United States President Donald Trump said the US carried out a land-based strike on Venezuela on Monday, marking a sharp escalation in Washington\u2019s recent military activity against the South American nation.<\/p>\n
Trump said the operation had targeted a docking facility being used to load boats carrying narcotics. Venezuelan authorities, however, have yet to confirm the incident.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n Tensions between Washington and Caracas have risen sharply since September, when the Trump administration began a series of strikes on Venezuelan vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, which the US government claims are trafficking drugs.<\/p>\n However, despite aerial strikes on more than two dozen boats, which have killed at least 100 people, the US has presented no evidence of drug trafficking.<\/p>\n More recently, US forces have seized Venezuelan oil tankers, which it claims are carrying sanctioned oil and ordered a naval blockade on all sanctioned oil tankers near the coast.<\/p>\n Caracas has long accused Washington of using allegations of drug trafficking as a pretext for forcing regime change in Venezuela, raising renewed concerns about the legality of such actions and the risk of a broader conflict. Indeed, legal experts say the targeting of vessels in international waters likely violates\u00a0US and international law and amounts to extrajudicial executions.<\/p>\n So, what do we know about these strikes so far, and could it lead to an imminent war between the US and Venezuela?<\/p>\n During a news conference on Monday alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Trump took the opportunity to announce that US forces had struck a Venezuelan dock.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n \u201cThey load the boats up with drugs, so we hit all the boats, and now, we hit the area. It\u2019s the implementation area. That\u2019s where they implement. And that is no longer around.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump did not say who carried out the strike or where it occurred.<\/p>\n \u201cI know exactly who it was, but I don\u2019t want to say who it was. But, you know, it was along the shore,\u201d the US president said.<\/p>\n US media cited sources familiar with the operation who claimed the strike had been carried out by the CIA.<\/p>\n Following Trump\u2019s announcement, the US military also announced in a post on X that it had carried out another attack on a boat in the eastern Pacific, killing two more people. It did not specify where exactly the strike took place.<\/p>\n Venezuela\u2019s government has yet to respond to Trump\u2019s announcement.<\/p>\n Relations between Washington and Caracas have been fraught for decades, shaped by a long history of US military intervention in Latin American countries.<\/p>\n Tensions deepened in the late 1990s under Venezuela\u2019s left-wing president Hugo Chavez \u2013 mostly because of the nationalisation of foreign-owned oil assets which the US claimed its companies had invested in and built \u2013 and deteriorated further after his successor, Nicolas Maduro, took power in 2013.<\/p>\n Tensions have escalated in recent months as a result of a US military campaign targeting alleged Venezuelan drug smugglers. The Trump administration claims the trafficking of drugs to the US constitutes a national emergency, but multiple reports have shown that Venezuela is not a major source of drugs being transported across borders.<\/p>\n Since September, Washington has carried out more than two dozen strikes in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, killing more than 100 people, accusing the Maduro government of being involved in flooding the US with drugs.<\/p>\n The Trump administration has offered no evidence of drug trafficking or legal justification for the operations, prompting claims that it is more interested in controlling oil in the region and\u00a0forcing regime change\u00a0in Venezuela.<\/p>\n The strikes have been accompanied by the largest US show of force in the region in decades, including the deployment of the world\u2019s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R Ford, F-35 jets and approximately 15,000 troops. Trump has previously also warned of possible attacks \u201con land\u201d.<\/p>\n Caracas has rejected US accusations of drug trafficking, condemning its actions as \u201cillegal\u201d under international law and a violation of Venezuela\u2019s sovereignty.<\/p>\n The Venezuelan government claims Washington is using drugs as a pretext for regime change and to seize the country\u2019s oil wealth.<\/p>\n Moreover, United Nations human rights experts have condemned the partial naval blockade, finding it an illegal armed aggression against Venezuela, while urging the US Congress to intervene.<\/p>\n Caracas-based analyst Elias Ferrer, of Orinoco Research, said if the US has in fact struck Venezuelan territory, it has \u201ccertainly violated international law\u201d unless the attack was pre-approved by the Maduro government, which could be possible in light of recent conversations between the Venezuelan president and Trump in the past month.<\/p>\n Depending on the answer to that question, Ferrer said the incident could either \u201cescalate, or actually de-escalate\u201d the situation.<\/p>\n \u201cTrump needs a victory before he can de-escalate in Venezuela, and this could be it: destroying an alleged drug-related target,\u201d he said, citing the US bombing of Iran in July as an example during the 12-day Iran-Israel war in June.<\/p>\n Iran responded by carrying out a pre-warned strike on a US base in Qatar, following which a ceasefire was announced between Iran and Israel within the next 24 hours.<\/p>\n If it was not pre-approved with Caracas, however, Alan McPherson, professor of Latin American studies at Temple University, said it represents a \u201cserious escalation\u201d by Washington as it is the first on Venezuelan territory.