What Is Happening Between the United States and Venezuela?
Why did the U.S. attack Venezuela?
Why was Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro captured?
Which countries support Maduro?
In the early hours of January 3, 2026, United States forces attacked Venezuela’s capital city of Caracas in a large-scale operation to capture Venezuelan Pres. Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. The two were swiftly flown out of the country to the American warship USS Iwo Jima, which had been patrolling the Caribbean. Maduro will face charges in the Southern District of New York of narco-terrorism, cocaine trafficking, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices against the U.S. Maduro has previously rejected U.S. claims of his involvement in drug trafficking.
In announcing Maduro’s capture, Trump said that the United States would run Venezuela until a “safe, judicious, and proper” transition to new leadership can take place. Specifically, Trump said U.S. oil companies would move into Venezuela to take over the oil-rich country’s struggling operations.
The operation was the culmination of months of buildup between the U.S. and Venezuela. Tensions rose sharply in late 2025 after the U.S. military carried out a series of lethal boat strikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, which U.S. officials said targeted vessels involved in drug trafficking. Many of these strikes were carried out along the Venezuelan coast. The operations, publicly announced by senior U.S. officials, have resulted in at least 105 deaths, triggering harsh criticism from foreign governments, human rights bodies such as the United Nations, and U.S. lawmakers from both the Republican and Democratic parties.
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The strikes coincided with broader U.S. military moves in the region, including large naval deployments in the southern Caribbean, as well as U.S. Pres. Donald Trump’s subsequent threats of potential land strikes and his declaration on November 29, 2025, that the airspace above and around Venezuela should be considered closed. In early December U.S. forces also seized a Venezuelan-linked oil tanker off the country’s coast, an operation that further inflamed tensions and drew sharp condemnation from Caracas. After the tanker’s seizure, the situation intensified when on December 16, Trump ordered a blockade of sanctioned oil tankers entering or departing Venezuela, a move intended to halt the country’s oil trade and deal a substantial blow to Venezuela’s oil-dependent economy. Here’s what to know about the recent escalation between the two countries:
Background
Although tensions between the United States and Venezuela have dramatically intensified during Trump’s second term (2025– ), the relationship has been strained for more than two decades. Disputes over oil, the imposition of U.S. sanctions, and the increasingly authoritarian nature of Venezuela’s political leadership have contributed to the deterioration. Tensions deepened during the presidency of Hugo Chávez (1999–2013), who frequently accused the United States of pursuing imperial ambitions in Latin America and of interfering in Venezuela’s internal affairs. Chávez also strengthened Venezuela’s ties with U.S. adversaries, including Cuba, Russia, and Iran. Under Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro, the relationship worsened as Venezuela slipped into a prolonged political and economic crisis marked by hyperinflation, collapsing oil production, mass emigration, and widespread human rights abuses.
The U.S. response has varied over time but has generally included sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and support for Venezuela’s political opposition. For example, in 2019 the Trump administration recognized opposition leader Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s interim president, a move that Maduro denounced as an attempted coup. Although Guaidó’s influence later waned, the confrontation between the two countries remained unresolved and continued to shape bilateral relations. By the early 2020s the United States and Venezuela had little diplomatic communication, and mutual distrust set the stage for deeper conflict.
Against this backdrop the Trump administration renewed a hard-line strategy toward Venezuela and its political leadership. Trump has repeatedly accused Maduro and senior officials in his government of playing central roles in large-scale drug-trafficking operations. During Trump’s first term (2017–21), the U.S. Department of Justice alleged that Maduro was connected to the Cartel de los Soles, a loose network of military and political elites believed to have profited from drug trafficking and extortion. In his second term Trump broadened his approach by designating both the Cartel de los Soles and the Venezuelan criminal organization Tren de Aragua as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs). In August 2025 he reportedly signed a secret directive permitting the Pentagon to use military force against specific Latin American drug-trafficking groups. He also raised a U.S. bounty on Maduro to $50 million, asserting Maduro’s direct role in narcotics smuggling.
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These policy moves directly correlated to the U.S. military escalation that unfolded in 2025 as the United States expanded its military presence in the Caribbean, deploying naval vessels, bombers, warships, and marine units in what officials described as an intensified counter-narcotics campaign to combat “narco-terrorists.” Beginning in early September, U.S. forces carried out a series of lethal maritime strikes against boats that were allegedly being used by drug-trafficking groups to move illicit drugs toward the United States. The strikes, which resulted in at least 105 deaths, marked one of the most forceful U.S. military actions in the region in decades. The combination of heightened military activity and increasingly confrontational rhetoric from both governments is pushing U.S.-Venezuela relations into their most volatile phase since Chávez’s rise to power, setting the stage for the possibility of a broader diplomatic and security crisis.
Venezuela’s reactions to the U.S. buildup
On November 29, 2025, Trump declared Venezuelan airspace closed. In a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, he wrote: “To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.” Venezuela condemned the announcement. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil called Trump’s statement a “hostile, unilateral, and arbitrary act” and a “colonialist threat that seeks to affect the sovereignty of [Venezuelan] airspace, constituting a new, extravagant, illegal, and unjustified act of aggression against the people of Venezuela.”
