{"id":194312,"date":"2025-12-21T00:33:36","date_gmt":"2025-12-21T00:33:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/trump-and-top-aides-refuse-to-rule-out-war-with-venezuela-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2025-12-21T00:33:36","modified_gmt":"2025-12-21T00:33:36","slug":"trump-and-top-aides-refuse-to-rule-out-war-with-venezuela-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/trump-and-top-aides-refuse-to-rule-out-war-with-venezuela-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump and top aides refuse to rule out war with Venezuela – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro orders Venezuelan navy to escort oil tankers after seizure by US forces
What action is Trump taking against Venezuela\u2019s oil industry?<\/a>
Donald Trump<\/a> and his top advisers have refused to rule out the potential for open conflict with Venezuela<\/a> as Nicol\u00e1s Maduro urged his navy to escort oil tankers defying the largest US fleet deployed in the region in decades.
In an interview broadcast on Friday morning, Donald Trump<\/a> told NBC News that going to war with Maduro\u2019s regime remains on the table. \u201cI don\u2019t rule it out, no,\u201d he said in a phone interview with the network.
And at a year-end press conference at the state department, Marco Rubio<\/a> doubled down on remarks by other top Trump advisers that the US could coerce Maduro through its campaign of strikes on alleged drug boats travelling toward the United States.
\u201cWe reserve the right, and have the right, to utilise every element of national power to defend the national interest of the United States,\u201d said Rubio. \u201cAnd no one can dispute that. Every country in the world reserves the same option. We just simply have more power than some of them.\u201d
The recent seizure of a sanctioned oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela<\/a> has led to a full-scale upheaval in the \u201cdark fleet\u201d that ferried oil from the heavily sanctioned country, according to industry data shared with the Guardian, in a move that experts have said will cut significant revenues to Maduro\u2019s government.
Of more than 30 sanctioned tankers that operate in Venezuelan waters, many are now sheltering in the Indian Ocean in order to avoid interdiction. An analysis of their tracking data provided by Windward AI, a maritime data company, \u201creveals a significant shift in maritime activity, with vessels rerouting to the Indian Ocean to evade US naval forces\u201d.
Of 59 \u201chigh-risk vessels\u201d, however, \u201cmany are trapped in the blockade zone or engaging in location manipulation,\u201d the report said.
Asked at a news conference on Friday whether the United States was planning regime change, Rubio said: \u201cIt is clear that the current status quo with the Venezuelan regime is intolerable for the United States,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, yes, our goal is to change that dynamic.\u201d
Experts say that blockade makes a direct US attempt to unseat Maduro more likely as the Venezuelan regime is slowly starved of oil revenues from sales to China.
\u201cThe blockade of these sanctioned vessels provides an additional source of leverage for the United States,\u201d said Jason Marczak, vice-president and senior director at the Atlantic Council\u2019s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, in a recent analysis.
\u201cBy cutting off a significant part of the regime\u2019s income, the United States gains an additional chip to put on the table in discussions on ending Maduro\u2019s dictatorship in Venezuela. This move elevates the Caribbean campaign from a counter-drug operation to one that is also cutting off the financial lifelines to Maduro, who the United States has designated as the leader of [putative drug trafficking organisation] the Cartel de los Soles.\u201d<\/a>
Trump refused to say whether ousting Maduro was the ultimate goal in his military offensive, which has been escalating for four months, with about 15,000 troops positioned at Venezuela\u2019s doorstep and attacks on vessels that have already killed more than 100 people in the Caribbean and the Pacific.
But Susie Wiles, his chief of staff, said in an interview published in Vanity Fair this week that Trump \u201cwants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle\u201d, undermining the administration\u2019s claims that law enforcement was the key goal of the US military buildup.
During his news conference, Rubio confirmed that the US was trying to put pressure on Maduro through the campaign of strikes against boats that the US has said were carrying drugs.
\u201cHe knows exactly what I want \u2026 He knows better than anybody,\u201d said Trump, who added that there would be additional seizures of oil tankers, such as the Skipper last week, which was carrying about 2m barrels of heavy Venezuelan crude and was reportedly bound for China.
Maduro called the seizure an act of \u201cpiracy\u201d, and his regime, without providing details, this week accused the government of Trinidad and Tobago of taking part in it<\/a>, on the same day the Caribbean country announced it would allow the US military access to its airports in the coming weeks following the recent installation of a radar system.
Inside the White House, several top Trump aides have enthusiastically thrown their support behind more direct action in Venezuela. They include his deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, who the Washington Post reported had initially pushed for an anti-drug campaign in Mexico before backing the Venezuela strikes, as well as Rubio, whose parents are Cuban immigrants, and has been a consistent critic of the Venezuelan regime for decades.
\u201cThe national interest of the United States, specifically when it comes to Venezuela, is as follows,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have a regime that\u2019s illegitimate, that cooperates with Iran, that cooperates with Hezbollah, that cooperates with narco-trafficking and narco-terrorist organisations.\u201d<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro orders Venezuelan navy to escort oil tankers after seizure by US forcesWhat action is Trump taking against Venezuela\u2019s oil industry?Donald Trump and his top advisers have refused to rule out the potential for open conflict with Venezuela as Nicol\u00e1s Maduro urged his navy to escort oil tankers defying the largest US fleet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":194313,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-194312","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}