US President Donald Trump will meet this month with his national security team at the White House to discuss the next steps regarding Venezuela, while tension reached its highest levels a few days ago before the Republican may choose to give orders to attack targets inside the South American country.
Among others, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are expected to attend the meeting. They will also attend, according to CNN, the state’s mayor, General Dan Kean, and Trump’s Cabinet secretary, Susie Wiles, in addition to a number of Miles and the president’s main advisor on domestic policy, Stephen Miller. The meeting time is set for 17.00 in Washington (23.00 Spanish Peninsula time)
The meeting comes just 24 hours after Trump admitted that he had a phone conversation with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro a few weeks ago, but he did not provide any information about the so-called advertisement for any type of fruit. “I won’t say it was good or bad, it was a phone call,” he told reporters who accompanied him on the plane. Air Force One He returned to Washington on Sunday night, after spending Thanksgiving celebrations at his private residence in Florida, Mar-a-Lago.
A day earlier, the president had already raised all alarms when he announced to international airlines that they should consider Venezuelan airspace “totally closed,” in what sounded like a warning that some sort of US action was imminent. But in his comments to the press on Sunday, he appeared to be trying to smooth things over and warned that there was no need to “give too much importance” or “read too much between the lines.”
Direct contact between the two presidents opened the hope of reaching a diplomatic solution to the conflict between the government. Washington accuses Maduro of “narcoterrorism” and leading the Soles cartel, which is a way of referring to corrupt groups and individuals within the Venezuelan government and armed forces linked to drug trafficking. Last week, the US State Department included the Souls gang on its list of foreign terrorist organizations. The United States also considers the Chavista leader an illegitimate president, due to violations committed in the electoral processes, especially in 2023.
Combating drug trafficking is the argument Washington has been putting forward to justify its massive military deployment in the Caribbean since August. Since September 2, US forces have carried out at least 21 attacks against suspected drug boats in international waters in this sea and in the eastern Pacific, killing at least 83 people in what came to be called “Operation Lanza del Sur.” The inclusion of the Soules Cartel on the list of terrorist organizations provides Washington, in the opinion of this administration, with new tools to begin a new phase in the operation that includes targets in Venezuelan territory.
Among those attending the meeting last summer, Rubio was a well-known figure in the Chavez regime. He is one of the master craftsmen of Caracas’ very strict manual labor policy, including the military deployment of the EE UU.
For his part, Hegseth finds himself in the midst of intense controversy after the newspaper The Washington Post It published information that, if confirmed, would make the Pentagon chief guilty of war crimes, according to a number of lawmakers. According to this information, on September 2, in the first attack on a suspected boat, which was carrying 11 people, two people survived and could be seen clinging to the remains of the boat. The Minister of Defense – the Minister of War, as he preferred to call himself – had ordered that no survivors should be left behind, and a second attack was ordered that ended the crew.
The Pentagon and Hegseth denied this information. On Sunday evening, the Minister of Defense posted a smugly joking image about the campaign of attacks on his social media account. It is a parody of a group of children’s literature, featuring the title “Franklin sets target for drug terrorists” and in which Tortuga’s character opens fire on supposed drug addicts.
Trump also rejected the accusations against the Defense Secretary, albeit in a more ambiguous manner. “I don’t know anything about this,” he announced on board the ship. Air Force One. The president also declared: “We’ll take a look at that. (…). No, I’m not that big, that’s all. There’s no second attack. The first one was too deadly, too good. And if people collapse…” With that assumption in the air, he came back to insist: “Pete said this is not the country.” When asked again, he went back to what the Defense Secretary had told him: “No, let’s get this straight. But Pitt says he’s not ordering the killing of these guys.”