US President Donald Trump has announced that the United States will “run” Venezuela and exploit its vast oil reserves following a surprise military operation that seized President Nicolas Maduro and removed him from the country.
United States President Donald Trump posted a photo on Saturday of what appeared to be the Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in custody on a US naval ship and wearing both a blindfold and handcuffs.
Trump made his remarks on Saturday, just hours after Maduro and his spouse were apprehended by US special forces following a nocturnal attack on Caracas that included numerous airstrikes on military and vital locations throughout the capital.
The US president further escalated the situation by declaring that the US was ready to send ground forces to Venezuela. He claimed that the US was “not afraid of boots on the ground.”
Trump made it obvious that regime change and access to Venezuela’s oil wealth were the main goals of the operation, despite the administration’s framing of it as a law enforcement activity.
“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure,” he said. “We’ll be selling large amounts of oil.”
Maria Corina Machado, an opposition leader supported by the US and the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize last year, applauded the operation on social media, declaring that “the hour of freedom has arrived.”
She demanded that the opposition candidate in the contentious 2024 election, Edmundo González Urrutia, take over as president “immediately.”
Trump, however, rejected proposals that Machado take the helm of a post-Maduro transition. He claimed that she had neither “support nor respect” in Venezuela.
Instead, Trump suggested he could work with Maduro’s deputy, Delcy Rodríguez, saying “she’s essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again”.
He also signalled that the US presence in Venezuela would not be brief. “We’re there now, but we’re going to stay until such time as the proper transition can take place,” he said.
International reaction
International condemnation of the operation came quickly. The secretary-general of the United Nations expressed his “deep concern that the rules of international law have not been respected.”
While France cautioned that a solution to Venezuela’s problem could not “be imposed from outside,” China, a long-time supporter of Maduro’s leftist government, declared it “strongly condemns” the US attack.
Meanwhile, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, said about 150 aircraft were involved, supporting troops who flew in by helicopter to seize Maduro. He said the mission followed months of intelligence gathering on the president’s movements and routines.
Maduro, 63, and his wife “gave up” without resistance and there was “no loss of US life”, Caine said.
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