Cuba is confronting the United States’ first effective blockade since the Cuban Missile Crisis and running out of fuel fast, pushing the nation toward a humanitarian crisis and its government to the edge of collapse, according to a New York Times analysis of shipping data and satellite images.

Cuban tankers have hardly left the island’s shores for months. Oil-rich allies have halted shipments or declined to come to the rescue. The U.S. military has seized ships that have supported Cuba. And in recent days, vessels roaming the Caribbean Sea in search of fuel for Cuba have come up empty or been intercepted by the U.S. authorities.

Last week, a tanker linked to Cuba burned fuel for five days to get to the port in Curaçao but then left without cargo, according to ship-tracking data. Three days later, the U.S. Coast Guard intercepted a tanker full of Colombian fuel oil en route to Cuba that had gotten within 70 miles of the island, the data showed.

While President Trump has pledged to halt any oil headed to Cuba, the Trump administration has stopped short of calling its policy a blockade.

But it is functioning as one.

Mr. Trump signed an executive order last month threatening to impose tariffs on countries that provide oil to Cuba. That has succeeded at scaring other nations, like Mexico, into sitting on the sidelines despite their desire to help Cuba.

At the same time, the largest U.S. military presence in the Caribbean in decades is policing the waters around the island, fresh off its work blocking oil shipments to and from Venezuela ahead of the U.S. capture of the country’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, last month.

And, according to a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters, the Coast Guard’s interception of the tanker headed to Cuba last week was part of a blockade that the Trump administration has not yet announced.

“Among us longtime Cuba watchers, we’ve always resisted people using the word blockade,” said Fulton Armstrong, the former lead Latin America analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency, who has been studying Cuba since 1984. “But it is indeed a blockade.”

The White House declined to comment. A Cuban government spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.

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“Since the Cuban Missile Crisis, this is the biggest step,” Mr. Armstrong said, referring to the 13-day confrontation in 1962 when the U.S. Navy encircled Cuba. “And the Cubans will have to make a decision on whether to surrender.”

President Miguel Díaz-Canel of Cuba has said he was open to negotiating with Washington, while promising to find ways around the blockade. “We are making every effort so that the country can once again have fuel,” he told reporters this month. “We have to do very hard, very creative, and very intelligent work to overcome all these obstacles.”

To understand whether fuel was still flowing to the island, The Times conducted interviews and analyzed satellite images, port records, and data broadcast from a series of ships connected to Cuba.

The analysis showed that oil-tanker traffic to and from the island has nearly stopped. Yet it also showed that several ships did appear to venture out in search of fuel. All were stymied by Mr. Trump’s policies.

The Ocean Mariner

On Jan. 29, Mr. Trump declared a national emergency, claiming that Cuba is a hotbed for spies and terrorists and threatening tariffs against any nation that provides petroleum products to the island.

On the same day, a tanker called the Ocean Mariner docked at a port in Barranquilla, Colombia, according to data broadcast by the boat and satellite imagery. It loaded 84,579 barrels of fuel oil, according to Kpler, a shipping data firm.

The Ocean Mariner has been a regular carrier of oil to Cuba, even delivering the island’s last shipment, from Mexico, on Jan. 9. But when it left Colombia, it broadcast its destination as the Dominican Republic.

Twelve days later, on Feb. 10, it changed course toward Cuba.