WASHINGTON — President Trump announced Wednesday that US forces “seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela” amid escalating tensions between the two countries over strikes on drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean Sea.
Trump noted vessel was the “largest one ever seized” by the American military.
“And other things are happening,” the president added. “You’ll be seeing that later.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi followed up by releasing a 45-second video of US troops rappelling from a helicopter and boarding the tanker in a dramatic armed takeover.
The US “executed a seizure warrant for a crude oil tanker used to transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran,” Bondi said. “For multiple years, the oil tanker has been sanctioned by the United States due to its involvement in an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organizations.”
Trump has launched a pressure campaign on Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro by blowing up suspected narco-terrorist boats and threatening military operations on land.
“It was seized for a very good reason,” Trump said of oil tanker.
Crude prices climbed more than 1.3% — roughly 75 cents — by mid-afternoon as word of the seizure rippled through the markets, threatening to pump up what Americans pay at the gas station.
The US has deployed 11 warships and 15,000 troops into the waters near Venezuela since September, and has killed more than 80 narcoterrorists in strikes on drug boats in the same time period.
Trump suggested in a Monday interview that Maduro’s “days are numbered” as the US ramps up its presence to combat suspected narco-terrorists traveling north from the South American nation.
He has also hinted that he is considering expanding military action to Venezuelan soil, refusing to rule out land strikes to knock out Maduro’s narcoterrorist regime.
“Strikes should have happened weeks ago. It’s now or never,” a source close to the administration told The Post last week. “Maduro won’t go on his own. Just not going to happen.”
On Tuesday, two US fighter jets also flew over the Gulf of Venezuela for a “routine training flight,” a defense official told the Associated Press.
But US lawmakers have been demanding more information about the airstrikes on the traffickers in recent weeks, with Democrats contending that the president is on the verge of waging a war without a vote from members of Congress.
Trump on Wednesday brushed off a question from a CNN reporter regarding the legality of the strikes, saying he thought the issue had been settled.
Trump has stressed that each boat strike saves as many as 25,000 American lives from drug overdose deaths.
On Wednesday, Maduro’s No. 1 enemy — opposition leader Maria Corina Machado — received the Nobel Peace Prize in a ceremony. After having been in hiding in Venezuela since 2024, she told the Nobel committee that she had escaped the country headed for the ceremony in Oslo, Norway.
Her presence and ability to lead Venezuela — after the opposition party was discovered to have won Maduro’s last election before the dictator nullified the results and declared himself winner — puts the South American country on strong footing should Maduro leave power, her advocates have said.
“We’re going to do it orderly and peacefully,” Machado told The Post in October of a possible transition from the Maduro regime. “I would dare to tell you that there’s no other society in our region, in our hemisphere, perhaps in the world, as cohesive as Venezuelan society.
“We all want the same. We want to live with dignity.”
