US President Donald Trump said on July 13 that his administration was investigating claims that Iran has stored drones in Cuba, warning that Washington would respond if the presence of such weaponry on the island were confirmed, as the White House ramps up pressure on Havana through a fresh round of sanctions.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump said his government was examining reports of an Iranian drone cache after being asked about a previously unpublicised document alleging their presence. "If they do have them, and they may very well have them, we'll take care of it," he said, adding that Secretary of State Marco Rubio was reviewing the matter in an adjoining room.

"If they really have them, we'll take care of it shortly. We won't have any problem," Trump said, stressing, "We're not going to allow that to happen." He was careful, however, to describe the matter as unconfirmed. "It could be that they are storing some; we are looking into it right now. It could be so, or it may not be," he said.

The remarks came as Trump confirmed the US military had launched fresh strikes against Iranian targets connected to the Strait of Hormuz, amid a renewed escalation in hostilities between Washington and Tehran. Despite the strikes, Trump told reporters he had not ruled out a negotiated settlement with Iran.

Speculation over an Iranian drone presence in Cuba gained traction last week when Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, said at an event hosted by the advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) that press reports indicated Tehran had transferred around 300 drones to the island, Fox News reported. Standing beside a Shahed-136, the Iranian-made loitering munition that Tehran has deployed extensively in the Middle East and supplied to Russia for use in Ukraine, Bush said: "We have decimated Iran's capability to make mischief in the region. There's no doubt about it," while praising the Trump administration's campaign against Tehran.

Bush sought to temper alarm over the reported cache, saying: "We have very good defence capabilities, so this is not a press conference to scare the bejesus out of people. The United States does have capabilities of defending the homeland, for sure." He nonetheless said the drones were posing "a threat."

Also appearing at the event, Republican congressman Carlos Gimenez of Florida described the Shahed as "a terror weapon" and said such systems represented the future of armed conflict. "This is the face of warfare," he said, pointing to advances in artificial intelligence that he said were making drones increasingly effective.

Mark Wallace, UANI's chief executive and a former US ambassador to the United Nations, went further, calling the Shahed "the ubiquitous terror weapon of mass destruction in modern warfare" and saying the model had "struck our allies across the region, killed American troops... and has been raining terror across the Middle East at our bases and the like." Wallace told Fox News that any drones transferred to the communist-run island, a long-time ally of Tehran and Moscow, had arrived years before the current US-Iran conflict began.

The drone allegations have surfaced as Washington sharply escalates economic pressure on Havana. The Treasury Department on July 13 added Cuba's Ministry of Tourism and nine other state entities to its sanctions list, including Enetec SA and Coreydan SA, both involved in fuel imports, the Foreign Trade Business Group (Gecomex) and the Maritime Port Transport Business Group (Gemar). The State Department said the designations were intended to curb funding for "paramilitary forces, armed civilian groups, and surveillance organisations that repress the Cuban people."

The measures build on sanctions imposed in June against Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, members of his family and Colonel Alejandro Castro Espín, son of former president Raúl Castro. The Justice Department has separately brought charges against Raúl Castro over the 1996 shooting down of two aircraft operated by a Cuban exile organisation, in which four people were killed.

Washington has paired the sanctions with an oil embargo that has plunged Cuba into a severe energy crisis marked by recurrent blackouts and fuel shortages, developments Cuban officials have described as a humanitarian emergency. Analysts have drawn parallels between the current pressure campaign and the approach Washington took toward Venezuela, which provided Cuba with heavily subsidised oil, before the military intervention that removed president Nicolás Maduro from power in January. Rubio, a Cuban-American long known as a hawk against socialist governments in Latin America, told a Senate hearing in early June that "Cuba has sponsored terrorism and supported virtually every violent radical left-wing terrorist group in the Western Hemisphere," citing Colombia's ELN and factions of the FARC. He also said Cuba continued to host "a considerable number of intelligence facilities for gathering information on behalf of the Chinese and Russians."

The growing US pressure comes weeks after Cuban authorities unveiled a package of 176 economic reforms aimed at expanding the private sector and loosening state control over enterprise, a last-ditch effort to bring relief to a besieged economy that is hampered by sanctions and fuel shortages.