CIA Chief Ratcliffe Meets Raúl Castro's Grandson in Cuba
Get the Geopolitics newsletter
Daily geopolitics — wars, elections, sanctions, the diplomatic moves that move markets. Free.
- CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Havana Thursday and met with Cuban officials including Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro — Raúl Castro's grandson — along with Interior Minister Lázaro Álvarez Casas and the head of Cuban intelligence services.
- Ratcliffe delivered President Trump's message that the US is prepared to seriously engage on economic and security issues "but only if Cuba makes fundamental changes," a CIA official confirmed to the AP.
- The US delegation stressed Cuba cannot remain a "safe haven for adversaries in the Western Hemisphere," while Cuban officials insisted the island poses no security threat and objected to its continued placement on the US state sponsors of terrorism list.
- The meetings marked the first US government flights to land in Cuba outside of Guantánamo Bay since 2016, and follow Rodríguez Castro's secret February meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the sidelines of a Caribbean Community summit in St. Kitts.
- The talks come against a backdrop of Cuba's collapsed power grid, lost electricity in eastern provinces, and a US fuel blockade that has caused food spoilage and reduced work hours; the State Department this week reiterated a $100 million humanitarian aid and satellite internet offer conditional on Cuban acceptance.
- In late January, Trump threatened tariffs on any country that sells or supplies oil to Cuba, though sources told AP that military action is not imminent despite the heated rhetoric.
Why it matters: The Havana visit is the highest-level CIA trip to Cuba in nearly a decade and the first US government flight outside Guantánamo since 2016, opening a channel that the $100 million aid offer — conditioned on Cuban cooperation — gives both sides reason to keep alive. For Cuba, engagement is the only path around the US fuel blockade now crippling its grid; for Washington, the meeting is a low-cost lever to press counterterrorism and regional security demands without resorting to the military option Trump has publicly floated.
