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Trump Administration Has ‘Made the Decision to Attack Military Installations Inside Venezuela’: Report
"Trump’s military buildup in the Caribbean isn’t about 'drugs,' it’s about oil, power, and regime change," said on critic of potential strikes in Venezuela.
Oct 31, 2025
Two reports claim that the Trump administration is poised to launch strikes against military targets inside Venezuela.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday night that the administration is preparing to attack a variety of targets inside Venezuela, including "ports and airports controlled by the military that are allegedly used to traffic drugs, including naval facilities and airstrips."
Reports from the US government and the United Nations have not identified Venezuela as a significant source of drugs that enter the United States, and the country plays virtually no role in the trafficking of fentanyl, the primary cause of drug overdoses in the US.
While the WSJ report said that the administration had not yet decided to carry out the operations against Venezuela, the Miami Herald reported on Friday morning that the administration "has made the decision to attack military installations inside Venezuela and the strikes could come at any moment."
A source who spoke with the Miami Herald didn't explicitly say that Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro would be the target of these actions, but they nonetheless hinted that the goal was to weaken his grip on power.
"Maduro is about to find himself trapped and might soon discover that he cannot flee the country even if he decided to,” the source said. “What’s worse for him, there is now more than one general willing to capture and hand him over, fully aware that one thing is to talk about death, and another to see it coming."
While the Trump administration has accused Maduro of leading an international drug trafficking organization called the Cartel de los Soles, some experts have expressed extreme skepticism of this claim.
Phil Gunson, analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank, said in an interview with Agence Presse-France earlier this year that he doubts that so-called "Cartel de los Soles" even exists, and noted that "direct, incontrovertible evidence has never been presented" to show otherwise.
Earlier this year, the administration attempted to tie Maduro to another gang, Tren de Aragua, despite US intelligence agencies rejecting the notion that the street gang had government connections.
Launching strikes on Venezuelan soil would mark a major escalation in the administration's military campaign targeting purported drug traffickers, which so far has consisted of drone strikes against boats in international waters that many legal experts have described as a campaign of extrajudicial murder.
Dozens of political leaders throughout Latin America earlier this month condemned the administration's attacks on the purported drug boats, and they warned that they could just be the start of a regime change war reminiscent of the coups carried out by the US government in the last century that installed military dictatorships throughout the region.
"We have lived this nightmare before,” they emphasized in a joint letter. “US military interventions of the 20th century brought dictatorships, disappearances, and decades of trauma to our nations. We know the terrible cost of allowing foreign powers to wage war on our continent. We cannot—we will not—allow history to repeat itself.”
Medea Benjamin, cofounder of anti-war group CodePink, accused the Trump administration of using a fight against alleged drug trafficking as a false pretext to seize Venezuela's vast oil reserves.
"Trump’s military buildup in the Caribbean isn’t about 'drugs,' it’s about oil, power, and regime change," she wrote in a post on X. "Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world, that’s why they’re escalating toward war."
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Venezuela Says CIA-Linked Mercenaries Caught During 'False-Flag Attack'
"This is a colonial operation of military aggression that seeks to turn the Caribbean into a space for lethal violence and US imperial domination."
Oct 27, 2025
The government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said Sunday that his country's security forces captured a group of mercenaries aligned with the US Central Intelligence Agency, less than two weeks after President Donald Trump confirmed his authorization of covert CIA action against the South American nation.
Venezuela "reports that it has captured a mercenary group with direct information from the US intelligence agency, CIA, being able to determine that a false-flag attack is underway from waters bordering Trinidad and Tobago, or from Trinidad or Venezuelan territory itself," the Venezuelan government said in a statement.
“This planned action perfectly evokes the provocation of the Battleship Maine and the Gulf of Tonkin, which gave rise to the war against Spain to seize Cuba in 1898 and allowed the US Congress to authorize involvement in an eternal war against Vietnam in 1964, from which they emerged defeated by the Vietnamese people after facing incalculable destruction and regrettable human loss," the statement continues.
"The government of Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has renounced the sovereignty of Trinidad and Tobago to act as a military colony subordinate to US hegemonic interests, turning its territory into a US aircraft carrier for war throughout the Caribbean against Venezuela, Colombia, and all of South America,” Caracas asserted.
The statement continues:
By folding to Washington’s militaristic agenda, Persad-Bissessar not only intends to attack Venezuela, a country that has always maintained a policy of energy cooperation, mutual respect, and Caribbean integration, and break our historic bonds of brotherhood; she also violates the United Nations Charter, the proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace approved by [the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States], and the principles of [the Caribbean Community], which protect all peoples of the Caribbean.
These are not defensive exercises: this is a colonial operation of military aggression that seeks to turn the Caribbean into a space for lethal violence and US imperial domination.
"Venezuela does not accept threats from any vassal government of the US. We are not intimidated by military exercises or war cries," the statement says, adding that the country "will always defend its sovereignty, its territorial integrity, and its right to live in peace against foreign enemies and [their] vassals."
