Washington DC - The US on Monday accused Cuba of infiltrating the highest levels of government in Washington, as President Donald Trump intensified his campaign to force regime change on the island.
A new US State Department report alleged that Cuba's decades-long espionage campaign was "one of the most durable and damaging foreign intelligence penetrations in American history."
Cuba "has infiltrated the highest reaches of the US government, recruited and cultivated generations of American activists [and] backed an unprecedented wave of left-wing terrorism on American soil," the report claimed.
While the allegations represent an escalation in US-Cuba tensions, espionage between the two countries has long been known and the report released Monday contained little new information.
The move comes only days after the trump administration moved to globalize the fight against what it called the "transnational threat" of "far-left political terrorism."
They also come amid a devastating US-imposed oil blockade of Cuba which has left the country struggling to survive, repeatedly forced into darkness, and in the midst of a major humanitarian crisis.
In 2015, then-President Barack Obama attempted a rapprochement with the Cuban government, hoping a more diplomatic approach would yield better relations after a half century of hostility.
Trump quickly restored a hardline stance, reinstating Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism.
He has repeatedly signaled that the Cuban government could be next after Venezuela to fall to US pressure, and said in June that Washington would be "taking over" the Caribbean island "almost immediately."
"Cuba’s assault on the United States was never, at root, a quarrel over economic policy or sovereignty or even ownership of a particular territory," the State Department wrote on X. "It was a revolution against Western civilization itself."