President Donald Trump referred to as for the US to “run” Venezuela on Saturday, shortly after the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro amid US strikes on the nation’s capital of Caracas. The assault is a significant escalation in Trump’s months-long strain marketing campaign in opposition to Venezuela and pushes the US into unsure territory legally, politically, and militarily. Right here’s what we all know.
US forces launched assaults in opposition to an unspecified variety of targets in Caracas, Venezuela, in a single day, and efficiently positioned and captured Maduro and his spouse, Cilia Flores. The couple has since been flown in another country, Trump stated in an early morning social media publish, and might be taken by ship to face prison costs within the US. A lot remains to be unclear, however Trump claims US troops are thought to have been killed within the assault.
Maduro has been beneath indictment within the US since March 2020, when the Southern District of New York charged him with narco-terrorism, drug trafficking, and corruption, together with 14 others. On Saturday, the Justice Division unsealed a brand new superseding indictment that introduced further costs in opposition to Maduro and likewise charged Flores and different members of Maduro’s household, and FBI brokers reportedly labored with US particular forces to detain Maduro; the chair of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Dan Caine, described it on Saturday as an “unprecedented operation” carried out “in unison with our intelligence company companions and regulation enforcement teammates.”
Below Trump, the US has additionally described Maduro as the pinnacle of a cartel referred to as Cartel de los Soles, which it designated as a International Terrorist Group in November. As my colleague Josh Keating has defined, although, that designation stretches the definitions of each “terrorist” and “group”: “Cartel de los Soles” is a time period utilized in Venezuela to refer typically to criminality by authorities and navy officers in Venezuela, however not anybody unified group.
That is the end result, for now, of a US navy effort that started with US strikes on alleged drug boats this September. The strikes, that are believed to have killed at the least 115 individuals, focused alleged drug traffickers within the Caribbean and Pacific, together with these affiliated with the Venezuelan cartel Tren de Aragua.
Concurrently these strikes have been ongoing, the US staged a considerable navy buildup within the Caribbean — excess of can be wanted for comparatively restricted anti-drug operations, together with dispatching the USS Gerald Ford plane service group, B-52 bombers, and particular operations helicopters typically used for floor operations. Trump additionally approved the CIA to take covert motion inside Venezuela, and the US additional stepped up its anti-regime efforts in December with the seizure of an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela.
Nevertheless, Trump’s relationship to Venezuela considerably predates tensions this summer time: Early in 2025, he tried to invoke the Alien Enemies Act in opposition to Tren de Aragua, threatened tariffs on international locations shopping for oil or fuel from Venezuela, and canceled (after which renewed) an oil export license permitting Chevron to function in Venezuela.
Extra considerably, Trump has threatened navy motion in Venezuela lengthy earlier than this yr. Early in his first time period, in response to a 2017 crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Venezuela, he warned that “We now have many choices for Venezuela, together with a attainable navy possibility if vital.” Round that point, he additionally reportedly requested advisers about choices for invading the nation.
That have set the tone for the remainder of his first-term coverage towards Venezuela, together with a US-led effort to acknowledge Venezuelan opposition chief Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s reputable president and pressure out Maduro, which finally collapsed. Now, greater than eight years after his first risk of navy pressure, Trump has pulled the metaphorical set off.
Is that this a regime-change operation?
It’s too early to say for positive, however it’s beginning to sound like one.
For now, whereas Maduro himself has been eliminated, his vp, Delcy Rodríguez, remains to be in place, as is the remainder of the Maduro authorities. Trump, nevertheless, repeatedly stated in a Saturday press convention that the US intends to “run the nation till such time as we are able to do a secure, correct and even handed transition” — presumably to a extra US-friendly authorities.
In the identical deal with, Trump additionally indicated US oil pursuits in Venezuela have been a consideration, and warned that extra US motion could possibly be forthcoming: “We’re going to run [the country], basically, till such time as a correct transition can happen. As everybody is aware of, the oil enterprise in Venezuela has been a bust,” he stated. “We’re going to have our very giant United States oil corporations, the most important wherever on this planet, go in, spend billions of {dollars}, repair the badly damaged infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and begin creating wealth for the nation. And we’re able to stage a second and far bigger assault if we want to take action.”
Venezuelan opposition chief and up to date Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado additionally sounded the same notice on Saturday, releasing an announcement titled “The hour of freedom has arrived.”
If that’s the case, nevertheless, what such an operation would seem like is extraordinarily unclear. The US historical past of regime change efforts, each in Latin America and extra lately within the Center East, is fraught, to say the least. And regardless of Machado’s anti-Maduro activism, there’s no clear government-in-waiting that the Trump administration might assist into energy: Trump instructed reporters Saturday that “I believe it will be very robust for [Machado] to be the chief. She doesn’t have the assist inside or the respect throughout the nation.”
Lastly, it’s nonetheless attainable the Trump administration merely gained’t observe by way of: As of Saturday, there was no proof of a sustained US presence in Venezuela itself, although the US navy buildup within the Caribbean remains to be in place.
