Scrutable

The State Department has designated Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism, a last-minute foreign policy stroke that will complicate the incoming Biden administration’s plans for dealing with Havana.

“With this action, we will once again hold Cuba’s government accountable and send a clear message: The Castro regime must end its support for international terrorism and subversion of U.S. justice,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement.

The New York Times reported last month that Mr. Pompeo was weighing the move and had a plan to do so on his desk. The action, announced with just over a week left in the Trump administration, reverses a step taken in 2015 after President Barack Obama restored U.S. diplomatic relations with Cuba, calling its decades of isolation an archaic relic of the Cold War.