The indictment against former Cuban President Raúl Castro for ordering the shootdown of two Brothers to the Rescue planes in 1996 is a long-awaited gift from U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and President Donald Trump to Cuban American hard-liners in south Florida. The stage-managed release of the indictment at Miami’s Freedom Tower, which once served as the Cuban Refugee Center, processing thousands of immigrants, leaves no doubt about its domestic political purpose. But it is also an ominous warning to Cuba’s leaders that the Trump administration is ready and willing to abandon diplomacy in favor of military operations in its quest for regime change.

The indictment is one more step up the escalatory ladder in Trump’s pressure campaign against Havana, a campaign that began with the Delta Force abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife on Jan. 3. In quick succession, Trump ordered a cutoff of Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba, issued an executive order threatening other countries with tariffs if they shipped oil to the country, and imposed secondary sanctions threatening sanctions against foreign enterprises doing in business with Cuba. The unambiguous aim is to strangle the life out of the Cuban economy and force the country’s leadership to submit to Washington’s demands.

The parallel between Maduro—indicted in New York for conspiracy to traffic narcotics—and Castro, who was indicted for conspiracy and murder, is obvious, as is the implicit threat of a similar U.S. special forces action to seize Castro.

The indictment casts a pall over the already gloomy negotiations between the two governments. Despite three face-to-face meetings, diplomatic talks have made “no progress” according to Lianys Torres Rivera, Cuba’s ambassador to the United States. Rubio is demanding that the Cubans change their form of government and leadership, which they refuse to do as a matter of national sovereignty. “Those are the red lines,” Torres told the Hill. During a dramatic visit to Havana on May 14, CIA Director John Ratcliffe issued an ultimatum to Cuban intelligence officials: Time is running out for Cuba to accede to Washington’s demands or suffer the consequences.

In the meantime, U.S officials have stepped up public justifications for military action. Since January, the administration has been claiming that Cuba represents an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the United States because the regime aligns itself with and hosts U.S. adversaries and collects signal intelligence (SIGINT) against the United States on behalf of Russia and China. During his meetings in Havana in mid-May, Ratcliffe demanded that Cuba shut down those intelligence-gathering operations.

But if spying were a casus belli, the international system would be condemned to a Hobbesian “war of all against all,” because everyone spies on everyone, friend and foe alike. Just last week, as Trump returned from his summit in China, he acknowledged this reality to reporters. “The question was asked of me yesterday … ‘What about the fact that China is spying?’ I said, ‘Well, it’s one of those things, because we spy like hell on them, too.’”

If SIGINT is not a sufficient pretext, unnamed officials also leaked a story to Axios that Cuba has acquired 300 military drones that pose a “growing threat” to the United States, alleging plans to attack Guantánamo Naval Station; U.S. naval vessels; and Key West, Florida. Cuba may or may not have acquired drones to defend itself against a U.S. attack, but the idea that Cuba would start a suicidal war with the United States is, as journalist Megyn Kelly put it, “a bunch of bullshit.” Cuba is “not in a position to threaten anybody,” she pointed out. “Don’t insult our intelligence.”

Cuban officials have gone out of their way to deny that they have any intention of attacking the United States while also asserting their right to defensive arms. “Like any country, Cuba has the right to defend itself against external aggression,” wrote Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío in response to the Axios story. “It is called self-defense, and it is protected by International Law and the U.N. Charter.”

The United States has no legitimate national security justification to launch a war against Cuba. But the overwhelming military power of the United States, as demonstrated in Venezuela, may lead the White House to believe that, as Trump himself put it, “I can do anything I want” with Cuba.

Senior U.S. officials may see the impoverished island as an opportunity for a quick win, to compensate for the not-so-quick war in Iran. The U.S. Defense Department has increased intelligence-gathering flights off Cuba’s coast, and the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz arrived in the Caribbean on May 20, Cuban Independence Day. U.S. Southern Command recently posted a video on X with the description, “Lethal. Precise. Ready,” showing planes, helicopters, tanks, amphibious landing craft, and troops on the ground, ending with an aerial photograph of Cuba.

A limited strike to seize Castro would probably succeed, although it could well prove more costly than seizing Maduro—and less effective. Castro, soon to be 95, retired almost a decade ago. While he still wields great influence, he is not running the country day to day, so his departure would not disrupt the regime the way that Maduro’s abduction did in Venezuela.

Three hundred drones will not stop the U.S. military if Trump decides to launch an Iran-style bombing campaign. But the lesson of Iran is that you cannot bring about regime change from the air, even when there is massive, organized opposition to the government on the ground—something that does not exist in Cuba.

Nor is killing a nation’s leadership with targeted assassinations sufficient. As Trump himself commented on Iran, “the first tier is gone, the second tier is gone, half of the third tier is gone,” and yet the regime appears no more pliable than it was before the war began.

At the far end of the kinetic spectrum is a full-scale invasion and occupation of the island, like the operation that the United States launched to capture Panamanian President Manuel Noriega in 1989—another head of state indicted in the United States. But that would make the Trump administration responsible for occupied Cuba, with more than 10 million people who are short on food, medicine, fuel, and electricity.

Some U.S. officials appear to believe that if the economy gets bad enough, Cubans will just rise up and overthrow the government rather than get on rafts and leave. In fact, that has been the implicit raison d’être for the embargo ever since the infamous Mallory memorandum in 1960, in which Lester D. Mallory, the deputy assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, advised that “every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba. … to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”

More than 65 years later, Washington is still pursuing that strategy. Having immiserated an entire country, U.S. officials are now attempting to engage and incite the Cuban people. In a video message in Spanish on May 20—the same day that Castro was indicted—Rubio blamed all the country’s economic ills on its leaders, denied any U.S. responsibility, and repeated Washington’s offer to provide $100 million in humanitarian aid to be distributed through the Catholic Church.

“I know that today,” Rubio said, “you … are going through unimaginable hardships. Today I want to share with you the truth about the reason for your suffering. … The only thing standing in the way of a better future are those who control your country.”

On the same day that Rubio was inciting Cubans against their government, Cuba’s ambassador to the United Nations, Ernesto Soberón Guzmán, was trying to keep negotiations alive.

“Cuba is willing to talk about everything with the United States,” he told the New York Times. “There is no taboo subject in our conversations — on the basis of reciprocity and equality.” Rubio, when asked about the prospects for a negotiated settlement, said: “The likelihood of that happening, given who we’re dealing with right now, is not high.”

An agreement that serves both countries’ interests should still be possible, but successful negotiations require compromise. The Trump administration seems uninterested in that, insisting instead on complete regime change by any means necessary.

During the decades since 1959, many U.S. presidents have considered intervening in Cuba, Trump reflected on May 21: “It looks like I’ll be the one that does it.”