Havana, Cuba - Cuba's president said Monday his country had a legitimate right to respond to a potential US attack following US claims that the island is considering staging drone attacks on US targets.

Axios on Sunday quoted US intelligence sources as claiming that Cuba had obtained more than 300 military drones with a view to possibly attacking the US base at Guantanamo Bay, US military vessels, and possibly even Florida.

Axios quoted unnamed US officials as saying that Cuba's acquisition of attack drones from Russia and Iran was proof of the "growing threat" that the Caribbean island nation poses to the US.

Writing on X, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel did not directly address the accusation in the Axios report. But he said Cuba had "the absolute and legitimate right to defend itself against a military onslaught."

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"Yet that cannot be wielded, logically or honestly, as an excuse for imposing war on the noble Cuban people," he wrote.

The Cuban government has accused Washington of trying to create a pretext for a military intervention against its arch-foe after first trying to "strangle" Cuba's economy with a crippling fuel blockade.

Diaz-Canel said a US attack would "trigger a bloodbath with incalculable consequences" and repeated that Cuba "poses no threat" to the US or any other country.

Trump – who, since the start of the year, has deposed Venezuela's leftist leader and gone to war against Iran – has suggested that Cuba could be next in his sights and mused about "taking over" the island situated 90 miles from Florida.

He cut off one of Cuba's last economic lifelines in January by halting oil shipments from Venezuela, its main fuel supplier, and threatening tariffs on any other country that attempted to make up the shortfall.

The Axios report of the alleged Cuban drone threat came days after CIA Director John Ratcliffe visited Havana for negotiations.