Unpacking Cuba's Ties with Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and U.S. Pro-Palestine Groups
How a U.S.-designated state sponsor of terror spent six decades training Palestinian terrorists, coordinating with Iran and Hezbollah, and mobilizing U.S. campus activists
The recent U.S. operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has highlighted Cuba’s subversive role in the region and its ties to adversaries of the United States. Cuba, a longtime ally of Venezuela’s socialist regime, reports that 32 of its military personnel were killed during last weekend's U.S. military operation while serving as Maduro's security detail in Caracas under a Cuba–Venezuela mutual defense agreement.
This incident underscores Cuba’s six decades of supporting international terrorism—extending from Cold War-era training camps for Palestinian terror operatives to contemporary coordination with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iranian intelligence, while simultaneously training American activists who have influenced anti-Israel protests on U.S. campuses.
The 1960s–1980s: Cuban Training Camps for Palestinian Terrorists
Cuba’s support for Palestinian terrorists dates to the 1960s, when Fidel Castro framed Palestine as a pillar of Third World revolutionary solidarity. In January 1966, Castro hosted the Tri-Continental Conference in Havana, publicly linking Cuba to the Palestinian cause. By 1968, Cuba sent military instructors and advisors to Palestinian bases in Jordan to provide guerrilla warfare and counter-intelligence training.
Between 1976 and 1982, the CIA estimated that approximately 300 Palestinian terrorists were training in Cuban camps at any given time, with total foreign trainees from all countries estimated at 600–800 per year.
ICAP's Alleged Links to Cuban Intelligence
According to the Washington Times, Cuba’s Instituto Cubano de Amistad con los Pueblos (ICAP)—the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples—has alleged ties to Cuban intelligence services. ICAP’s activities include coordinating international pro-Palestinian activism. Founded in 1960 by Fidel Castro and under direct intelligence oversight, ICAP has ties to approximately 2,000 partner organizations in 150 countries, with roughly 800 partners in Europe and 77 U.S.-based groups linked through the National Network on Cuba.
In 2022, approximately eight months before Hamas' October 7, 2023 attack, ICAP invited Al-Tajammu to formalize links between Latin American solidarity networks and Middle Eastern terrorist organizations, as reported on in the Washington Times. Al-Tajammu is a pro-Iran coalition that includes Hezbollah, the Houthi movement, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and the PFLP.
Intelligence Cooperation and Operational Ties with Hezbollah and Iran
Cuba’s alleged relationship with Hezbollah extends beyond diplomatic support to operational coordination and intelligence cooperation. A leaked September 2011 U.S. State Department document sent to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reported that Israeli intelligence had allegedly informed the Israeli government that Hezbollah was working to establish an operational base in Cuba for potential attacks against Israeli and Western targets across Latin America.
The document indicated the alleged Cuban base would reportedly serve as a staging area for operations against Israeli diplomatic facilities, a logistics hub for Hezbollah’s Western Hemisphere activities, and an intelligence platform targeting Israeli and U.S. interests regionally. Sources cited in the correspondence suggested Hezbollah operatives were also allegedly surveilling U.S. and U.K. facilities—including diplomatic missions, banks, and businesses—as potential contingency targets.
According to the State Department correspondence, former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah allegedly coordinated directly with Cuba’s General Intelligence Directorate (DGI) to establish the base while agreeing to maintain a low profile and avoid creating evidence trails that could implicate Cuba in any future attacks.
Cuba-Hezbollah cooperation was publicly acknowledged in July 2021 when Hezbollah’s head of international relations visited the Cuban Embassy in Lebanon and expressed explicit support for the Cuban regime. Following Israel’s elimination of Nasrallah in September 2024, the Cuban government issued statements condemning Israel and expressing solidarity with Hezbollah.
Testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives in 2012 confirmed Cuba’s ties to Hezbollah and other designated terrorist groups, describing a three-tier system of regime-directed terrorism, regime-supported foreign terrorist organizations, and intelligence support benefiting U.S. adversaries. The testimony specifically identified Cuba’s relationship with Hezbollah as part of a broader pattern of support for four designated terrorist organizations.
In 2003, Cuban intelligence assets at the Bejucal signals-intelligence base allegedly jammed U.S. satellite transmissions to Iran at Tehran’s request. Congressional testimony from 2012 noted that approximately half of Cuban ambassadors to Iran have been identified as intelligence officers. The testimony also stated that Cuba and Iran maintain over 400 joint biotech and pharmaceutical patents, raising concerns about dual-use applications.
High-level coordination intensified in 2023. In April 2023, Cuba’s Ambassador in Beirut León Cruz attended the International Al-Quds Day commemoration at the Iranian Embassy in Beirut, an event that featured Hamas leader Osama Hamdan, Hezbollah deputy secretary general Sheikh Naim Qassem, PFLP deputy secretary general Abu Ahmad Fuad, and the Houthi representative in Lebanon, Ammar al-Hamzi, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi visited Havana in June 2023, signing six cooperation agreements. In December 2023, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel traveled to Tehran for meetings with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Formal Alignment with Hamas and Post-October 7 Mass Mobilization
In February 2023, Hamas’ representative in Lebanon Ahmed Abdel-Hadi met with Cuba’s ambassador in Beirut Jorge León—eight months before the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks. Leon reportedly “praised the resistance of fighters and martyrs in the defense of a just cause.”
In June 2023, a solidarity meeting at the Cuban diplomatic mission in Beirut reportedly brought together the general secretaries of the PFLP, DFLP, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), with Jorge León Cruz in attendance.
