US President Donald Trump said the US carried out a ground attack on Venezuela on Monday, marking a sharp escalation in the US government’s recent military activities against the South American country.
President Trump said the operation targeted a dock facility used to load boats loaded with drugs. However, Venezuelan authorities have not yet confirmed the incident.
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Tensions between Washington and Caracas have risen sharply since the Trump administration launched a series of attacks on Venezuelan ships in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean that the US government says conduct drug trafficking.
However, the United States has not produced any evidence of drug trafficking, even though more than 20 boats were bombed and at least 100 people were killed.
Most recently, the US military seized a Venezuelan oil tanker it claimed was carrying sanctioned oil and ordered a naval blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers near the coast.
Caracas has long accused Washington of using drug trafficking allegations as a pretext to force regime change in Venezuela, raising new concerns about the legality of such actions and the risk of broader conflict. In fact, legal experts say targeting ships in international waters likely violates U.S. and international law and amounts to extrajudicial executions.
So what is known about these attacks so far, and could it lead to an imminent war between the United States and Venezuela?
what happened?
During a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Monday, President Trump used the opportunity to announce that U.S. forces had attacked a dock in Venezuela.
“There was a massive explosion in the area of the pier where drugs were being loaded onto boats,” Trump said.
“They’re loading the boats with drugs, so we hit all the boats, and now we hit the area. This is the enforcement area. That’s where they enforce the drugs. And that doesn’t exist anymore.”
President Trump did not say who carried out the attack or where it took place.
“I know exactly who it was, but I don’t want to say who. But, you know, it was along the coast,” the US president said.
US media, citing people familiar with the operation, claimed that the attack was carried out by the CIA.
Following President Trump’s announcement, the U.S. military also announced in a post on X that it had struck a boat again in the eastern Pacific, killing two more people. He did not say exactly where the strike took place.
The Venezuelan government has not yet responded to President Trump’s announcement.
Why is President Trump campaigning against Venezuela?
Relations between Washington and Caracas have been troubled for decades, shaped by a long history of U.S. military intervention in Latin American countries.
Tensions deepened in the late 1990s under Venezuela’s leftist President Hugo Chavez, largely due to the U.S. nationalization of foreign-owned oil assets that it said were invested and built by Venezuelan companies, but worsened after his successor Nicolas Maduro took power in 2013.
Tensions have escalated in recent months as a result of a U.S. military operation targeting suspected drug smugglers in Venezuela. Although the Trump administration maintains that drug trafficking into the United States constitutes a national emergency, reports indicate that Venezuela is not a major source of drugs being shipped across the border.
Since September, Washington has carried out more than 20 airstrikes in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean, killing more than 100 people and accusing the Maduro regime of being involved in flooding the United States with drugs.
The Trump administration has not provided any evidence of drug trafficking or legal justification for the operation, leading to widespread claims that it is interested in controlling the region’s oil and forcing regime change in Venezuela.
The attack was accompanied by the United States’ largest show of force in the region in decades, including the deployment of the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the Gerald R. Ford, F-35 fighter jets and about 15,000 troops. President Trump has previously warned of the possibility of a “ground” attack.
Caracas has rejected US charges of drug trafficking, calling the actions “illegal” under international law and a violation of Venezuela’s sovereignty.
The Venezuelan government claims Washington is using drugs as a pretext to overthrow the regime and seize the country’s oil wealth.
Additionally, UN human rights experts denounced the partial naval blockade as an illegal armed invasion of Venezuela and called on the US Congress to intervene.
Will this attack lead to an imminent war with Venezuela?
Elias Ferrer, an analyst at Caracas-based Orinoco Research, said if the U.S. did indeed attack Venezuelan territory, it would be “certainly in violation of international law” unless the attack had the prior approval of Maduro’s government, a possibility given recent conversations between the Venezuelan president and President Trump last month.
Ferrer said that depending on the answer to that question, the incident could either “escalate or actually de-escalate” the situation.
