Cuba and Venezuela Stand with Iran After Missile Attack on Israel

The authoritarian regimes of Cuba and Venezuela expressed support for Iran after its missile attack on Israel this week.

Iran launched a missile attack against Israel on Tuesday, deploying some 180 missiles, none of which caused casualties inside Israel. Tuesday’s attack marks Iran’s second missile attack against Israel in the past six months.

Cuba’s communist Castro regime, through its Foreign Ministry, released a statement on Tuesday calling for a stop to alleged “Israeli aggression in the Middle East.” The Castro regime claimed that Israel’s actions, with the “logistical and political support of the U.S. government,” have led to a dangerous escalation that further compromised regional stability and security and “provoked Iran’s response.”

The statement expressed Cuba’s “solidarity with the nations attacked by Israel” and asserted that Havana has been warning of the “danger of further escalation in the Middle East” as a result of the “aggressiveness and impunity with which Israel acts.”

“Almost a year after the savage genocide by the Zionist government against the Palestinian people, and as a demonstration of its utter disregard for the principles enshrined in the U.N. Charter, the Israeli government, instead of seeking a negotiated solution that would guarantee a ceasefire, has lashed out and intensified its irresponsible aggression against Lebanon, Syria and Yemen,” the statement read.

October 7 will mark the anniversary of Hamas, an Iranian proxy terrorist organization, invading Israel for an unprecedented siege in which terrorists conducted door-to-door mass executions of random civilians, gang-rapes of attendees at a music festival, infanticides, and other atrocities. The Cuban regime did not mention, much less condemn, the October 7 massacre in its statement.

Similarly, the Venezuelan socialist regime’s Foreign Ministry released an official statement on Wednesday stating that it is following the events in the Middle East after Iran’s “legitimate defense against threats and crimes of the Israeli regime.”

The statement read:

The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is following in detail the recent events in the Middle East that have prompted an action by the Islamic Republic of Iran, invoking its right to legitimate self-defense, as set forth in Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, in response to the threats and crimes against humanity committed by the Netanyahu regime against Palestine, Lebanon and the Iranian people, including violations of their sovereignty and territorial integrity and the murder of innocent civilians, as well as political and military leaders of these countries. The inaction shown by the United Nations Security Council, paralyzed by the veto exercised in a complicit manner by the United States of America, has prevented Netanyahu from stopping the aggressions and non-compliance with international law, which continues to be the greatest threat to security in the region. It is urgent to stop the escalation of war by Israel in the entire region and to determine its responsibilities in the war crimes committed by its government.

The Venezuelan socialists concluded by urging the international community to stop the “genocide against the Palestinian people and Lebanon, as well as the unbridled race to take control of the region by Israel and the United States of America.”

Both regimes, which maintain extensive ties to Iran and its Shiite jihadist proxy Hezbollah, have been highly critical of Israel’s recent actions against Hezbollah in Beirut. Most notably, Cuba’s figurehead “president” Miguel Díaz-Canel publicly condemned Israel’s recent airstrike operation that resulted in the “cowardly targeted killing” of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, confirmed on Saturday. Nasrallah, who had led Hezbollah for decades, was responsible for thousands of civilian deaths, including Americans.

“This fact seriously threatens regional and global peace and security, for which Israel bears full responsibility with the complicity of the United States,” Díaz-Canel continued in a follow-up post.

Granma, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Cuba, described Iran’s attack on Israel as a “clear response” to the deaths of Nasrallah and others such as Hamas “political” leader Ismail Haniyeh, which neither Israel nor any other country has claimed responsibility for. The communist outlet rebutted Israel’s claims that the missile attack largely failed. Granma claimed that “80 percent” of the missiles “hit their targets in Israel, evading the national air defense system, although that is not what the Hebrew country’s spokesmen say.”

“Their media publish, again and again, the words of the bloody Prime Minister of that country, Benjamin Netanyahu, who insists that the action was thwarted thanks to its advanced anti-aircraft defense system,” Granma’s report read.

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