Cuban exiles have been warning the U.S. about Cuba’s ties to Iran and other terrorist states for years, and Cuba is on the Department of State’s list of nations sponsoring terror. This is countered by a prevailing opinion that Cuba presents no threat to the U.S.; that in fact, it is the U.S. who is terrorizing Cuba with that evil embargo.
From today’s Miami Herald, excerpts from a Dangerous Cuba-Iran kinship:
Close ties between Tehran and Havana have reportedly existed since Iran’s revolutionary leadership came to power in 1979. Given both nations’ sponsorship of terrorism, their continued collaboration imperils U.S. national security. In the past, Havana provided training and material to selected terrorist groups, some of which are Iranian allies. Today, Cuba remains a safe haven for some international terrorist groups and it allows safe transit to others. Furthermore, Iran’s Interests Section and its Mission to the United Nations appear inadequately staffed for significant intelligence collection. This shortfall likely makes Tehran even more dependent on Havana’s continued intelligence trafficking.
In 2006, Ricardo Cabrisas Ruiz — a career officer in Cuba’s premier foreign intelligence service, the Directorate of Intelligence (DI) — visited with senior Iranian government officials. This meeting followed his October 2003 meeting with President Mohammad Khatami on expanded ties between Havana and Tehran.
At the time, Cabrisas served under cover as a minister without portfolio. During their discussions, Khatami said reciprocal visits by officials of the two countries would lead to further expansion and consolidation of mutual ties. Khatami described his nation’s ties with Havana as exemplary and claimed that closer Cuba-Iran cooperation would benefit the entire world. Cabrisas publicly focused on Havana’s willingness to broaden ties with Tehran and underlined the need to bolster economic cooperation. The meeting called for the recurring visits by officials, scientists and others to develop these enhanced ties.
Since at least 1996, the DI has targeted U.S. technologies beneficial to the Cuban economy. With one of the most advanced biotechnology industries in the emerging world, Castro successfully made biotechnology a building block of the Cuban economy. Cuba now holds more than 400 biotechnology patents and earns considerable foreign currency through its sales of biotechnology products to more than 50 nations. Tehran and Havana first began collaborative work on dual-use biotechnologies in the early 1990s.
Scott Carmichael, a senior counterintelligence officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency, recently confirmed continued intelligence sharing between Iran and Cuba. Additionally, Israeli sources report that during last year’s meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement in Havana, Iranian and Cuban intelligence officers discussed increased collaboration in targeting the United States.
This is akin to a dam keeper failing to repair a crack in a very large dam; a crack that is growing and growing, with more and more water seeping out. The keeper thinks about the leak, worries about it, but instead of fixing it, he sits, and watches and waits…
Eventually, that dam is going to burst.
Ziva, don’t you get the feling that this warning — like all the previous warnings that have come true — will fall on deaf ears?
This is off topic, and I apologize for that, but does anyone have any reaction to Perez-Roque’s statement that Cuba is ready to give up its sovereignty and even its flag to join with Venezuela in some grand confederation of Latin American countries? I found the statement disgusting, but not surprising, coming from the dictartorship that has long proclaimed Cuba’s independence while selling Cubans out to the Soviets, the tourists and the multinationals.
Is this just bluster from this moron, or is there more to it? I’m curious what others think about this.
Like I’ve been saying…the quicker we cut off the head of the snake the better. What we want is a safer America. So we pick a battle we can never win – staying in Iraq to stop the civil war that’s going to happen the second we leave. The country was held together by a ruthless dictator remember? Wouldn’t it have been smarter to jump into Cuba with 100,000 of our best, in the dead of night, arrest the snakes decapitating the terrorist leadership, seize the evidence of terrorist aiding and abetting, prove the bio-war shenanigans that Castro has going in Havana and elsewhere, show the world the shocking pictures of his victims – all of which pulls the rug out from under the terrorists and their rogue nation friends on notice? Plus we know the Cuban people would be shooting flowers at the GI’s and not bullets.
LittleGator: You’re right, Perez-Roque (aka Soco-Troco) is a blithering idiot. He’s one of those sick, die-hard revolutionaries that needs to be cleansed from the face of the Earth. Those ‘die-hards’ may actually believe that subordinating themsleves to Chavez is their only hope of survival. So, what we may be seeing is the beginings of the elite in-fighting that will surely take place once Fidel dies. I think folks like Soco-Troco are seeing the writing on the wall and are trying to forestall the inevitable by supporting stunts like this, which I’m sure will not go well with a large group within the leadership. Just watch them go after each other, which will facilitate their eventual collapse.
As for Iran/Cuba – it doesn’t surprise me. Our government is infested with folks who see nothing wrong with Cuba or Chavez’ Venezuela. They believe everyhting is benign and it’s just us crazy exiles that create these so-called dangers. An enlightened member of our intelligence community recently declared that the USGOV has many more pro-Castro sympathizers imbedded in its bureacracy. We can only hope that our efforts to counter them are more successful than their efforts to undermine us.