Venezuela never was just about Venezuela, as President Donald Trump points out during a news conference in Florida on Sunday.
Venezuela has been working closely with Cuba and other nations such as Russia and China, but the US military action to remove the South American nation's President Nicolas Maduro has changed the political mix.
But now President Trump says there's a deal in the works.
Cuba is a poor nation from which many have escaped over the past 65 years and found safe haven in the US, many of them settling in Florida.
At a news conference in Mar a Lago Sunday afternoon, Mr. Trump said, "I want the people who came here to live, who were horribly treated by Cuba to be taken care of, to be able to go back and do what they need to do, y'know they have their family there, they haven't been able to go back in many, many years.
"So I think we're going to make a deal with Cuba."
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is praising the move to cut a deal, saying on Fox News, "With President Trump, you know that whatever deal he strikes is going to be good for the American people."
He also pointed to the potential for a deal as an example of how American energy dominance can be a tool to bring about world peace.
One of the things keeping the Marxist government in control in Cuba is help from other far-left nations such as Venezuela, which has been supply Cuba with oil and petroleum products to run its electricity and keep its cars sunning.
The US stopped that, and the energy squeeze is helping bring Cuban leaders to the table for negotiations that could eventually lead to compromises with the Trump administration that could reopen the island nation that's only 90 miles south of the tip of Florida.
Reaching a deal with Cuba to open up it's markets to capitalism for the first time since the late 1950s would be a substantial breakthrough for the Trump White House.