Following the October 7th terror attacks, mass demonstrations occurred in Cuba in support of Hamas. Over 100,000 Cubans marched in Havana past the U.S. Embassy, with President Díaz-Canel leading the march.
Cuba’s Foreign Ministry issued statements blaming Israel for the violence and defending Hamas’s actions. In October 2024, Díaz-Canel again led a pro-Palestinian march in Havana, reinforcing Cuba’s ongoing alignment with Hamas.
Cuba's Ongoing Ties with PFLP and DFLP
Cuba has maintained continuous coordination with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)—a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization—and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), a U.S.-sanctioned organization. Both organizations participated in the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel.
The DFLP’s ties to Cuba are extensive enough that the organization held its regional Congress in Havana in January 2018. In 2017, Cuba’s Ambassador to Syria, Rogerio Santana Rodríguez, met with DFLP Secretary General Nayef Hawatmeh in Damascus, maintaining high-level diplomatic channels between the Cuban regime and the organization.
In November 2021, a PFLP delegation headed by its representative in Lebanon, Marwan Abdelal, visited the Cuban Embassy in Beirut to express support for Cuba and opposition to U.S. policy toward the island.
In December 2017, the PFLP held a large celebration in the center of Havana commemorating its 50th anniversary. Approximately 500 people gathered in a large government-owned facility in the middle of Havana for the event. Mousa Solyman, the head of the PFLP in Cuba, stated in regards to the event that “In Cuba we have the support of the government and the people.”
The People’s Forum
During April-May 2023, The People's Forum, a New York-based organization under congressional investigation for alleged ties to the Chinese government through Neville Roy Singham, a billionaire with documented ties to the Chinese Communist Party. The forum organized a delegation of 300 U.S. activists to Cuba, where they were received by President Miguel Díaz-Canel. The trip, led by co-executive director Manolo De Los Santos, was hosted by the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP). In June 2024, The People’s Forum led another delegation to Cuba for a meeting with Díaz-Canel, where discussions specifically linked the Palestinian cause to the U.S. embargo on Cuba.
On January 24, 2024, Manolo De Los Santos spoke in New York City: “When we finally deal that final blow to destroy Israel. When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism.”
CODEPINK
CODEPINK, a prominent pro-Palestine activist group, has received approximately 25 percent of its total funding since 2017 from sources linked to Singham. The organization runs ongoing Cuba travel programs and has organized solidarity campaigns with the Cuban regime. In June 2025, CODEPINK members traveled to Cuba on an eight-day trip where they met with Cuban activists.
In December 2025, Benjamin and Vijay Prashad of the Tricontinental Institute openly discussed planning a “Gaza-style” flotilla to Cuba, with Benjamin urging China to provide “real, real, real boats” and “real aid” to express “absolute disgust” with the U.S. government.
ANSWER Coalition and Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL)
ANSWER Coalition operates a Cuba–Venezuela Solidarity Committee and coordinates closely with ICAP, having hosted events featuring ICAP president Kenia Serrano Puig and North America division head Leima Martínez. ANSWER organizes campaigns with National Network on Cuba, an ICAP-affiliated coalition.
The organization has been a primary organizer of anti-Israel protests across the United States since October 7, 2023, including the November 4, 2023 National March on Washington that drew an estimated 300,000 participants—described as the largest pro-Palestine demonstration in U.S. history—and the July 24, 2024 Union Station protest where demonstrators burned American flags and clashed with Capitol Police, prompting congressional investigations into the group's activities and funding.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), a Marxist-Leninist group with ties to ICAP, has been linked to over 1,700 anti-Israel rallies across the United States since October 7, 2023. ICAP has often hosted PSL members in Cuba, and PSL national leader Gloria La Riva received ICAP's commemorative seal in 2021, with documented meetings between La Riva and ICAP officials in 2022 and 2024.
In July 2022, a PSL solidarity delegation traveled to Cuba to pay tribute at a monument to Che Guevara, praising him as a symbol of “unparalleled heroism and self-sacrifice for the cause of socialist revolution.”
On May 21, 2025, two Israeli embassy staff members, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, were shot and killed in Washington, D.C. while attending an event organized by the American Jewish Committee. The suspect was identified by D.C. police as 30-year-old Elias Rodriguez, a Chicago native allegedly affiliated with the Chicago chapter of the PSL in 2017.
Rodriguez left behind a manifesto titled "Escalate For Gaza, Bring The War Home" that echoed language from Che Guevara's most widely circulated advocacy for political violence, found in the letter he wrote and had delivered at the 1966 Tricontinental Conference in Havana: "We must carry the war into every corner the enemy happens to carry it: to his home, to his centers of entertainment; a total war."
U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN)
In December 2025, the U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN) endorsed the #HandsOffCuba and #HandsOffVenezuela virtual teach-in organized by Cuban activist groups. USCPN was co-founded by Rasmea Odeh, a former member of the PFLP who was convicted in 1970 for her role in a bombing that killed two Israeli college students. Odeh was deported from the U.S. in 2017 after it was revealed that she had lied on immigration forms about her criminal history.
The Red-Green Alliance and National Security Implications
Cuba has been designated a State Sponsor of Terrorism by the United States, most recently in January 2021 under the Trump administration, for harboring terrorists and supporting international terrorism.
The documented pattern—spanning six decades of training Palestinian terrorists, coordinating with Hamas and Hezbollah, maintaining intelligence cooperation with Iran and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and mobilizing U.S. campus activism through Chinese-funded networks—represents what analysts describe as a “red-green alliance” leveraging antisemitism and regional leftist movements to extend hostile influence operations near the U.S. mainland.