Secretary of State Marco Rubio is taking action against a Cuban financial institution that is helping prop up the genocidal Iranian regime. The red-green alliance of communism and fundamentalist Islam is a very real and very dangerous fact.
The new Monroe Doctrine, as my colleague Sarah Anderson often illustrates, means that the Trump administration has worked on eliminating terrorism and transnational crime organizations from the Western Hemisphere. But it also means targeting groups and entities that help support terrorists from the other side of the planet. That includes the Cuban bank that has been financially supporting Iranian jihadis.
Many of America’s enemies have, over the years, used Castro’s Cuba as an outpost for their financial or military operations targeting the United States. That was true from the Soviet Russian deployment of troops and missiles to Cuba in the 1960s to the modern-day spy bases for China there. And since Commies are habitually incapable of building prosperous economies or healthy alliances, they often look to foreign dictatorships and shady deals.
Rubio condemned the “rogue state” of Cuba for helping a “hostile foreign military.”
For too long, Communist Cuba has been allowed to operate as an outpost for malign actors and terror groups – including the Islamic Republic of Iran, the world’s number one state sponsor of terrorism – to target the United States. Today, I designated BICSA, a Cuban financial institution which has been providing financial services to sanctioned Iranian entities. Let me be absolutely clear: the Trump Administration will not tolerate a rogue state hosting hostile foreign military, intelligence and terror operations less than a hundred miles from our homeland. https://t.co/MMEgob7I1V
— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) October 15, 2026
Related: Iran Executes More Young Heroes — So Can We Obliterate This Regime, Please?
Rubio also issued a press statement on Thursday where he explained:
Cuba’s BANCO INTERNACIONAL DE COMERCIO S.A. (BICSA) has provided services to the designated Iran’s Karafarin Bank since at least 2022. The Department of the Treasury sanctioned Karafarin Bank pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13902 in 2020. Today, in concert with a Department of the Treasury action on Iranian financial actors, I am sanctioning the Cuban state-owned BICSA pursuant to Section 2(a)(i)(A) of E.O. 14404 for operating in or having operated in the financial services sector of the Cuban economy.
While America and Iran are not trading daily strikes right now, the Iranian regime continues to target ships in the Strait of Hormuz, orchestrate terrorist attacks globally against Americans, and stockpile more weapons for the future.
Notably, the Treasury Department also just targeted an Iraqi bank that was likewise assisting the Iranian terrorists:
Today, as part of Operation Economic Outcast, Treasury disrupted Iran’s efforts to infiltrate the international financial system through an Iraqi bank that also supports Iran’s terrorist proxy militia groups. By dismantling these institutions—including offshore banks and shadow financiers that have moved hundreds of millions of dollars through shell companies and foreign‑exchange specialists across the Middle East and Asia—Treasury is severing critical revenue streams that sustain Iran’s military and proxy forces. https://t.co/oQnsonnczK
— Treasury Department (@USTreasury) October 15, 2026
This is a war of economies as well as a war of militaries.