{"id":309518,"date":"2025-12-10T20:35:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T20:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/309518\/"},"modified":"2025-12-10T20:35:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T20:35:07","slug":"us-forces-seize-oil-tanker-off-venezuela-coast-us-foreign-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/309518\/","title":{"rendered":"US forces seize oil tanker off Venezuela coast | US foreign policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

US forces have seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, in a major escalation of Donald Trump\u2019s four-month pressure campaign<\/a> against the South American country\u2019s dictator, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro.<\/p>\n

The US president confirmed the operation on Wednesday, telling reporters: \u201cWe\u2019ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela<\/a> – a large tanker, very large, the largest one ever seized actually. And other things are happening so you will be seeing that later and you will be talking about that later with other people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two US officials told Reuters the operation was led by the US Coast Guard, but did not name the tanker or say specifically where the interception happened. A senior Trump administration official told Bloomberg that the US had conducted a \u201cjudicial enforcement action on a stateless vessel\u201d that was last docked in Venezuela.<\/p>\n

Maduro has been in power since 2013, when he succeeded Hugo Ch\u00e1vez after the latter\u2019s death from cancer. Widely believed to have stolen last year\u2019s presidential election, Maduro has clung to power after launching a wave of repression that forced Edmundo Gonz\u00e1lez, the apparent winner of the 2024 vote, into exile in Spain.<\/p>\n

Since August, the US has put a $50m bounty<\/a> on Maduro\u2019s head, launched the biggest naval deployment<\/a> in the Caribbean Sea since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis<\/a>, and carried out a series of deadly airstrikes<\/a> on alleged drug boats that have killed more than 80 people.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, two US fighter jets circled the Gulf of Venezuela for about 40 minutes. The aircraft flew just north<\/a> of Maracaibo, one of Venezuela\u2019s most populous cities.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Gonz\u00e1lez\u2019s most important backer, the opposition leader Mar\u00eda Corina Machado, was awarded the Nobel peace prize for her \u201ctireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a peaceful and just transition from dictatorship to democracy\u201d.<\/p>\n

Machado\u2019s daughter, Ana Corina Sosa Machado, accepted the prize, telling a ceremony in Oslo that her mother\u2019s struggle to end years of \u201cobscene corruption\u201d and \u201cbrutal dictatorship\u201d would go on.<\/p>\n

Venezuela has the world\u2019s largest proven reserves of oil and, although years of mismanagement and corruption have done severe damage to its oil industry, oil exports remain Venezuela\u2019s main source of revenue. The main customer is China.<\/p>\n

The objective of this week\u2019s reported tanker seizure was not immediately clear.<\/p>\n

In an interview last week, Joe Biden\u2019s former chief Latin America adviser, Juan Gonz\u00e1lez, said that at around the time of last year\u2019s election he had pushed for the US to station two navy destroyers off Venezuela\u2019s coast \u201cand even impose an oil blockade\u201d.<\/p>\n

That never happened, but Gonz\u00e1lez believed one possible way out of the current crisis might be for the Trump administration to push Maduro into accepting a recall referendum, perhaps in 2027, but threatening \u201creal hardline consequences\u201d such as a blockade if the result was not respected.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it is potentially a viable option where there should be a very credible and aggressive snapback associated with it,\u201d Gonz\u00e1lez said, adding: \u201cImposing an oil blockade would shut down the entire economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s less aggressive [than a land strike] but it\u2019s still considered an act of war,\u201d added Gonz\u00e1lez, who was the national security council\u2019s senior director for the western hemisphere during the Biden administration.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe [Trump] could take unilateral action by by blocking oil tankers from leaving or entering the country and that I think would precipitate Maduro\u2019s departure.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US forces have seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, in a major escalation of Donald…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309519,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-309518","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}