Pressure on the Cuban government has been building almost by the week, and the latest sign of it came on 10 June, when US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used a visit to the naval base at Guantanamo Bay to warn Havana against acquiring weapons capable of reaching the base or the American mainland. Doing so, he told reporters, would invite a confrontation the island " could not stand ", according to Al Jazeera. The warning sat on top of a months-long military build-up that, by several accounts,