US President Donald Trump announced Tuesday he is ordering a naval blockade of sanctioned oil tankers entering Venezuela, intensifying military pressure on Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro following last week’s US seizure of an oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast and amid an ongoing military buildup in the region.Trump made the announcement on his social media platform, claiming Venezuela was using oil revenues to fund drug trafficking and other illegal activities.
“Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America,” Trump posted. “It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before — Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.”
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The military campaign has included strikes on vessels in international waters in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, resulting in at least 95 deaths across 25 known strikes.While the operations have drawn scrutiny from US lawmakers, the Trump administration has defended them as successful in preventing drugs from reaching American shores.The administration has maintained that the campaign’s primary goal is drug interdiction, but recent comments from Trump’s chief of staff suggest broader aims.In a Vanity Fair interview published Tuesday, Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles indicated the operations are part of a strategy to remove Maduro from power, stating Trump “wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle.”
