Trump Weighs Strikes on Cartels Inside Venezuela

President Donald Trump is weighing a multitude of options for carrying out military strikes against drug cartels operating in Venezuela, including potentially hitting targets inside the country as part of a broader strategy aimed at weakening leader Nicolas Maduro, CNN reported.

Tuesday’s deadly strike on an alleged drug boat departing Venezuela was a direct reflection of those options, sources said, and marked a significant escalation in the Trump administration’s campaign against drug cartels, many of which it’s designated as terrorist groups. Multiple sources told CNN Tuesday’s strike was just the beginning of a much larger effort to rid the region of narcotics trafficking and potentially dislodge Maduro from power.

Asked by a reporter on Friday if he would like to see regime change in Venezuela, Trump said, “We’re not talking about that.”

“But we are talking about the fact that [Venezuela] had an election, which was a very strange election, to put it mildly,” Trump said, referring to last year’s presidential race in Venezuela marred by accusations of electoral fraud.

The US has moved substantial military firepower into the Caribbean in recent weeks, a move meant in part to be a signal to Maduro, according to multiple White House officials.

Ships armed with Tomahawk missiles, an attack submarine, a range of aircraft and more than 4,000 US sailors and Marines are now all positioned near Venezuela. Two White House officials told CNN 10 advanced F-35 fighter jets are also being sent to Puerto Rico, where a Marine unit is currently conducting amphibious landing training exercises.

The administration has taken steps to connect Maduro to its broader anti-drug mission – labeling him as a narco-terrorist with ties to some of those recently-designated cartels – and doubling the bounty for his arrest to $50 million.

‘Green light’ to kill terrorists

Earlier this year, Trump authorized the military to carry out lethal operations against cartels his administration designated as terrorist groups, according to a source familiar with the matter, a move in which the president appeared to claim the power to treat suspected smugglers not as criminals, but enemy combatants.

Asked Tuesday if the US would consider strikes on Venezuelan soil against the Maduro regime, Secretary of State Marco Rubio didn’t count out the possibility.

“This is a counter-drug operation,” Rubio said. “We are going to take on drug cartels wherever they are, wherever they are operating against the interests of the US.”

Rubio added more detail to the boat strike on Wednesday, saying, “Instead of interdicting it, on the president’s orders, we blew it up. And it’ll happen again. Maybe it’s happening right now,” Rubio added.

What that ultimately means for Maduro remains unclear. But multiple sources told CNN that some Trump officials believe the strike this week and future strikes on Venezuelan drug traffickers could put pressure on people around Maduro who have benefitted from the cartels’ illicit revenue streams, potentially squeezing them so much that they consider ways to oust the Venezuelan leader.

“The preferred course of action is for Maduro to leave on his own, to read the tea leaves,” one source briefed on the administration’s plans told CNN. “And then I think the message is ‘Do you want it to be easy or do you want it to be hard?’”

The Trump administration is being intentionally nebulous, the person said, cautioning that as of now, there is no indication that Trump has decided to move forward with military strikes against targets inside Venezuela.

However, two White House officials in speaking to CNN also left open the possibility of similar strikes in the future. One of the officials said Trump has told national security and defense officials that “if there is an opportunity to kill terrorists, he will immediately give them the green light to do so.”

‘Are we going to invade Venezuela?’

Despite all this, behind the scenes the US continues to coordinate with Venezuelan officials on deportation flights. The Trump administration also recently re-issued a license for US energy giant Chevron to resume oil operations in Venezuela, home to the largest proven oil reserves in the world.

That apparent contradiction has prompted some experts and former officials to question what the administration’s truly trying to accomplish.

“Are we going to invade Venezuela and depose the regime when it’s offering most of what the administration is asking?” said Benjamin Gedan, the Venezuela director at the National Security Council under the Obama administration. “Other than regime change, it’s probably pretty open to cooperating with this administration. So that’s why the kind of sudden build of the naval forces has been surprising, because there have been a lot of hints that the US was actually headed toward normalizing relations with this regime,” he added.

The White House, meanwhile, continues to stress that all options are on the table as it relates to Venezuela, Maduro and the cartel mission, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt saying Trump “is prepared to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into our country and to bring those responsible to justice.”

“The Maduro regime is not the legitimate government of Venezuela,” Leavitt said when asked by reporters late last month about the possibility of sending US troops to Venezuela. “It is a narco-terror cartel, and Maduro, it is the view of this administration, is not a legitimate president. He is a fugitive head of this cartel who has been indicted in the United States for trafficking drugs into the country.”