WASHINGTON DC -- The Trump administration on Thursday imposed sanctions on Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel as it seeks to further ratchet up pressure on the government in Havana.

The sanctions also target former President Raul Castro’s son and grandson, Díaz-Canel’s wife and stepson, as well as the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba, three other organizations said to be tied to the Cuban government, and a Cuban-Australian mining venture.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement he was going after those “who sustain the regime’s malicious campaign to subvert and destabilize U.S. national security.”

It is the latest move by the Trump administration as it works to incapacitate the Cuban economy and force changes – including possible regime change – in Havana.

Those measures include a slew of punishing sanctions, an ongoing oil blockade and the indictment of Raul Castro. Meanwhile, the specter of potential military action on the island still looms, as a US military carrier was sent to the region and Rubio has repeatedly asserted that Cuba poses a threat to the United States.

“These sanctions target the Cuban regime’s wide-ranging and violent radical action network and the actors who implement and fund it,” Rubio said Thursday.

“Beginning with Fidel Castro’s program to globalize the so-called Marxist ‘revolution,’ Havana has served as a forward operating base for global irregular warfare against U.S. interests, recruiting, training, and equipping violent left-wing militants across our region – including Marxist terrorist groups in the United States – with the ultimate goal of undermining U.S. national security,” he claimed.

Díaz-Canel said in a post on X that the sanctions are “aimed at reinforcing the (blockade) and escalating tensions between Cuba and the United States.”

“The aggressiveness and perversion of the U.S. government will clash with our determination to face the worst-case scenarios and resist the imperial onslaught,” he wrote in a post translated by the Cuban embassy in the US.

Rubio warned of the threat of secondary sanctions against “anyone dealing with entities owned 50 percent or more by GAESA, MINFAR, or the previously designated Ministry of the Interior.” GAESA is the military conglomerate that runs much of Cuba’s economy.

“Foreign banks and companies providing services to those designated are at risk of sanctions?and should freeze those activities,” a separate State Department fact sheet warned. “The Trump Administration will continue to target the Cuban regime’s subversive network, those who enable its subversive operations, and those who profit while the Cuban people suffer.”

On Wednesday, Rubio told lawmakers on Capitol Hill the US “is open to a negotiated situation that puts Cuba on a path towards democracy, prosperity, freedom, normalcy” and “would work with whoever is open to doing it.”

The top US diplomat acknowledged the prospect is “challenging” and indicated they haven’t found an equivalent to Delcy Rodriguez – the US backed former Maduro associate in Venezuela – within the Cuban system.

Rubio suggested a transition could be more similar to the Czech Republic or Poland, where he said they preserved “certain institutions in their society in order to provide stability and longevity to the project that we’re in.”

“There are specific, maybe, technocrats that we could work with, I think it’s a little harder when you get higher up, because of the ideological bent that some of them have,” Rubio told the House Foreign Affairs Committee, noting that “there are clearly individuals within the apparatus of power in that country that understand that what they have now is not sustainable and needs to be fixed.”

However, asked about a “Delcy number two,” Rubio said they haven’t found such a person.

“Ultimately, if you’re asking me, is there a singular individual right now that we would trust and rely on to lead this transition from start to finish? I can’t give you that name right now,” he said.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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