In announcing the move, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo cited Cuba’s hosting of American fugitives and Colombian rebels and its support for Venezuela’s authoritarian leader.
The State Department designated Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism on Monday in a last-minute foreign policy stroke that will complicate the incoming Biden administration’s plans to restore friendlier relations with Havana. In a statement, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo cited Cuba’s hosting of 10 Colombian rebel leaders, along with a handful of American fugitives wanted for crimes committed in the 1970s, and Cuba’s support for the authoritarian leader of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro. Mr. Pompeo said the action sent the message that “the Castro regime must end its support for international terrorism and subversion of U.S. justice.” The New York Times reported last month Mr. Pompeo was weighing the move and had a plan to do so on his desk. The action, announced with just days remaining in the Trump administration, reverses a step taken in 2015 after President Barack Obama restored diplomatic relations with Cuba, calling its decades of political and economic isolation a relic of the Cold War. Once in office, President Trump acted swiftly to undermine Mr. Obama’s policy of openness, to the delight of Cuban-American and other Latino voters in Florida who welcomed his aggressive stance toward both Havana and its socialist, anti-American ally, Mr. Maduro. Other Republicans cheered on Mr. Trump, saying that Havana had failed to enforce political overhauls and had continued to crack down on dissent, breaking promises it had made to the Obama administration. United States officials said the plan to restore Cuba to the terrorism sponsor list was developed, in a break from standard process, by the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs and not its Counterterrorism Bureau, which would typically play a central role in such a decision. Monday’s designation said that Cuba has “repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism,” according to the State Department’s criteria for adding countries to the list, which includes only three other nations: Iran, North Korea and Syria.
