a moment of peak bilateral tension between Washington and Havana. The White House has spent the past five months enforcing a de facto fuel embargo against the island following the US-led operation that removed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January, severing Cuba's dominant source of subsidised oil and triggering island-wide blackouts of up to 22 hours. Cuba declared total fuel exhaustion last week, with energy minister Vicente de la O Levy confirming the island held no diesel, no fuel oil and no reserves, a collapse that has driven the largest street protests in Havana since the crisis began. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has repeatedly vowed the US would be "taking over" Cuba "almost immediately."

A senior US official told Axios the drone acquisitions represented a significant escalation in the threat environment. "When we think about those types of technologies being that close, and a range of bad actors from terror groups to drug cartels to Iranians to the Russians, it's concerning. It's a growing threat," the official said. The presence of Iranian military advisers operating inside Havana was identified as a particular flashpoint, with the communist-run island said to be continuing to seek additional drone acquisitions beyond the 300 already secured.

Responding to the report, Cuba's embassy in Washington stated that "like any country, Cuba has the right to defend itself against external aggression. It is called self-defence, and it is protected by international law and the UN Charter." Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez accused Washington of constructing a "fraudulent case" day by day to justify what he called a "ruthless economic war" and lay the groundwork for eventual military aggression. "Cuba neither threatens nor desires war," he wrote on X, insisting Havana's posture was purely defensive.

President Miguel Díaz-Canel hardened that position further on May 17, asserting Cuba had "the absolute and legitimate right to defend itself" against what he described as a multidimensional US assault. He warned that any military strike would unleash "a bloodbath of incalculable consequences" for both countries and destabilise the wider region, while maintaining that Cuba had never harboured offensive intentions against the United States, "as its own defence and national security agencies know well."

The intelligence report marks a significant escalation in a rivalry that has simmered, and occasionally boiled over, since the Castro revolution of 1959. CIA director John Radcliffe visited Cuba last week, with CBS News citing an unnamed official as saying he warned the island against becoming a "safe haven for adversaries in the Western Hemisphere." US media also reported moves to indict former president Raúl Castro for allegedly ordering the shooting down of two small aircraft carrying humanitarian aid in 1996, a decades-old grievance that Washington appears to be reviving as leverage.

The broader geopolitical context makes the disclosure particularly charged. Cuba has drawn closer to both Russia and Iran as US pressure has intensified: Moscow dispatched a government-owned tanker carrying 730,000 barrels of crude oil to the port of Matanzas in late March, the island's only significant energy delivery since December, while Iranian military advisers are now said to be present on Cuban soil. High-level talks between US and Cuban officials took place in Havana in April, the first such encounter since 2016, but the two sides offered sharply divergent accounts of what was discussed, and the diplomatic process has since been overshadowed by increasingly bellicose military rhetoric on both sides.

With Russian and Iranian hardware now reportedly within striking distance of US installations just 90 miles from Florida, a dispute rooted in more than six decades of bitter ideological hostility could tip into open military confrontation. The question of whether Washington's pressure campaign against Havana ends in a negotiated transition or something far more dangerous is one that neither side appears close to answering.