US Senator Lindsey Graham has predicted Cuba's communist government will collapse imminently, suggesting the island could become Washington's next target following joint US-Israeli airstrikes on Iran that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

"Cuba's next. They're gonna fall. This communist dictatorship in Cuba? Their days are numbered," the Republican senator told Fox News on the night of March 1, drawing parallels between the Caribbean nation and Venezuela, where Nicolás Maduro was seized by US forces in January and replaced by acting president Delcy Rodríguez, whom the Trump administration has kept in power in exchange for US access to the country's oil reserves.

Graham's remarks come as Cuba confronts its gravest crisis since the revolution, with the island's electricity system reaching a new nadir. Official data from state utility Unión Eléctrica showed blackouts affecting up to 64% of the country during peak hours on March 2, with residents in several provinces enduring outages of up to 20 hours daily.

The energy collapse has disrupted water supplies, food preservation, hospital operations and school attendance across the island. Eight of 16 principal generation units sit offline due to recurring faults or deferred maintenance, the legacy of what engineers describe as decades of chronic underinvestment. Estimates place the cost of rehabilitating the grid at between $8bn and $10bn, a sum beyond reach for an economy that has contracted approximately 15% since 2020.

Speaking on February 27, a day before airstrikes on Iran began, President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House that discussions with Cuban leaders were under way and floated the possibility of a “friendly takeover of Cuba.” "The Cuban government is talking with us," Trump said. "They have no money. They have nothing right now. But they're talking to us, and maybe we'll have a friendly takeover of Cuba."

Trump indicated that Secretary of State Marco Rubio was involved in high-level discussions with Cuban officials, describing once again the island as a "failing nation" but adding: "I think we're going to make a deal with Cuba."

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel responded publicly, saying Havana was "willing to engage in dialogue with the United States, a dialogue on any topic, but without pressure or preconditions". It remains unclear whether formal negotiations are currently taking place, though reports last month suggested possible discussions in Mexico.

The Trump administration last week moved to slightly ease its energy stranglehold on Cuba, authorising US companies to export fuel directly to the island's private sector and permitting applications to resell Venezuelan-origin oil to non-government entities. But the Commerce Department and Treasury explicitly excluded any entities linked to the Cuban military, intelligence services or companies under the military conglomerate GAESA.

"The strategy here is to show the Cubans and the world that the only lifeline that Cuba has left is the United States," said Ricardo Herrero, executive director of the Cuba Study Group, as quoted by the New York Times.

The partial easing represents what analysts describe as a carefully calibrated effort to accelerate regime change whilst avoiding a full-blown humanitarian collapse.

Venezuela had supplied Cuba with the bulk of its petroleum until the January 3 operation that resulted in Maduro's capture and severed Caracas's subsidised oil flows to Havana. Mexico, another key supplier, halted shipments after an executive order signed by Trump on January 29 labelled Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to US national security and foreign policy interests, threatening punitive tariffs against any country supplying oil to the communist-run island.

Rohit Rathod, a senior oil analyst at Vortexa, told Bloomberg he estimates the country's reserves could be depleted by late March, a timeline that could trigger social unrest severe enough to threaten the government. Cuba recorded zero oil imports in January, the first such month since 2015, and has received just one shipment so far in 2026, as per Kpler data.

Cuban aviation authorities informed international airlines last month that jet fuel would be unavailable at all airports until further notice, forcing carriers to suspend service and dealing a severe blow to the tourism sector that provided crucial foreign exchange.

Meanwhile, the island's solar photovoltaic parks generated 4,466 megawatt hours on March 2, peaking at 840 megawatts during maximum radiation, but this contribution remains structurally insufficient to offset nighttime deficits when the system falls back on ageing Soviet-era thermoelectric plants.

Relations between Washington and Havana have deteriorated sharply in recent months. Last week, Cuban authorities reported that a Florida-registered speedboat carrying 10 armed individuals from the US opened fire on soldiers off the island's north coast, killing four people and injuring six. Rubio stated the incident was not a US government operation and involved no official personnel.

Axios reported last month that Rubio has been conducting clandestine discussions with Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, grandson of former Cuban leader Raúl Castro, as Washington explores options for political change on the island. The engagement circumvents formal diplomatic contacts and demonstrates the administration's belief that the 94-year-old former leader wields more influence than President Díaz-Canel.

During the interview with Fox, Graham praised Trump's foreign policy approach, comparing him favourably to Ronald Reagan. "I am a big admirer of Ronald Reagan, but I'm here to tell you that Donald Trump is the gold standard for Republicans, maybe any president, when it comes to foreign policy," the senator said.

He cited Maduro's removal as evidence of Trump's effectiveness. "Maduro? Everybody talked about him; well, Donald Trump's got him in jail!" Graham said.

Trump has set regime change in Cuba as a goal by the end of 2026. However, unlike Venezuela with its vast oil reserves and functioning opposition parties, Cuba offers Washington fewer levers for engineering political transformation, hampered by decades of economic mismanagement and a fractured civil society.

Breaking with years of defiance, Díaz-Canel has indicated willingness to open dialogue with Washington, describing "economic strangulation by the world's leading power". But he has also launched military drills to prepare for potential instability, with Cuba's National Defence Council approving plans to shift the country into a "state of war" posture.

Havana, already subject to a punishing trade embargo for over 60 years, attributes the energy breakdown to Washington's latest fuel blockade, whilst independent analysts point to the state's long-standing refusal to modernise or open the energy sector to private capital, a structural constraint that no amount of emergency measures can resolve.