It marks a sharp escalation in the US pressure campaign against Maduro, which has seen dozens killed in strikes on boats alleged to have been carrying drugs from Venezuela. In recent months American warships have been moving into the region.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration has accused Venezuela of funnelling narcotics into the US. Venezuela – home to some of the world’s largest proven oil reserves – has, in turn, accused Washington of seeking to steal its resources. Maduro vowed on Wednesday that Venezuela would never become an “oil colony”.<\/p>\n
But the White House press secretary told reporters on Thursday that the US was committed to both “stopping the flow of illegal drugs” into the country and enforcing sanctions.<\/p>\n
She would not be drawn on whether the US planned to seize more ships transporting Venezuelan oil.<\/p>\n
“We’re not going to stand by and watch sanctioned vessels sail the seas with black market oil, the proceeds of which will fuel narco-terrorism of rogue and illegitimate regimes around the world,” Leavitt said. <\/p>\n
She added that the US planned to seize the oil on board the Skipper, after the necessary legal process.<\/p>\n
Leavitt also said Trump would not be concerned “at all” to hear Russian President Vladimir Putin had called Maduro earlier in the day to offer Moscow’s support “in the face of growing external pressure”.<\/p>\n
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent later said that imposing sanctions on three nephews of Maduro’s wife, alongside a number of businesses and ships, would tackle the leader’s “dictatorial and brutal control”.<\/p>\n
In a post on X, he said the Trump administration was “holding the regime and its circle of cronies and companies accountable for its continued crimes”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It marks a sharp escalation in the US pressure campaign against Maduro, which has seen dozens killed in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311013,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[84,1294,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-311012","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311012","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=311012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}