For Donald Trump, Cuba is everything Iran is not

What solace it must be for Donald Trump to contemplate Cuba. Superficially, his dealings with the island nation may appear uncomfortably reminiscent of the mess he has got America into in Iran. As Mr Trump did with Iran, he broke a deal with Cuba in his first term that was reached by his predecessor, Barack Obama, then failed to achieve a better one despite severe sanctions. The communists in Havana, corrupt and cynical though they may be, seem as fanatical as the theocrats in Tehran about their antediluvian ideology. Like the mullahs, the Marxists just don’t appreciate the value of good beach-front property. And, as in Iran, the end-game in Cuba is vague. Who knows what deal might ultimately feel, in the Trump bones, enough like victory?

But Cuba is a nation of maybe 9m people, not 93m. Thanks to momentous dealmaking by a previous American president, it poses no nuclear threat. It is not going to start flinging ballistic missiles around the Caribbean. The biggest difference in the two contests of national will affirms a conviction Mr Trump has held since the 1970s, yet somehow failed to appreciate in the case of Iran: whoever controls the oil holds the cards.

Mr Trump has complained that Iran is acting as “the bully of the world” by using oil as a lever, closing the Strait of Hormuz to deter America and Israel. In the western hemisphere he can be the bully. He cut off Cuba’s source of cheap oil when he replaced Venezuela’s nefarious strongman, Nicolás Maduro, with a more compliant strongwoman, Delcy Rodríguez. American tariff threats have stopped the supply of oil to the Cuban government from anywhere else since the end of January. Cuba produces barely enough fuel to cover 40% of the power it needs.

Small wonder, given his nature, that as Iran defies and embarrasses him Mr Trump has taken such satisfaction in dominating Cuba. “I think I can do anything I want with it,” he gloated in mid-March. He does not even need the help of an occasionally aggravating ally like Israel, much less a perpetually aggravating one like all of Europe. Displaying a competence that has not characterised the Iran policy, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and son of Cuban immigrants, has methodically blocked the government’s sources of foreign currency. Cuba’s aged electricity grid has collapsed three times this month, blacking out the nation and silencing its telecommunications. Interlocking crises of health care, food, communications and transport are becoming dire.

It is so easy to imagine a different Cuba. Indeed, it’s been done. In one of Mr Trump’s favourite movies, “The Godfather Part II”, the mafia boss Michael Corleone pays a visit to Havana at the end of 1958. The capital is a glamorous, smouldering entrepot where poor but cheerful people throng the streets and American businessmen, politicians and mobsters attend spectacular shows and strike lucrative deals in gilded hotels and casinos. An executive from an American telephone company gives the president, Fulgencio Batista, a solid-gold telephone, a present almost as crass and tacky as the gold Rolex clock and gold bar Swiss executives gave Mr Trump when they were seeking lower tariffs last autumn. “This kind of government knows how to help business, to encourage it,” declares Michael’s mafia associate, Hyman Roth. “We have now what we have always needed: real partnership with a government.” Michael flees as the revolution arrives. It would bring new ties to the Soviet Union, the expropriation of lands and refineries held by American companies, and, beginning in 1960, the American trade embargo that endures to this day.

Mr Trump has long hoped for a Cuban government he could do business with. As far back as 1998 one of his companies, Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, explored an investment in Cuba, in apparent violation of the embargo. (While rhapsodising over the Havana of the 1950s, Hyman Roth notes, “The hotels here are bigger and swankier than any of the rug joints we’ve put in Vegas.”) Ten years later Mr Trump registered his trademark in Cuba, a step that complied with American law but seemed to break a promise he had made not to do business in Cuba until it was “free”.

Yet just what Mr Trump might consider “free” is not certain. His statements about Cuba have added to the incoherence of his foreign policy. Even back before he began changing regimes, his goals in Cuba made a hash of his putative emphasis on respecting sovereignty and not dictating other countries’ internal affairs. His national-security memorandum last June that laid out his ambitions in Cuba began with “the need for more freedom and democracy” and “respect for human rights”. That was good politics. Those are still the goals of America’s Cuban exiles. Indeed, Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar of south Florida, another child of exiles, has called for “Nuremberg trials” for the regime, along with a rapid transition to democracy.

Maybe, as the president negotiates with the Cuban government, he will pursue his old stated goals, particularly given Mr Rubio’s personal and political stake in a free Cuba. But the regime is entrenched, and an endless blockade could create another refugee crisis. Besides, Mr Trump has amply demonstrated that his piety about human rights is as instrumental as the piety about sovereignty with which it conflicts. To him, it does not really matter if Cuba is a democracy or a monarchy; he wants a partner that will import American products and services, says John Kavulich, president of the US-Cuba Trade and Economic Council. “If you can do that, he really doesn’t care what name is on your government,” adds Mr Kavulich. “And that is what the Cubans have to come to terms with.” After so many decades of struggle, such an outcome may disappoint the Cuban people. But at least the phones will work, and for some they may even be golden. ■