Why has Donald Trump attacked Venezuela and brought Maduro?

US President Donald Trump says the US goes to “run” Venezuela “till such time as we are able to do a secure, correct and considered transition”.

It comes after US forces captured the Venezuelan chief Nicolás Maduro following strikes on the nation.

Maduro was flown out of Venezuela along with his spouse and has been indicted on drug prices in New York.

The strikes inside Venezuela come after a US strain marketing campaign in opposition to the Maduro authorities, which the Trump administration accuses of flooding the US with medicine and gang members.

Right here what has led as much as this second.

Trump blames Nicolás Maduro for the arrival of tons of of 1000’s of Venezuelan migrants within the US.

They’re amongst near eight million Venezuelans estimated to have fled the nation’s financial disaster and repression since 2013.

With out offering proof, Trump has accused Maduro of “emptying his prisons and insane asylums” and “forcing” its inmates emigrate to the US.

Trump has additionally centered on preventing the inflow of medicine – particularly fentanyl and cocaine – into the US.

He has designated two Venezuelan felony teams – Tren de Aragua and Cartel de los Soles – as Overseas Terrorist Organisations (FTOs) and has alleged that the latter is led by Maduro himself.

Analysts have identified that Cartel de los Soles will not be a hierarchical group however a time period used to explain corrupt officers who’ve allowed cocaine to transit by Venezuela.

Trump had additionally doubled the reward for info resulting in Maduro’s seize and has introduced that he would designate the Maduro authorities as an FTO.

Maduro has vehemently denied being a cartel chief and has accused the US of utilizing its “battle on medicine” as an excuse to attempt to depose him and get its palms on Venezuela’s huge oil reserves.

There was a construct up of strain on the Maduro authorities since Trump started his second time period in workplace final January.

First, the Trump administration doubled the reward it provided for info resulting in the seize of Maduro.

In September, US forces started concentrating on vessels it accused of carrying medicine from South America to the US.

There have been greater than 30 strikes on such vessels within the Caribbean and the Pacific since then, killing greater than 110 folks.

The Trump administration argues that it’s concerned in a non-international armed battle with the alleged drug traffickers, whom it accuses of conducting irregular warfare in opposition to the US.

Many authorized specialists say the strikes should not in opposition to “lawful army targets”. The primary assault – on 2 September – has drawn explicit scrutiny as there was not one however two strikes, with survivors of the primary hit killed within the second.

A former chief prosecutor on the Worldwide Felony Court docket instructed the BBC that the US army marketing campaign extra usually fell into the class of a deliberate, systematic assault in opposition to civilians throughout peacetime.

In response, the White Home mentioned it had acted in step with the legal guidelines of armed battle to guard the US from cartels “making an attempt to convey poison to our shores… destroying American lives”.

Again in October, Trump mentioned he had authorised the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela.

He additionally threatened strikes on land in opposition to what he described as “narco-terrorists”.

He mentioned that the primary of such strikes had been carried out on 24 December, although he gave little element, simply stating that it had focused a “dock space” the place boats alleged to hold medicine the place being loaded.

Previous to Maduro’s seize, Trump repeatedly mentioned that Maduro “is not any pal of the US” and that it will be “sensible for him to go”.

He additionally elevated the monetary strain on Maduro by declaring a “whole naval blockade” on all sanctioned oil tankers getting into and leaving Venezuela. Oil is the principle supply of international income for the Maduro authorities.

The US has additionally deployed an enormous army pressure within the Caribbean, whose said goal is to cease the move of fentanyl and cocaine to the US.

In addition to concentrating on vessels they accuse of smuggling medicine, the pressure has additionally performed a key position within the US naval blockade.

Counternarcotic specialists say that Venezuela is a comparatively minor participant in international drug trafficking, performing as a transit nation by which medicine produced elsewhere are smuggled.

Its neighbour, Colombia, is the world’s largest producer of cocaine however most of it’s thought to enter the US by different routes, not by way of Venezuela.

In line with a US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) report from 2020, nearly three quarters of the cocaine reaching the US is estimated to be trafficked by way of the Pacific with only a small share coming by way of quick boats within the Caribbean.

Whereas a lot of the early strikes the US has carried out have been within the Caribbean, more moderen ones have centered on the Pacific.

In September, Trump instructed US army leaders that the boats focused “are stacked up with luggage of white powder that is principally fentanyl and different medicine, too”.

Fentanyl is an artificial drug which is 50 instances stronger than heroin and has turn into the principle drug chargeable for opioid overdose deaths within the US.

On 15 December, Trump signed an govt order designating fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction”, arguing that it was “nearer to a chemical weapon than a narcotic”.

Nonetheless, fentanyl is produced primarily in Mexico and reaches the US nearly completely by way of land by its southern border.

Venezuela will not be talked about as a rustic of origin for fentanyl smuggled into the US within the DEA’s 2025 Nationwide Drug Risk Evaluation.

Nicolás Maduro rose to prominence below the management of left-wing President Hugo Chávez and his United Socialist Get together of Venezuela (PSUV).

Maduro, a former bus driver and union chief, succeeded Chávez and has been president since 2013.

Throughout the 26 years that Chávez and Maduro have been in energy, their social gathering has gained management of key establishments together with the Nationwide Meeting, a lot of the judiciary, and the electoral council.

In 2024, Maduro was declared winner of the presidential election, despite the fact that voting tallies collected by the opposition steered that its candidate, Edmundo González, had gained by a landslide.

González had changed the principle opposition chief, María Corina Machado, on the poll after she was barred from operating for workplace.

She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October for “her wrestle to realize a simply and peaceable transition from dictatorship to democracy”.

Machado defied a journey ban and made her strategy to Oslo in December to gather the award after months in hiding.

She mentioned that she deliberate to return to Venezuela, a transfer which might put her prone to arrest by the Venezuelan authorities, who’ve declared her a “fugitive”.

The US has deployed 15,000 troops and a variety of plane carriers, guided-missile destroyers, and amphibious assault ships to the Caribbean.

Among the many US flotilla is the USS Gerald Ford, the world’s largest plane provider.

US helicopters reportedly took off from it earlier than US forces seized an oil tanker off Venezuela on 10 December.

The US mentioned the tanker had been “used to move sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran”. Venezuela described the motion as an act of “worldwide piracy”.

Since then, the US has focused two extra tankers in waters off Venezuela.

Trump mentioned after Saturday’s strikes that the “American armada stays poised in place”.

Maduro has lengthy accused the Trump administration of making an attempt to depose him so the US may achieve management of Venezuela’s oil riches, pointing to a comment Trump made after the US seized the primary oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast.

When quizzed by reporters as to what would occur with the tanker and its cargo, he mentioned: “I assume we’ll preserve the oil.”

Nonetheless, US officers have beforehand denied Venezuela’s allegations that strikes in opposition to Maduro’s authorities have been an try and safe entry to the nation’s untapped reserves.

Venezuela has the world’s largest confirmed crude oil reserves and income from the oil sector finance greater than half of the its authorities finances.

Nonetheless, its exports have been hit by sanctions and a scarcity of funding and mismanagement inside Venezuela’s state-ruin oil firm.

In 2023, Venezuela produced solely 0.8% of worldwide crude oil, in keeping with the US Power Data Administration (EIA).

It presently exports about 900,000 barrels per day and China is by far its largest purchaser.