U.S. military planners are writing options for attacking drug dealers within Venezuela, and an attack within that nation’s borders could start in weeks, according to four sources interviewed by NBC News.
Those sources are two U.S. officials who were briefed on the planning and two other sources who were familiar with the negotiations. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not cleared to discuss the plans. Attacking within Venezuela would be another provocation in the Trump administration’s war against purported drug targets and its policy toward Venezuela’s government.
Over the past few weeks, the U.S. military attacked at least three Venezuelan boats supposedly laden with narco-traffickers and drugs that pose a threat to Americans, said President Donald Trump on Truth Social. The administration has not supplied evidence that drugs were aboard all of those boats. But at a press conference Sunday, an official in the Dominican Republic, together with one from the U.S. Embassy there, did say that drugs had been discovered floating in the water after one attack.
Strikes within Venezuela might occur within the coming few weeks, but nothing has been approved by the president thus far, the four individuals reported. Two of these and another official who is familiar with the negotiations described that the United States’ increased military involvement is partly due to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro not doing enough, in the administration’s opinion, to prevent the export of illegal drugs from his nation.
The plans being discussed primarily focus on drone strikes against drug trafficking groups’ members and leadership, as well as targeting drug labs, the four sources said.
Asked for comment, the White House referred NBC News to this previous statement from the president: “We’ll see what happens. Venezuela is sending us their gang members, their drug dealers, and drugs. It’s not acceptable.” The Pentagon declined to comment.
A number of Trump administration officials are frustrated that the United States’ military action has not yet dented Maduro’s hold on power or elicited any major reaction, the official close to the discussions added. The White House expected to encounter more resistance on the strikes against the narco-craft than it had and has since deliberated carefully about what to do next, the official close to the discussions said.
That involves negotiations between Venezuela and the U.S. via Middle Eastern leaders as intermediaries, NBC News has discovered. Maduro has discussed with those intermediaries concessions he would make to stay in office, a senior administration official told NBC News. The senior administration official declined to identify which countries are acting as intermediaries but said they are allies.
Trump is “willing to use every tool of American power to prevent drugs from pouring into our nation and to hold accountable those responsible,” the senior administration official said.
CNN had earlier reported that Trump was weighing up several options, including potentially U.S. strikes within Venezuela.
The Venezuelan government has not yet responded to a request for comment. Maduro has denied prior involvement in drug trafficking and has repeatedly claimed that the U.S. is attempting to push him out of office.
Questioned on the prospect of U.S. attacks within his nation, Venezuelan political analyst Anibal Sanchez Ismayel replied to NBC News in a WhatsApp message, “An attack on Venezuelan soil would have repercussions ranging from diplomatic protests to the rise in political persecutions of those they categorize as collaborators, to further unifying the population with sovereignty reaffirmed need to defend.”
The government source familiar with conversations and one other source close to the thinking of the administration are of the opinion that the U.S. striking in Venezuela would not come as a surprise, considering other recent developments.
The U.S. has sent at least eight vessels with over 4,000 crew members to waters in the area recently and delivered F-35 fighter aircraft to Puerto Rico, the U.S. military reports.
“You don’t deploy that many assets down there without considering all alternatives,” said the official close to the administration’s thinking.
That is particularly significant because having thousands of U.S. military personnel, vessels, and planes in the region could start affecting deployments elsewhere.
“You can’t have that level of firepower in the Caribbean indefinitely,” one of the officials close to the talks said.
In Trump’s first term in 2020, the Justice Department charged Maduro with drug trafficking. The Trump administration has charged Maduro with collaborating with cartels that it alleges are shipping cocaine, fentanyl, and gang members to the U.S. The administration recently raised a U.S. reward for the arrest of Maduro to $50 million. Venezuela is not a major producer of cocaine, but rather a major point of departure for flights transporting the drug elsewhere. It is not thought to be a source of illegal fentanyl smuggled into the U.S., most of which originates from Mexico.
Trump administration officials have not excluded regime change as a second purpose of these military actions, and they have ratcheted up pressure on Maduro himself. NBC News reported earlier that the administration’s objective, the source close to its thinking said, is to compel Maduro to take impulsive actions that will ultimately result in him being removed from power without American boots on the ground.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been one of the regime-change voices among this administration, the source with knowledge of administration thinking said.
Earlier this month, Maduro wrote a letter to Trump regarding the opening of a dialogue, the Venezuelan government said in a social media post. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that Trump had received the letter but denounced it.
“Frankly, I believe there were quite a number of lies that were recycled by Maduro in that letter, and the administration’s stance on Venezuela hasn’t changed,” Leavitt said during a White House press briefing Monday. “We consider the Maduro government to be illegitimate, and the president has made it clearly evident that he’s not afraid to use any and all tools at his disposal to prevent the illegal distribution of lethal drugs from the Venezuelan government into the United States of America.”
The U.S. has maintained coordination with Venezuela on some issues, such as continuing deportation flights, the official who is familiar with the talks said. There have been 54 such flights up to last Friday, the official added.
Ric Grenell, the special presidential envoy for special missions, has been in regular contact with Trump and continues to advocate for diplomacy with Venezuela as a possibility, the same official and a source involved in the negotiations said.
