Cuba’s electrical grid is collapsing. Yet instead of stabilizing the island, the communist regime is expanding military cooperation with Iran and Russia just 90 miles from the United States. That should alarm Washington far more than Havana’s blackouts.
In mid-May, Cuba’s energy crisis reached a breaking point. Energy and Mines Minister Vicente de la O Levy admitted the regime had effectively exhausted its diesel and fuel oil reserves. Blackouts now last up to 22 hours per day in parts of the island. Russian fuel deliveries have slowed, while Venezuelan support largely disappeared following former dictator Nicolas Maduro’s downfall. Cuba’s grid is surviving on limited domestic crude, natural gas, and renewables. Daily energy deficits now exceed 1,100 megawatts.
Yet while ordinary Cubans sit in darkness, Havana continues investing in asymmetric warfare capabilities. Recent intelligence assessments reportedly indicate that Cuba has acquired more than 300 attack drones from Iran and Russia since 2023. The systems are reportedly dispersed across strategic military sites, while Iranian advisers assist Cuban forces in drone operations and asymmetric tactics. Cuban intelligence personnel have also reportedly studied Iranian methods refined in conflicts across the Middle East and Ukraine. This is not another symbolic Cold War provocation. It is an emerging operational threat near the American homeland.
CUBAN PRESIDENT WARNS OF ‘BLOODBATH’ IF US ATTACKS AS TENSION RISES
These drones operate within the range of Naval Air Station Key West, Guantanamo Bay, and U.S. naval assets throughout the Caribbean. Small attack drones are cheap, difficult to detect at scale, and capable of overwhelming defenses through saturation tactics perfected by Iran and Hezbollah. Recent conflicts in the Persian Gulf and northern Israel have already demonstrated how low-cost drone warfare can challenge even advanced militaries.
The implications extend well beyond Florida. The southeastern U.S. hosts critical components of America’s strategic defense architecture, including submarine support infrastructure, aerospace defense systems, naval logistics hubs, and military transit corridors. Even limited drone harassment targeting fuel depots, radar installations, or maritime routes could disrupt readiness during a regional or global crisis.
Iran understands this perfectly. Tehran’s strategy has never relied on matching American military power conventionally. Instead, it depends on deniable, low-cost pressure campaigns designed to exploit vulnerabilities and complicate U.S. defense planning.
Cuba now offers Iran a forward operating platform directly adjacent to the continental U.S. Washington should not dismiss this as speculative. Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela spent years building overlapping intelligence, military, and illicit financial networks under Maduro. Iranian-backed drone projects operated in Venezuela with Cuban intelligence coordination, while Hezbollah-linked facilitators, sanctions-evasion pipelines, and narcotics-financing networks expanded under Caracas’s protection. That ecosystem is now moving closer to the U.S. mainland through Cuba.
The timing makes the threat even more dangerous. Weak authoritarian regimes are often the most reckless. Cuba’s leadership faces worsening blackouts, economic deterioration, and growing public anger. History repeatedly shows that regimes under severe internal stress often externalize confrontation to project strength and distract from domestic collapse.
The fantasy that Havana could be moderated through accommodation has collapsed alongside Cuba’s power grid. Instead, the regime has deepened its alignment with America’s principal adversaries while positioning hostile capabilities near U.S. territory.
CUBA HAS COMPLETELY RUN OUT OF FUEL DUE TO US SANCTIONS: ‘THERE’S ABSOLUTELY NOTHING’
Washington still holds leverage. Cuba’s economy is deteriorating rapidly, fuel reserves are depleted, and dependence on foreign support has rarely been greater. The U.S. should tighten sanctions enforcement, pressure third-country suppliers facilitating fuel transfers, expand maritime interdiction efforts, and aggressively target networks supporting Iranian military cooperation on the island.
The ayatollah’s regime no longer needs ballistic missiles in Cuba to threaten the U.S. Cheap drones, Iranian advisers, and a collapsing anti-American regime 90 miles from Florida may be enough.
Jose Lev Alvarez is an American-Israeli scholar specializing in Middle Eastern security policy. A multilingual veteran of the Israeli special forces and the U.S. Army, he holds three master’s degrees and is completing a doctorate in intelligence and global security in the Washington, D.C., area.