#us-venezuela-tensions

#us-venezuela-tensions

BLITZER: Also happening now, a U.S. official tells CNN that Venezuelan security forces have detained at least five Americans in recent months. This comes as tensions between the two nations keep building and building. The official said the Trump administration believes the Maduro regime is detaining Americans to help build leverage against the United States. Here with me now in The Situation Room is CNN cybersecurity reporter Sean Lyngaas.

In Beijing's view, Washington's escalation which includes seizing Venezuelan oil tankers, striking alleged drug-smuggling boats and imposing a blockade off the Venezuelan coast is a textbook example of American unilateralism, infringing on another country's sovereignty and violating the United Nations Charter. During a December 17 call with his Venezuelan counterpart, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi voiced opposition to US unilateral bullying and expressed his support for Venezuela's right to defend its sovereignty and national dignity.

US forces on Saturday stopped a second merchant vessel off the coast of Venezuela in international waters, according to two US officials, the Associated Press reported. The move comes days after Donald Trump announced a blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers coming in to and out of the South American country and follows the seizure by US forces of an oil tanker off Venezuela's coast on 10 December.

In recent months, the Trump administration has blown up several boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific, alleging that the vessels were carrying drugs. Most of the boats originated in Venezuela, and at least 90 people have been killed in the strikes. Notably, Venezuela does not produce fentanyl, which is by far the deadliest illicit substance in the U.S. Last week, the Trump administration also seized an oil tanker from Venezuela, whose government it sought to overthrow during Trump's first term.

Why the United States apparently seized a Venezuelan oil tanker. Trump, despite broaching the topic directly to media, elected not to answer who owned said tanker, or what the justification was for taking it, saying only "it was seized for a very good reason." When one reporter asked what would happen to the oil seized from said tanker, or the ship itself, Trump replied: "Well, we keep it, I guess," according to New York Times reporter Chris Cameron.

The United States has designated Venezuela's so-called Cartel de los Soles a foreign terrorist organization, marking the latest escalation in US-Venezuela tensions. Washington alleges Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro heads the organisation, which, the US says, is involved in widespread corruption and drug trafficking. Maduro denies the accusations amid growing fears of potential US military action in the region, and his government has called the cartel an invention.

The UK's reported decision to restrict intelligence-sharing with the Pentagon on suspected drug-traffickers' boats in the Caribbean is a modest yet symbolic act of resistance to Donald Trump's imperialist revival. Britain is said to have objected to repeated, lethal US airstrikes on alleged smugglers off Venezuela's coast which have been widely condemned as illegal extrajudicial killings amounting to murder. The strikes appear to foreshadow direct US attacks on Venezuela itself.

United States President Donald Trump has threatened Venezuela with incalculable consequences if the country does not immediately take back immigrants he described as prisoners and people from mental institutions. GET THEM THE HELL OUT OF OUR COUNTRY, RIGHT NOW, OR THE PRICE YOU PAY WILL BE INCALCULABLE! he said on his Truth Social platform on Saturday. He insisted that Venezuela had forced such people into the US and claimed without evidence that thousands of people have been badly hurt, and even killed, by these Monsters.'