He cited the U.S. bombing of Iran in July during the 12-day Iran-Israel war in June as an example, saying, “We need a Trump victory before we can de-escalate the situation in Venezuela, which is possible. Destroy the alleged drug-related targets.”
In response, Iran carried out a forewarning attack on a US military base in Qatar, and within 24 hours a ceasefire was announced between Iran and Israel.
But Alan McPherson, a Latin American studies professor at Temple University, said without prior approval from the Caracas government, this would be a first on Venezuelan territory and would represent a “serious escalation” by the U.S. government.
“This has all the marks of a militarily unnecessary war of choice against a sovereign state,” MacPherson told Al Jazeera.
“Politically, the (US) regime wants to overthrow President Maduro – plain and simple,” he added.
Additionally, McPherson said that while the United States “may also want to damage the drug business” from Venezuela, President Trump has made clear that he primarily wants to “reverse oil nationalization for the benefit of American companies.”
Is the US campaign really about oil?
Recent statements by White House officials have raised questions about whether the real cause of tensions with Caracas is, in fact, Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, rather than drug smuggling.
Venezuela boasts the world’s largest proven oil reserves, and the United States once partnered with the country to develop oil fields. It became a founding member of OPEC in 1960 and a major oil exporter, especially after the creation of PDVSA (Petroleos de Venezuela, SA) in 1976, which brought all foreign oil companies under state control.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Venezuela supplied the United States with approximately 1.5 million to 2 million barrels per day, making it one of the United States’ largest sources of foreign oil. However, after Hugo Chávez was elected president in 1998, exports began to decline sharply as he restructured the country’s oil sector, nationalizing assets, restructuring PDVSA, and prioritizing domestic and political goals over traditional export markets.
The situation worsened under Hugo Chávez’s successor, President Nicolás Maduro, when the Trump administration imposed oil sanctions in 2017 and tightened them in 2019. These measures restricted Venezuela’s ability to sell oil to the United States, restricted its access to international financial markets, and further reduced the country’s oil exports.
Currently, Chevron is the only US oil company continuing to operate in Venezuela under a special license granted by former US President Joe Biden, allowing it to operate despite oil sanctions.
President Donald Trump’s aide Stephen Miller said earlier this month that Venezuela’s oil belongs to the U.S. government, calling the nationalization of the country’s oil industry “theft” and claiming that “American sweat, ingenuity, and toil created Venezuela’s oil industry.”
Although American and British companies did invest in the initial development of Venezuelan oil projects, international law clearly recognizes Venezuela’s sovereignty over its own resources.
Can Congress intervene to stop President Trump from going to war?
In the United States, authority over the military is divided into two. Congress is given the power to declare war by the U.S. Constitution, but the last time the United States declared war was in 1942 during World War II. This means that the longest war ever waged by the United States was never declared by Congress.
In addition to giving the president the power to direct military action during a declaration of war, the Constitution also gives the president the power to order the U.S. military to respond to an attack or imminent threat. This power allows the executive branch to use military force against countries even if Congress has not declared war.
The War Powers Resolution of 1974 was intended to limit the president’s ability to send troops for these non-war actions, imposing time limits and other requirements on sending troops without Congressional approval. However, enforcement has been spotty, leaving the president with relative freedom to wide-ranging administrative interpretations of what does and does not require authorization, as well as what is permitted under existing Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMF).
Lawmakers in Congress have repeatedly tried to block President Trump from taking military action against Venezuela.
Earlier this month, a group of Democratic and Republican U.S. lawmakers pushed through a vote to block U.S. military action against Venezuela without Congressional approval.
However, the resolution was narrowly defeated by a 216-210 vote in the Republican-controlled Congress.
McPherson, the scholar, said Congress could certainly refuse to declare war or give the president “any authorization to use force.”
“It is even possible to cut off funding for certain military purposes, but the executive branch would likely resist such restrictions, and this Republican Congress is unlikely to do any of the above.”
