The United States officially removed Cuba from its list of countries sponsoring terrorism in 2015, as part of a short-lived outburst of rapprochement during the Obama years. The renewed appointment could throw a wrench into President-elect Joe Biden’s potential plans for diplomacy with the island, and could assist Cuban Americans and other voters who helped President Donald Trump to victory in Florida, even though he eventually won the election lost.
When asked for an answer to the Times report, a State Department spokesman told CNN that “we are not discussing any deliberations or possible deliberations regarding nominations.” The White House declined to comment on the record when it was reached by CNN.
The consideration unites U.S.-Cuban relations that have reached their lowest point in decades, as the incoming Biden government and the Cuban government look at how to reconnect after four years of the Cold War era. Increasing sanctions by the Trump administration and the disruption of the tourism industry by the coronavirus pandemic have already plagued the island’s struggling economy.
Whether Pompeo will approve the plan remains unknown, but a reversal of the Biden administration could take months, the Times reported. The designation as a state sponsor of terrorism could result in sanctions, including “restrictions on U.S. foreign aid; a ban on the export and sale of defense; certain controls on the export of dual-use items; and miscellaneous financial and other restrictions,” according to the Department of Foreign Affairs.
U.S. officials told the Times that the proposal to return Cuba to the terrorism list stemmed from the State Department’s Western Hemisphere Bureau – as opposed to its terrorism bureau, which would normally be heavily involved in such a move. Former Obama foreign policy adviser Ben Rhodes told the Times that the departure from the standard planning protocol “is a sign that they know they can not get Cuba on the merits.”
Ties between Cuba and the United States began to deteriorate in 2017, when the Trump administration not only imposed economic sanctions on the communist government, but restricted permission for U.S. citizens to travel to the island. The administration also effectively stopped legal transfers sent from Cuban Americans to family members in Cuba, and canceled a wide variety of other Obama-era policies, including U.S. cruise ships to visit the island and Major League Baseball to Cuban players yard.
Recent relations between the two countries have been restrictive throughout. Pompeo announced earlier this month that the US was placing Cuba as well as the Comoros, Nicaragua and Russia ‘on a special watch list for governments carrying’ serious violations of religious freedom ‘. “
In September, Trump announced a new series of economic sanctions on Cuba that prohibit U.S. citizens from buying Cuban cigars as well as rum and staying at Cuban hotels on the island. And in May, the State Department found that Cuba was one of four countries that “did not fully cooperate” with U.S. counter-terrorism efforts last year.
Republicans have already expressed opposition to the expected policy of the Biden government in the region, with Senate Marco Rubio having expressed doubts about the possible reversal of US policy towards Cuba.
“I think it would honestly be a mistake to go back to a policy that did not have the intended effect,” Rubio said on NBC 6 earlier this month. “The Cuban army and the Cuban regime benefited from it, but in the lives of everyday Cubans not much has changed, either for their freedoms or their prosperity.”
CNN’s Jenny Hansler, Patrick Oppmann, Maegan Vazquez and Philip Wang contributed to this report.
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