Trump, US officials discuss Venezuela amid concerns over military build-up
United States President Donald Trump has met his national security team to discuss “next steps” on Venezuela, according to media reports, as his government continues to defend a controversial double strike on alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean.
The meeting on Monday came as the US military continued to surge assets to the Caribbean. That has sparked concerns over a possible land invasion aimed at toppling the government of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro.
According to US media, the talks at the Oval Office included Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other senior White House aides.
No details of the meeting were immediately available.
Last week, the US president said that land operations against criminal groups in Venezuela could begin “very soon”, in what would be an escalation of the US military’s months-long strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug smugglers in international waters in the Caribbean.
Days earlier, the US designated the Cartel de los Soles, which officials describe as a drug trafficking cartel led by Maduro, as a “foreign terrorist organization” (FTO). Experts have pushed back on the characterisation, saying the “Cartel de los Soles” has traditionally referred to a loose network of corruption within the Venezuelan government.
In a Saturday post on his Truth Social account, Trump said airspace over Venezuela should be considered closed “in its entirety”, in what some observers saw as the final preparations for military action.
But on Sunday, Trump told reporters not to “read anything into” the move.
Reporting from Washington, DC on Monday, Al Jazeera’s chief US correspondent Alan Fischer said “no one quite knows” why Trump announced the airspace closure. He added that reports in US media indicate the announcement happened without Pentagon notification.
“When asked about it … on Air Force One, [Trump] said that you shouldn’t read too much into it. But of course, that didn’t stop the speculation, because normally no-fly zones are imposed before there’s some sort of military operation,” Fisher said.
He added that many observers in Washington have read the threats and asset build-up as an effort to force Maduro to flee the country before any military action is taken. Others have pointed to Trump’s past statements on Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, sparking concerns he could pursue a “war for oil”.
“Of course, in all of this, Donald Trump has to balance his MAGA [Make America Great Again] supporters because he campaigned on the fact that he wouldn’t get involved in what he described as stupid foreign wars,” Fisher said.
Reporting from the US territory of Puerto Rico, the staging ground of the military’s Caribbean build-up, Al Jazeera’s Phil Lavelle said there has been a flurry of activity, but it remained difficult to discern if any operations were imminent.
“We’ve got about 15,000 or so military personnel in this part of the world as this readiness is under way,” Lavelle said.
“We’ve also obviously got the sea systems: We’ve got the USS Gerald F Ford, the largest aircraft carrier strike group in the world, currently off the coast … Also, the USS Winston S Churchill and the USS Bainbridge,” he said.
Renewed scrutiny over boat strikes
The build-up has persisted as the Trump administration has faced renewed pressure over its lethal strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug smugglers in international waters in the Caribbean.
Over the weekend, Republican and Democratic leaders on the US House and Senate armed services committees announced they were upping oversight of the strikes.
That came after the Washington Post and CNN reported last week that US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth gave a verbal order to kill all people aboard a boat suspected of smuggling drugs from Venezuela.
Subsequently, military officials reportedly ordered a so-called “follow-on” strike on the vessel after two individuals appeared to survive the first strike.
