imperial ambitions are Things are changing under President Donald Trump. Greenland, Venezuela, Iran and Cuba are often viewed as a train of complete and near-total victory. As the midterm elections approach, and the date for the apparent return of war in Iran, talk of an easy regime overthrow is back, if it ever left.
At a rally in Florida last Friday, Trump laid out his grand vision, which he promised would come true once the Islamic Republic’s threat to the world is eliminated: “We’re going to come back from Iran. Those beautiful ships are going to go through Cuba. We’re going to have one of them parked about 50 yards off the coast. They’re going to put their hands up, and then we’re going to send Marco Rubio to seal the deal.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a descendant of Cuban immigrants who left under President Fulgencio Batista (although Rubio later tried to claim his parents fled Castro, who came to power three years later), has long made overthrowing the communist government in Havana a top priority on his agenda, hoping to replicate the relative ease of kidnapping Venezuela’s president in January. Rubio raised some eyebrows last Friday when he publicly posted on X that those seeking to “create positive change in Cuba” could “seize this opportunity to create the change you want through discrete means.” [sic] Cooperation with the CIA. “
The post caused widespread confusion (Bloomberg’s White House correspondent wrote: “Checked four times to see if this was real”), but it was also shared by U.S. officials and members of Congress, heightening public calls for cooperation. To the public, open recruitment may seem strange and out of character because they imagine the CIA recruiting covert agents and informants through secret channels or hidden websites, just as the CIA under Bush and Obama tried to recruit agents inside Iran.
But this public appeal is not entirely new. Under the Biden administration, the CIA has used public Telegram channels to recruit collaborators inside Russia and posted videos on social media in the hope of recruiting Chinese, Iranian and North Korean assets.
This open recruitment stems from the difficulties Western intelligence agencies face in fighting adversaries who have built sophisticated surveillance networks of their own. In May 2025, a CIA official told ABC News, “In today’s world, [universal technical surveillance]we can’t recruit resources like we did 20 years ago, and probably like you did 10 years ago. “This affects not only intelligence operations against Beijing, but also Tehran and Havana, where the United States and Israel lack on-the-ground connections and have a limited official presence, leading the CIA and Mossad to try to recruit willing informants online.
While these limitations may influence the details of this strategy, those in power in their respective countries may view them not as evidence of limitations but as evidence of their new strategic power: bragging about their national power rather than shutting it down as useless. After all, what good is deterrence if no one knows you did it?
While the scale of these public calls began during the Biden administration and has exploded during Trump’s second term, these moves were arguably preceded by Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to bring Mossad operations more into the public sphere. The Israeli prime minister’s boasting about multiple cyberattacks against Iran’s nuclear program in the late 2010s began to prompt a shift in public discussion of the Mossad’s work, with many Netanyahu allies, such as then-Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, praising Iran for now “knowing that it has been exposed and that Israel can reach anywhere in the Islamic Republic.” The former deputy director of Mossad said after the revelation of Iran’s stolen nuclear files that Netanyahu’s actions “went against our nature” and that “the prime minister insisted on making this public.”
David Barnea, Netanyahu’s pick for Mossad chief in 2021, is credited with institutionalizing the change, pivoting the secret intelligence agency’s operations to appeal to a wider audience, reportedly involving Mossad veterans alarmed by the disclosure of agents inside Iran. Portraying Israel as a superpower capable of exerting power anywhere has become a popular narrative under Netanyahu. In an interview with “60 Minutes”, one Mossad official said of the 2024 pager attacks in Lebanon, which injured more than 2,000 people, that “they are proving our superiority throughout the Middle East,” while another official said that the complexity and success of the operation showed that “the world is our stage.”
The United States has also developed a habit of demonstrating its superpower status under Trump, declaring that the country intends to conquer places such as Greenland and Canada, stealing natural resources from Venezuela and Iran to enrich the US treasury, and openly and unabashedly placing the Western Hemisphere under the Washington protectorate known as the “Donro Doctrine.” When Rubio delivered a speech in Greece on the War of Civilizations against the backdrop of the Acropolis in early October, he declared, “We choose to pursue national power unapologetically.”
Publicly blaming the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) against foreign adversaries, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) against domestic adversaries, is part of a strategy to embrace imperialist fervor at home and abroad. Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater and a private security contractor who remains influential in Trump’s world, said he was “jealous” of the pager attack and publicly urged the CIA to learn lessons from the Mossad, saying “we deserved it.”
While both countries openly seek deep intelligence penetration into hostile nations, the power of covert and overt operations remains limited, even by superpowers and followers. Although the CIA asserted its authority in May by publicly having its director meet with Cuban officials in Havana to demand “fundamental changes” in exchange for freedom from the economic stranglehold, the agency has a storied history of failed attempts to overthrow Cuba’s communist government. Early hopes that Iran could take control as quickly and cleanly as it took control of Venezuela’s government were dashed early in the conflict, and a war that was supposed to last only weeks is now almost certain to stretch beyond the midterm elections with another round of devastating blows.
Even if the war with Iran ends so easily that U.S. ships are able to pass through Cuba on their way back and be better prepared, outside analysts and even internal U.S. intelligence assessments agree that overthrowing the communist country will not be easy. The New York Times reported in August that U.S. intelligence sources suggested the situation may be closer to Iran, and that even if Raul Castro – who has not held any official role in the country since 2021 – was captured, “few pragmatic officials” might succeed him in power.
While the Cuban military lacks the advanced equipment that Iran possesses and displays a state of readiness (like Venezuela’s) that does not indicate a country’s true willingness to fight a protracted war, Cuba’s military structure is similar to Iran’s, based on decentralization and leadership redundancy. Furthermore, Cuba’s political power structure is similar to that of Iran, but is not actually based on a single individual, despite claims to the contrary.
While Trump continues to tout the miracle of being able to eliminate Maduro without American deaths, the brazenness of the operation and the deceptive publicity of the negotiations with Iran appear to have taught the Cuban leadership a lesson. President Miguel Díaz-Canel said in June: “All these factors create a great deal of distrust for the Cuban people when it comes to any type of negotiation. We continue to express our willingness to engage in dialogue, but it must be a dialogue between equals, without pressure and respecting our sovereignty.” U.S. officials have yet to internalize this sentiment. Speaking of Cuba in March, Trump gleefully mused: “Whether it’s freeing it or taking it, I think I can do whatever I want with it.” He said something similar about Iran at the time.