President signaled this week that the United States could take action on Cuba, raising new questions about what would happen if mounting pressure triggers a political shift on the island.
The warning comes as Cuba faces one of its most severe internal crises in decades, with a collapsing economy, widespread blackouts and fuel shortages straining the regimes ability to govern. The situation has worsened as shipments of subsidized fuel from Venezuela have declined, cutting off a key energy lifeline.
But as pressure builds from both inside and outside the island, experts say the central question is not who could replace President Miguel DÃaz-Canel â its that there is no clear successor at all.
” is the result of a system that has spent decades making sure no independent leadership can exist in the first place,” Melissa Ford Maldonado, AFPI director of the Western Hemisphere Initiative, told Fox News Digital.
She added that the regime has “controlled communication, restricted the gathering of people, surveilled its own people, killed press freedom, criminalized dissent and ultimately made a powerful opposition force highly unlikely.”
“Who replaces DÃaz-Canel is more symbolic than anything else,” Sebastián A. Arcos, interim director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University, told Fox News Digital.
Arcos said DÃaz-Canel “has very little power,” describing him as a figure installed to project a younger image without altering the system.
“The key person continues to be Raúl Castro,” he said, referring to the 94-year-old former Cuban leader.
That dynamic, analysts argue, explains why even a dramatic shift â whether driven by internal collapse or external pressure â may not immediately produce a new leader.
And yet a small group of insiders, technocrats and opposition figures are seen as potential players in any transition â though none represent a clear or unified alternative.
A relatively unknown figure to most Cubans, Ãscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga has quietly risen through the ranks.
The 54-year-old electronics engineer serves as deputy prime minister and minister of foreign trade and foreign investment, and is the great-nephew of Fidel and Raúl Castro.
“Hes part of the family,” Arcos said, underscoring how even emerging figures remain .
Arcos said his rapid rise makes him one of the more plausible faces of a controlled transition.
“He might be a good technocrat⦠based on the standards of the Castro system,” he said.
But any such move would likely be cosmetic. “They might take DÃaz-Canel down and replace him with someone like Pérez-Oliva⦠as a gesture⦠but it doesnt change anything,” Arcos said, explaining it would be a technocratic reshuffle designed to ease pressure, not reform the system.
Raúl Castros son, Alejandro Castro EspÃn, represents the regimes security backbone.
A longtime intelligence official, he is closely tied to Cubas internal security apparatus and the inner circle of power, according to El PaÃs.
While not publicly positioned as a successor, his influence underscores how power remains concentrated within the Castro family and military-linked elite, which experts say could lead to a hardline continuity scenario rooted in security control.
Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz remains one of the most visible figures in Cubas current leadership.
But Arcos noted that Marreros tenure is deeply tied to the countrys economic collapse. “Hes been there during this dramatic decline⦠so hes closely associated with the catastrophe,” he said.
Experts cited by El PaÃs similarly assess that figures like Marrero are unlikely to represent meaningful change, and that he represents continuity tied to the current crisis, with little credibility for reform.
As a senior Communist Party official, Roberto Morales Ojeda represents the regimes institutional core. His power lies within the party app
