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ARTICLE VIEW:
Trump weighs strikes targeting cartels inside Venezuela, part of wider
pressure campaign on Maduro, sources say
By Zachary Cohen, Kylie Atwood, Kristen Holmes, Alayna Treene, CNN
Updated:
7:22 PM EDT, Fri September 5, 2025
Source: CNN
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, according to
multiple sources briefed on the administration’s plans.
Tuesday’s deadly 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 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.”
Concern around Washington
Still, as of Friday, a lack of answers had fueled significant concern
throughout Washington about what, if any, legal justification the
administration has for Tuesday’s strike – and any additional
military actions that could come later.
A briefing on Tuesday’s strike for members of Congress and select
staff had been scheduled for Friday morning but was abruptly canceled
with no explanation, according to sources familiar with the plans. The
cancelation was so last minute that staffers had already gathered in a
conference room on the Hill, one of the sources said.
“None of it is clear at all,” another person familiar with the
cancelled congressional briefings told CNN, adding that the
administration has not provided any details about the legal
justifications for Tuesday’s strike, or evidence supporting their
claim that it targeted known-drug traffickers.
On Thursday, the White House sent a letter to Republican Speaker of the
House Mike Johnson and Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Senate
president pro tempore, explaining its view that the president acted
within his constitutional authority as commander in chief to conduct
Tuesday’s strike. The letter, a copy of which was reviewed by CNN,
makes clear the open-ended nature of the mission.
“It is not possible at this time to know the full scope and duration
of military operations that will be necessary,” the letter read.
“United States forces remain postured to carry out further military
operations.
Rubio takes the lead
Shortly after Trump took office, Richard Grenell, Trump’s envoy for
special missions, which included Venezuela, visited Caracas to meet
with Maduro. The surprise visit prompted speculation that the White
House might be walking back the “maximum pressure” campaign against
Maduro that it had previously pursued. Grenell returned to the US with
six Americans the US had deemed illegally detained and the White House
celebrated their return.
But the episode set up a clash between Rubio, who has long opposed
giving any concessions to Maduro, and Grenell, who was pushing to make
deals with the leader. In the months since the visit, the White House
has made clear that it opposes Maduro.
Since then, as much as any Trump official, Rubio has been the public
face of the administration’s anti-cartel campaign. He was the first
member of Trump’s national security team to reveal details about the
boat strike after Trump announced it, promptly telling reporters that
Trump would be using the “full power of America” to take on drug
cartels.
His remarks came hastily on the tarmac in Florida before he flew to the
region to discuss the administration’s intention to “eliminate”
the threat of drug trafficking to Americans. Though Rubio initially
said that the alleged Venezuela drug boat was likely bound for Trinidad
or another Caribbean country, a day later, after Trump said it had been
headed for the US, Rubio amended his remark and said the boat was
“eventually” headed to the US.
Rubio also appeared to lay the groundwork for the lethal strike in the
weeks before it occurred. On the same day that the State Department and
Justice Department announced an increase in the reward for the arrest
of Maduro, Rubio said that designating drug cartels as terrorist
organizations would allow the US to use every tool possible, to target
the groups.
Rubio has long been a harsh critic of Maduro, and in recent days has
made the case that going after Maduro’s involvement in the drug trade
is a critical piece of the administration’s goal to dismantle
transnational organized crime.
“Nicolás Maduro is an indicted drug trafficker in the United States,
and he’s a fugitive of American justice,” Rubio said on Thursday.
‘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.”
Venezuela’s role in the drug trade
More broadly, experts point out that Venezuela plays a minimal role in
the region’s drug trade, raising questions of whether drugs are being
used as a pretext to go after Maduro, according to a former US official
familiar with the situation.
In his first term, Trump to oust Maduro by deploying various pressure
tactics in hopes of facilitating a democratic transition in Venezuela.
It has long been a policy objective of the US to try spur the
Venezuelan military to turn against Maduro, but it has not been
successful, said Gedan, now a foreign policy fellow at Johns Hopkins
University.
Retired US Ambassador Luis Moreno echoed that sentiment, telling CNN
that the US has been trying to encourage dissent “forever.”
“Sometimes it works, but until you get some of the key elite units
stationed outside Caracas, especially the paratroopers at the air base
the outskirts of Caracas, the one that Hugo Chavez came from, that unit
is crucial,” said Moreno.
Moreno, who spent much of his career at the State Department working on
counternarcotics, said profits from trafficking “somewhat” support
Maduro but “the amount of money, the Russians, Cubans, everyone else,
and the oil – it’s not going to substitute for the oil.”
“It’s the Venezuelan military security forces that make immense
money from taking payoffs from Colombian traffickers,” Moreno said.
“I don’t know if that goes directly to supporting Venezuelan
infrastructure.”
Gedan, however, noted that Venezuela reportedly receives a significant
income “from its share of cocaine trafficking, illegal gold exports
and other illegal economies.”
Venezuela is not a cocaine-producing country, and although transit
through Venezuela is not ruled out, other countries are identified as
emerging players in international drug markets where the sharp increase
in homicides is linked to the rise in drug trafficking, .
Rubio has sharply rejected any suggestion that Venezuela is not a key
piece of the drug flow coming to the US.
“I’ve seen a lot of this reporting, and it’s fake reporting and
I’ll tell you why. It says that somehow Venezuela is not involved in
the drug trade because the UN says they’re not involved,” Rubio
said. “I don’t care what the UN says. The UN doesn’t know what
they’re talking about.”
CNN’s Jennifer Hansler, Natasha Bertrand and Priscilla Alvarez
contributed to this report.
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