Venezuela's accusation came amid joint military exercises between the US and Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean Sea and follows a string of deadly US attacks on vessels the Trump administration claimed—without evidence—were transporting drugs bound for the United States. According to the Trump administration, at least 43 people have been killed in the US boat strikes in the southern Caribbean and Pacific Ocean since early last month.
Trinidad and Tobago challenged Venezuela to provide proof of the alleged false-flag operation and said the joint military operation with the United States "aims to bolster the fight against transnational crime and build resilience through training, humanitarian activities, and security cooperation."
The Trump administration—which had already deployed an armada of warships and thousands of troops to the southern Caribbean—said Friday that it ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group off the coast of Venezuela, which possesses the world's largest oil reserves.
The US has been meddling in Venezuelan affairs since at least the late 19th century, going back to the 1895 border dispute between Venezuela and Britain. Since then, the United States has helped install and prop up brutal dictators and assisted in the subversion of democratic movements, including by training Venezuelan forces in torture and repression at the notorious US Army School of the Americas.
In the 21st century, successive US administrations beginning with George W. Bush have tried to thwart the Bolivarian Revolution that was launched by former President Hugo Chávez and continued under Maduro. During the first Trump administration, Venezuela foiled an attempt by a group of mercenaries, including two Americans, to invade the country and topple Maduro.
Tens of thousands of Venezuelans have also died as a result of US economic sanctions, according to research from the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
Taunting the Venezuelan president during a Sunday appearance on CBS "60 Minutes," Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said, “If I was Maduro, I'd head to Russia or China right now."
However, senior Venezuelan officials waxed defiant in the face of the latest US threat.
“Once again, the empire and its accomplices seek to bend the sovereign will of the Venezuelan people through a criminal economic siege that flagrantly violates the Charter of the United Nations and international humanitarian law," Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil Pinto said Monday.
"These actions are not only illegal," he added, "they are an unconventional act of war that we are determined to face and defeat in all scenarios."
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Trump's Escalation Against Venezuela Continues as Hegseth Deploys Aircraft Carrier Strike Group to Latin American Waters
An aide to Brazil's president warned that a US regime change operation in Venezuela "could inflame South America and lead to radicalization of politics on the whole continent."
Oct 24, 2025
The Trump administration said Friday that it has ordered the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group, which contains the largest warship in the world, to waters off the coast of Venezuela, marking another major military escalation after a new surge of extrajudicial boat bombings in the region this week.
"In support of the president’s directive to dismantle transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) and counter narco-terrorism in defense of the homeland, [Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth] has directed the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group and embarked carrier air wing to the US Southern Command."
The announcement came shortly after the administration announced its 10th strike on what Hegseth claimed to be a drug-running boat, killing six people and bringing the death toll from the operations up to 43. As usual, the claim came with scant evidence.
The narrative that these boats have been transporting drugs to the US has been critically undermined in recent days after two of the alleged "narco-traffickers" who survived one of the Trump administration's strikes were released back to their home countries: One of the survivors, an Ecuadoran man, was set free shortly after returning to his country as officials stated there was no evidence to charge him.
In several other cases, the relatives or home governments of those killed in these bombings have contested that they were not drug smugglers but fishermen.
The strikes have been met with increasing criticism in recent days, not just from Democrats, but from Republican lawmakers—including Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska)—who co-introduced a war powers resolution last week to require congressional input before carrying out acts of war against Venezuela.
A group of former national security officials—including Rear Adm. Bill Baumgartner of the Coast Guard and Retired Navy Rear Adm. Michael Smith—meanwhile issued a statement on Thursday condemning the strikes as "illegal" and "ineffective."
The International Crisis Group, a nongovernmental organization dedicated to preventing armed conflict, warned Thursday that "what began purportedly as a campaign to stop illicit drugs from getting to US shores looks increasingly like an attempt to force Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his allies from power."
According to several reports, Caracas has allegedly floated proposals that would allow the US to take a dominant stake in Venezuela's oil and mineral wealth.
President Donald Trump's deployment of the Ford strike group, which is currently en route from the Mediterranean Sea, notably comes shortly after the president threatened to begin carrying out strikes on the Venezuelan mainland without seeking authorization from Congress, which led dozens of elected officials throughout Latin America to issue a letter denouncing military aggression in the region.
"The Trump administration is planning to lead a new 'War on Drugs,'" the leaders warned. "That war may start with regime change in Venezuela, but we know that it will not end there. Already, the US is threatening illegal drone strikes on Mexican soil in the name of its 'national security.' If we do not stand for peace now, we risk a new wave of armed interventions across the region, unleashing a humanitarian crisis of unimaginable scale in all of our home countries."
Celso Amorim, an aide to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, said on Friday, following the announcement of the ship's deployment, that "we cannot accept an outside intervention because it will trigger immense resentment," adding that it "could inflame South America and lead to radicalization of politics on the whole continent."
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