U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday announced sanctions against the Cuban communist regime’s BICSA bank for providing services to Iran’s Karafarin Bank, a U.S.-sanctioned entity.

BICSA, or Banco Internacional de Comercio S.A. (“International Commerce Bank S.A.”), is a Havana-based bank founded by the Castro regime in 1993 with the stated goal of functioning as a financial institution focused on imports and exports, in addition to other banking-related services.

In an official press statement, Rubio detailed that BICSA has provided services to Iran’s Karafarin Bank since at least 2022. Karafarin is one of 18 major Iranian banks sanctioned by the United States in October 2020 during President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to stop illicit access to U.S. dollars.

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“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 is a U.S.-designated State Sponsor of Terrorism (SST) due to the Castro regime’s decades-old record of supporting the Iranian regime and several international terrorist organizations, such as Iran’s proxy-terror group Hezbollah, Hamas, and Colombia’s Marxist FARC and ELN terror groups.

Rubio further added in the statement:

Let me be clear: the Trump Administration will not tolerate a rogue state hosting hostile foreign military, intelligence and terror operations less than a hundred miles from the American homeland. We will continue to aggressively identify and eliminate the Cuban regime’s financial and security interconnections with Iran and other dangerous and hostile states and actors.

The sanctions against BICSA are the latest in a series imposed on Cuban regime institutions as part of the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against the rogue communists who have ruled over Cuba for almost seven decades. Miguel Díaz-Canel, the figurehead “president” of Cuba, condemned the sanctions against BICSA as part of a purported “economic and multifaceted war” against the island nation.

“Today the target is the BICSA Bank, in an additional effort to attack the Cuban people, sabotage the country’s economic performance, and reinforce the criminal collective punishment against our people,” Díaz-Canel wrote in a social media post on Thursday.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parilla claimed in a social media post that BICSA is a “legitimate bank whose transactions in Cuba and the world are also absolutely legitimate.” According to the minister, the new sanctions “evidence of the criminal determination to apply the maximum punishment against the Cuban people and ‘shut down every relief valve’ for the Cuban economy.”

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) detailed that there is a roughly one-month wind-down period that runs through November 14, 2026, before the U.S. government begins targeting foreign persons, including Foreign Financial Institutions (FFIs) for engaging with the now-sanctioned Cuban bank.

OFAC, however, emphasized that non-U.S. persons and FFIs should “proceed with caution” in any dealings with a sanctioned party. The office recommended that foreign persons unable to divest from or wind down transitions involving Cuba’s BICSA, or any entity directly or indirectly owned by the bank should contact OFAC for further information.

“Persons subject to U.S. jurisdiction have long been prohibited from transacting with BICSA, a Cuban State-Owned entity, absent OFAC authorization,” OFAC explained. “Accordingly, persons subject to U.S. jurisdiction continue to be prohibited from engaging in transactions involving BICSA, including in connection with a non-U.S. person’s wind down of activities with BICSA, unless separately authorized by OFAC.”

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.