This was not the first time Venezuela protested what it views as U.S. hostility. In October 2025, following the series of boat strikes by the U.S. military, the Maduro government requested an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council in response to what it described as “mounting threats” from the United States. In the request, which was made in a letter to Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s ambassador to the UN and the Security Council president, Venezuela accused the Trump administration of seeking to overthrow Maduro and of endangering “peace, security, and stability regionally and internationally.” The Venezuelan government also warned of the possibility of an “armed attack” by the United States against Venezuela in the near future. The United Nations responded to U.S. actions by stating: “These actions violate the fundamental international obligations not to intervene in the domestic affairs or threaten to use armed force against another country. These moves are an extremely dangerous escalation with grave implications for peace and security in the Caribbean region.”
U.S. seizure of oil tanker off Venezuelan coast
In addition to the series of boat strikes by the U.S. military, on December 10, 2025, a notable incident occurred in which members of the U.S. Coast Guard, Marine Corps, and special operations units intercepted an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela. The vessel, called Skipper, was a 20-year-old ship that had departed a Venezuelan port shortly before being seized. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi released footage of the raid on the social-media platform X (formerly Twitter), showing armed personnel rappelling onto the ship’s deck from a helicopter. She said that the United States executed a seizure warrant on the vessel and that the tanker had been “used to transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran.” The following day White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that the vessel was undergoing a forfeiture process and would be sent to a U.S. port. In response the Venezuelan government issued a statement condemning the seizure, accusing the United States of “blatant theft” and calling the operation “an act of international piracy.” Officials added that they planned to bring the matter before international bodies.
The day after the Skipper was seized, the United States imposed sanctions on six additional vessels allegedly transporting Venezuelan oil. When asked whether the administration intended to continue seizing such ships, Leavitt did not give a direct answer but said, “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.”
U.S. implements oil blockade on Venezuela
“Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America,” Trump wrote on December 16, 2025, on Truth Social. He continued: “It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before — Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.” With this declaration Trump announced a blockade on sanctioned oil tankers entering or departing Venezuela, a step designed to limit the country’s oil exports and increase U.S. leverage in the escalating standoff. Additionally, Trump declared that he would seek to designate the Maduro government as a Foreign Terrorist Organization for what he described as the “theft of our [United States] Assets, and many other reasons, including Terrorism, Drug Smuggling, and Human Trafficking.”
In response the Venezuelan government stated that the blockade was a “grotesque threat.” Venezuela’s defense minister, Vladimir Padrino López, said the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB) would remain steady in the face of the escalating dispute, maintaining what he described as an “unshakable calm” while carrying out their duties. He stated that the military’s central mission is to protect the country’s territorial integrity “at all costs” as tensions rise and said that the armed forces would continue to defend Venezuela’s “legitimate rights over its air and maritime spaces.” Padrino López argued that the blockade order constitutes a grave violation of international law, saying it “flagrantly violates the United Nations Charter” and amounts to a “clear act of aggression.” He warned that this “deranged warmongering posture” threatens not only Venezuela but also the wider Latin American and Caribbean region, and he urged multilateral organizations to intervene.
Preparation for land attacks
As U.S. naval attacks expanded into the eastern Pacific Ocean in late 2025, Trump began openly raising the possibility of using military force on Venezuelan territory. In statements Trump argued without evidence that U.S. maritime strikes had sharply reduced drug trafficking by sea and that the next phase of the campaign would focus on land attacks. In an October interview with Time, he claimed that the United States’ actions had “almost totally stopped” drug smuggling by sea, adding, “Now we’ll stop it by land.” Similar comments appeared in subsequent remarks, including Trump’s late-November public statement that the United States would “very soon” take action on land against suspected drug traffickers.
2026 capture of Maduro
In the early morning hours of January 3, 2026, explosions were heard throughout Caracas as the U.S. launched a full-scale military operation against the Maduro government. MH-47 Chinook heavy transport helicopters were seen flying over the city, and a short time later, Trump claimed on Truth Social that Maduro had been captured by U.S. forces: “The United States of America has successfully carried out a large-scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Country.”
U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi said that Maduro and his wife had been indicted, and that Maduro was facing a series of charges related to alleged drug trafficking the U.S. had long accused him of supporting.
“Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, have been indicted in the Southern District of New York. Nicolas Maduro has been charged with Narco-Terrorism Conspiracy, Cocaine Importation Conspiracy, Possession of Machineguns and Destructive Devices, and Conspiracy to Possess Machineguns and Destructive Devices against the United States,” Bondi said in a statement following the operation.
United States to run Venezuela
In announcing Maduro’s capture, Trump said that the United States would run Venezuela until a “safe, judicious, and proper” transition to new leadership could take place.
“We’re going to run the country,” Trump announced in a news conference January 3, 2026.
When pressed on how the U.S. would oversee Venezuela, Trump said an unspecified group was being formed that included Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to manage the country. Trump said U.S. oil companies would take charge of oil-rich Venezuela’s struggling nationalized operations. He said oil will be sold to other countries, and the revenue from the operations would be used to support both Venezuela and also reimburse the United States for its efforts.
Rubio said Congress received no prior warning of the operation, calling it too sensitive to share. Trump acknowledged the U.S. presence and efforts in the country may ultimately require a second offensive, but opined that the first one was so successful he did not think it would be necessary. Trump didn’t commit, but also didn’t reject, a “boots on the ground” approach to running Venezuela, and acknowledged security would be needed to protect U.S. oil efforts.
Trump also issued a warning to other leaders, saying that what happened in Venezuela “can happen to them” and “it will happen to them” if they do not act in accordance with U.S. wishes.
Rubio reinforced Trump’s message, saying “the message for the world” is “don’t play games” with President Trump, “because it’s not going to turn out well.” Pressed specifically about Cuba, Rubio said government officials in Havana should be concerned.