Washington DC - President Donald Trump said Sunday that Cuba hopes to make a "deal" that could happen "pretty quickly," after months of mounting pressure by Washington as it pushes to topple the island's communist authorities.

"Cuba also wants to make a deal, and I think we will pretty soon either make a deal or do whatever we have to do," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.

"So we're talking to Cuba, but we're going to do Iran before Cuba...So I think something will happen with Cuba pretty quickly," he said.

Cuba's President Miguel Diaz-Canel confirmed Friday that his government had held talks over "bilateral differences" with the US, though without any details about the nature of the discussions.

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In January, Trump placed the impoverished island under a US oil blockade, strangling its fuel supply over what he called the "extraordinary threat" posed by Cuba to the US, on top of a decades-long economic embargo by Washington.

The Cuban government has been in Trump's sights since the January overthrow of Washington's other bete noire in the Caribbean, Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, on whom Cuba relied for cheap oil.