Flush with Cold War nostalgia, Fidel Castro rose from his death bed this week to make an important announcement: The U.S. is dangerously close to nuclear war with North Korea and Iran. Inspired perhaps by last week’s ’70s-style U.S.-Russian spy trade, the communist icon, now 83, issued that dark warning in an hourlong interview on Cuban television.
Don’t feel bad if you missed it. Few are taking Castro seriously — even Cubans seem uninterested. Though Castro clearly still has influence within Cuba’s bureaucracy, his people don’t seem to hang on his every word these days. Maybe it’s because he’s been largely absent from public view for four years, since handing the reins to his not-much-younger brother Raul. Maybe the Adidas tracksuit doesn’t command the same respect as the old camouflage fatigues. More likely it’s because he’d already made a doomsday proclamation last month. And it didn’t pan out.
In his regular column on June 27 in Granma, the Cuban government’s official newspaper, Castro predicted nuclear war would break out between the U.S. and Iran prior to the World Cup quarterfinals — halting the tournament. The World Cup continued, and no nukes were launched. There is a lesson here for future apocalyptic prophets: When crying “doomsday,” don’t mention specific dates. “At any moment” is much more ominous, and generously ambiguous.
No one should understand that as well as Castro, whose death has been imminent for decades. (Just ask the Miami exiles who have iced down the Champagne countless times in response to wishful rumors.)
The world had not ended, the last time we checked. And Fidel, it turns out, is still alive.
