Biden administration pauses attack on Cuba as ‘state sponsor of terror’

By John Studer
January 27, 2025
Half a million Cubans march past U.S. Embassy in Havana Dec. 20 protesting Washington’s over 60-year-long economic war against Cuba, listing country as “state sponsor of terrorism.”
Office of Cuban presidentHalf a million Cubans march past U.S. Embassy in Havana Dec. 20 protesting Washington’s over 60-year-long economic war against Cuba, listing country as “state sponsor of terrorism.”

On Jan. 14, President Joseph Biden filed a “Certificate of Rescission of Cuba’s Designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism.” It stated, “The Government of Cuba has not provided any support for international terrorism during the preceding 6-month period” and it “has provided assurances that it will not support acts of international terrorism in the future.”

“Despite its limited nature,” the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded, this reversal of U.S. policy imposed in the last week of the first Donald Trump presidency and maintained through the four years Biden has been in office “is a decision in the right direction.”

It is “in line with the sustained and firm demand of the government and the people of Cuba, and with the broad, emphatic and reiterated call of numerous governments, especially in Latin America and the Caribbean, of Cubans living abroad, of political, religious and social organizations, and of numerous political figures in the United States and other countries.”

In December half a million Cubans marched by the U.S. Embassy in Havana protesting Washington’s unrelenting economic war against their socialist revolution. “We are marching to tell the U.S. government to let the Cuban people live in peace,” Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel told the crowd. They also demanded the U.S. government remove Cuba from its list of “State Sponsors of Terrorism.”

Defenders of the Cuba Revolution in the U.S. and elsewhere have joined in the campaign.

Along with this decision, the Biden administration waived Title III of the notorious Helms-Burton Act, which had allowed U.S. nationals to sue the Cuban government for damages on claims they lost property nationalized after the Cuban Revolution.

It also waived for the next six months a memorandum that bars people in the U.S. from having financial transactions with “restricted Cuban entities.” This lifts restrictions on staying at hotels with connections to the government.

The Biden administration’s decision should have happened years ago, a Jan. 15 article in Cuba’s daily Granma points out. All that was needed was a recognition of the truth — the total lack of justification for such a designation.

At the same time, Cuba’s foreign ministry noted, “The U.S. government could reverse the measures adopted today in the future.”

Despite the steps taken, “the economic war remains and persists in posing the fundamental obstacle to the development and recovery of the Cuban economy at a high human cost to the population, and continues to be a stimulus to emigration.”

In addition to the more than 60-year-long economic embargo, other measures that remain in place are restrictions on sale of oil to Cuba, a ban on ships docking in the U.S. within 180 days of having docked in Cuba, and dozens of other restrictions added in 2017.

At the same time, the Cuban government announced a decision to free over time some 553 people convicted of crimes in Cuba. Díaz-Canel wrote Pope Francis at the beginning of the year announcing their release, in keeping with the Catholic Church declaring 2025 as a special year of mercy and forgiveness.

This is in common with the humanitarian record of the revolution, explained the Cuban government.