OPINION:
About 90 miles from the shores of Key West, Florida, a little-known organization linked to Cuba’s intelligence apparatus is training foreign nationals to wage war against the West. Since the early days of Fidel Castro’s revolution, the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP) has used “diplomacy” as a cover to recruit radical activists from Western nations.
ICAP is a Cuban intelligence-affiliated organization that targets malcontent Americans and others under the auspices of “solidarity” and profits from their travel expenses to Havana, where they train to wreak havoc against their own governments. Some of the far left’s most memorable activist groups founded during the Vietnam War, such as the Venceremos Brigade, were trained by ICAP.
The organization has come a long way since the 1960s. Today, the Cuban regime works through 77 U.S.-based “solidarity groups” organized through the National Network on Cuba, an ICAP-associated coalition whose membership includes the Democratic Socialists of America. Globally, ICAP has relationships with about 2,000 such organizations in more than 150 countries, including 800 sprinkled across Europe. It is also the Cuban regime organ responsible for coordinating Cuba’s relationships with American “sister cities,” another vehicle for Cuba’s influence.
More recently, ICAP has moved from stirring up leftist dissonance to facilitating connections between U.S. and Latin American activists and organizations that legitimize terrorism against Westerners and Jews. As such, the U.S. should sanction it.
In 2022, the Cuban regime used ICAP to extend an official invitation to Al-Tajammu, a pro-Iran coalition whose board includes members of Hezbollah, the Houthis, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which played an instrumental role in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks.
During that meeting, ICAP formalized an agreement with Al-Tajammu. This development became strategically important for Iran and Hamas before the Oct. 7 attack, as it began to connect Al-Tajammu with “like-minded groups” in Latin America.
Some of those “like-minded groups” have reached consultative status inside the United Nations. Others, such as the Network for the Defense of Humanity, are self-described soft-power vehicles used by Cuban intelligence operations to promote their agenda. The network’s model follows the Soviet-era tradition of using intellectual circles as fronts for influence, recruitment and disinformation. Many of them operate in the South American Tri-Border Area, where al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and others are engaging in drug trafficking and money laundering.
The threat is not opaque. In 2017, Cuba allowed the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to organize a branch in Havana, which today helps promote terrorist propaganda, meetings and fundraising with U.S. activists. Some of this media output is financed through a California-based organization whose treasurer is Al-Tajammu’s North America representative. Since 2022, that California group has been sending U.S. activists to Cuba and Venezuela.
The effects of this alliance are already visible. In 2024, I reported that ICAP was playing a role in hosting anti-Israel activists who had been traveling to Cuba for “training.” Among those traveling to Havana are protesters who vandalized Jewish businesses and occupied the Columbia University campus. These activities resulted in the harassment and intimidation of Jewish students.
Another organization often hosted by ICAP in Cuba was the U.S.-based Party for Socialism and Liberation, which boasts a long record of antisemitic speech. This is not a coincidence.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation is also a member of the National Network on Cuba, and multiple members have reported being “inspired” or having their activism “solidified” after trips to Cuba in their youth. In the U.S., the party has sponsored or co-sponsored more than 1,700 anti-Israel rallies nationwide, according to the Anti-Defamation League. The group came under renewed scrutiny after a May attack at a Jewish event in Washington that left two Israeli Embassy employees dead. The man charged in the attack, Elias Rodriguez, allegedly shouted “Free Palestine” during his arrest and was reported to have been a member.
The role Cuba is playing in the red-green alliance by helping Al-Tajammu and others legitimize violence remains dangerously underreported. Antisemitism has become the convergence point for radical anti-Western groups that would otherwise not have an ideological connection with one another. In 2022, a hack on Iran’s English-language state media agency, Press TV, revealed that the network contacted the National Network on Cuba leadership in the U.S. 52 times, shedding light on the Cuba-Iran connection.
Cuba is not just a dictatorship; it is a dictatorship of intelligence that has mastered the art of manipulating reality to remain in power. By exploiting commonalities among radicals, Havana exploits U.S. activists’ grievances and mobilizes them to do its bidding.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has extensive expertise in Cuban affairs, can help correct this blind spot by advising President Trump to sanction ICAP. Doing so will be an important step toward degrading Havana’s intelligence efforts to recruit, radicalize and weaponize activists against the United States.
• Gelet Martinez Fragela is the editor-in-chief of ADN Cuba (www.adncuba.com), an independent news platform reporting human rights abuses and covert activities of the Cuban regime.
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