Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Thursday that the United States is imposing sanctions on BICSA, a Havana-based state bank, for providing services to Iran’s Karafarin Bank, which the U.S. government sanctioned in 2020.
BICSA, formally Banco Internacional de Comercio S.A., was founded by the Castro government in 1993 and was set up to handle import-export and other banking functions. According to Rubio’s statement, BICSA has serviced Karafarin since at least 2022. Karafarin was one of 18 major Iranian banks sanctioned by the United States in October 2020 under President Trump’s first term, part of a broader effort to cut off Tehran’s access to U.S. dollars.
“President Trump has been absolutely clear: under his administration, the United States will not tolerate terrorism, organized crime or extra-hemispheric forces spreading anti-American influence in our region,” Rubio said. “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.”
Cuba has long been designated a State Sponsor of Terrorism by the United States, a label tied to its history of supporting Iran and groups including Hezbollah, Hamas, and Colombia’s FARC and ELN.
Rubio added that the administration “will not tolerate a rogue state hosting hostile foreign military, intelligence and terror operations less than a hundred miles from the American homeland,” and said the government would continue working to identify and dismantle financial links between the Cuban government and Iran and other hostile actors.
Cuban Government Pushes Back
The sanctions are the latest in a string of actions the Trump administration has taken against Cuban state institutions. Miguel Díaz-Canel, Cuba’s president, called the move part of an
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