<\/p>\n \u201cThis has all the markings of a war of choice \u2013 militarily unnecessary \u2013 against a sovereign nation,\u201d McPherson told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n \u201cPolitically, the [US] administration wants to overthrow President Maduro \u2013 plain and simple,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n In addition, McPherson said, while the US \u201cmay also want to damage the drug business\u201d coming from Venezuela, Trump has been clear that he mostly wants to \u201creverse the nationalisation of petroleum to the benefit of American corporations\u201d.<\/p>\n Recent remarks by White House officials have raised questions about whether Venezuela\u2019s large oil reserves are in fact the real source of tension with Caracas, rather than drug smuggling.<\/p>\n Venezuela has the world\u2019s largest proven oil reserves, and the US once partnered with the country to develop its oil fields. It was a founding member of OPEC in 1960 and became a major oil exporter, especially after PDVSA (Petroleos de Venezuela, SA) was created in 1976, and all foreign oil companies were brought under state control.<\/p>\n In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Venezuela supplied roughly 1.5 to 2 million barrels per day to the United States, making it one of the US\u2019s largest foreign oil sources. However, exports began to decline sharply after Hugo Chavez was elected president in 1998, as he reshaped the country\u2019s oil sector, nationalising assets, restructuring PDVSA, and prioritising domestic and political objectives over traditional export markets.<\/p>\n The situation worsened under President Nicolas Maduro, Hugo Chavez\u2019s successor, when the Trump administration imposed oil sanctions in 2017 and then tightened them in 2019. These measures restricted Venezuela\u2019s ability to sell crude to the US and limited access to international financial markets, further reducing the country\u2019s oil exports.<\/p>\n Today, Chevron is the only US oil company that continues to operate in Venezuela under a special licence granted by former US President Joe Biden, which allows it to operate despite oil sanctions.<\/p>\n Stephen Miller, a top aide to President Donald Trump, said earlier this month that Venezuela\u2019s oil belongs to Washington, calling the country\u2019s nationalisation of its petroleum industry \u201ctheft\u201d and arguing that \u201cAmerican sweat, ingenuity and toil created the oil industry in Venezuela\u201d.<\/p>\n While US and British firms did invest in early development of oil projects in Venezuela, international law clearly recognises Venezuela\u2019s sovereignty over its own resources.<\/p>\n Power over the military is divided in the United States. Congress is granted the power to declare war by the US Constitution, but the last time the US declared war was in World War II, in 1942. That means the longest wars the US has engaged in have been undeclared by Congress.<\/p>\n In addition to empowering the president to direct military actions during a declared war, the Constitution grants the president the authority to order the US military to respond to attacks and imminent threats. It is from these powers that the executive branch has been able to deploy military force against countries in the absence of a congressionally declared war.<\/p>\n The War Powers Resolution of 1974 was intended to limit the ability of the president to deploy the military in these non-war actions, imposing time limits on deployments without congressional authorisation, and imposing other requirements. However, enforcement has been spotty and broad executive interpretations of what does and does not require authorisation, as well as what is permitted by existing Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMFs) have left the president with a relatively free hand.<\/p>\n Members of Congress have tried repeatedly to prevent Trump from taking military action against Venezuela.<\/p>\n Earlier this month, a group of Democratic and Republican US Congress representatives forced a vote that would have blocked US military action against Venezuela without congressional approval.<\/p>\n But the resolution was narrowly defeated in the Republican-controlled Congress by a vote of 216-210.<\/p>\n Academic McPherson said Congress can certainly refuse to declare war or to give the president \u201cany authorisation to use force\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIt can even cut off funds for specific military purposes. But the executive would likely defy any such restrictions, and this Republican Congress is unlikely to do any of the above.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n United States President Donald Trump said the US carried out a land-based strike on Venezuela on Monday, marking a sharp escalation in Washington\u2019s recent military activity against the South American nation. Trump said the operation had targeted a docking facility being used to load boats carrying narcotics. Venezuelan authorities, however, have yet to confirm the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6966,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latin-america-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
What happened?<\/h2>\n
Why is Trump conducting a campaign against Venezuela?<\/h2>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-12-22T204650Z_722703964_RC22LIA40A7D_RTRMADP_3_USA-VENEZUELA-TANKER-1766636634.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C512&quality=80\")
Will this attack lead to an imminent war with Venezuela?<\/h2>\n
Is the US campaign really about oil?<\/h2>\n
![\"oil\"](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/INTERACTIVE-Venezuela-oil-fields-and-pipelines-1756997792.png?quality=80\")
Can the US Congress intervene to prevent Trump from going to war?<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"