Supertanker Skipper seized by the US
President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that the US will impose a blockade on all “sanctioned oil tankers” entering or leaving Venezuela, dramatically escalating his administration’s campaign against President Nicolás Maduro. The move follows the recent seizure of an oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast and a growing US military buildup in the region.
WASHINGTON- President Donald Trump said Tuesday he is ordering a blockade of all “sanctioned oil tankers” entering Venezuela, ramping up pressure on the country’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, in a move that appeared designed to place a tighter chokehold on the South American nation’s economy.
Trump’s escalation comes after US forces last week seized an oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast, an unusual move that followed a build-up of military forces in the region. In a social media post Tuesday night announcing the blockade, Trump alleged that Venezuela was using oil revenue to fund drug trafficking and other crimes. He vowed to continue the military build-up until the country turned over oil, land and other assets to the United States, though it was not clear why he believed the US had a claim to them.
“Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America,” Trump said on his social media platform. “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.”
Pentagon officials referred all questions about the post to the White House.
Venezuela’s government press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But before Trump’s announcement Tuesday, Maduro praised Venezuela for having “proven to be a strong country” in the face of US
“Venezuela has 25 weeks denouncing, confronting and defeating a campaign of multidimensional aggression, ranging from psychological terrorism to the piracy of the corsairs who assaulted the oil tanker,” Maduro said on state television Tuesday.
He added, “We have taken the oath to defend our homeland, and that on this soil peace and shared happiness triumph.”
The military build-up has been accompanied by a series of strikes on boats in international waters in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. The campaign, which has drawn bipartisan scrutiny from US lawmakers, has killed at least 95 people in 25 known strikes on vessels.
Trump has for weeks said the US will move its campaign beyond the water and begin strikes on land.
The Trump administration has defended the strikes as a success, saying they have prevented drugs from reaching American shores, while pushing back on concerns that the operations stretch the bounds of lawful warfare.
While administration officials have said the campaign is about stopping drugs headed to the US, Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, appeared to confirm in a Vanity Fair interview published Tuesday that the effort is also intended to oust Maduro.
Wiles said Trump “wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle”.
Tuesday night’s announcement appeared to advance that same objective.
Venezuela, which holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves and produces about 1 million barrels a day, has long relied on oil revenue as the backbone of its economy.
Since the Trump administration began imposing oil sanctions in 2017, Maduro’s government has relied on a shadowy fleet of unflagged tankers to smuggle crude into global supply chains.
The state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela S.A., known as PDVSA, has been effectively locked out of global oil markets by US sanctions. It sells most of its exports at a steep discount on the black market, primarily to China.
Francisco Monaldi, a Venezuelan oil expert at Rice University in Houston, said roughly 850,000 barrels of Venezuela’s daily production are exported. About 80% goes to China, 15% to 17% goes to the US through Chevron Corp., and the remainder goes to Cuba.
In October, Trump appeared to confirm reports that Maduro had offered a stake in Venezuela’s oil and mineral wealth in recent months in an effort to stave off mounting US pressure.
“He’s offered everything,” Trump said at the time. “You know why? Because he doesn’t want to f— around with the United States.”
It was not immediately clear how the US planned to enact what Trump called a “TOTAL AND COMPLETE BLOCKADE OF ALL SANCTIONED OIL TANKERS going into, and out of, Venezuela”.
The US Navy currently has 11 ships in the region, including an aircraft carrier and several amphibious assault ships. Those vessels carry a wide array of aircraft, including helicopters and V-22 Ospreys. The Navy has also been operating several P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft in the area.
Together, those assets give the US military significant capacity to monitor and interdict maritime traffic entering and leaving Venezuela.
In his post, Trump said the “Venezuelan Regime has been designated a FOREIGN TERRORIST ORGANIZATION”, though it was unclear what designation he was referencing.
Historically, the foreign terrorist organization label has been reserved for non-state actors that do not enjoy sovereign immunity under treaties or United Nations membership.
In November, the Trump administration designated the Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terrorist organisation. The term originally referred to Venezuelan military officers involved in drug trafficking, but it is not a cartel in the traditional sense.
Governments accused of financing or tolerating extremist violence are typically designated “state sponsors of terrorism”. Venezuela is not on that list.
In rare cases, the US has designated elements of foreign governments as foreign terrorist organisations. During Trump’s first term, his administration did so with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, an arm of the Iranian government that had already been designated as part of a state sponsor of terrorism.
(FRANCE 24 with AP)