Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller are reportedly present at the meeting.
The meeting in the Oval Office comes as the United States has committed one-fifth of the US fleet to the Caribbean Sea, outside Venezuela’s territorial waters. Fifteen thousand American soldiers are waiting for their orders at military bases in Puerto Rico and on seven Navy warships.
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This includes a nuclear submarine and the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford. The world’s most modern aircraft carrier has a crew of 5,000 and carries more than 75 attack, reconnaissance and support aircraft, including F/A-18 fighter planes and war helicopters.
Southern Spear
For Operation Southern Spear, as Defense Secretary Hegseth has called the operation against Venezuela, the Pentagon has also sent B-52 and B-1 bombers to Venezuela from bases in Louisiana and Texas in recent weeks.
B-52s can carry dozens of precision-guided bombs, and B-1s can carry up to 80,000 pounds of guided and unguided munitions, the largest non-nuclear payload of any aircraft in the Air Force’s arsenal.
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The official reason why Trump has positioned one-fifth of the US fleet off the coast of Venezuela is that he wants to stop the flow of the deadly drug fentanyl into the US. Interesting detail: the extremely addictive painkiller does not come from Venezuela, but from Mexico.
US Army in the Caribbean Sea
Since early September, the US military has attacked at least 20 suspected drug boats in the Caribbean Sea, just outside Venezuela’s territorial waters, and in the Pacific Ocean, killing more than 80 people.
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Because the government has so far provided no evidence that the boats were actually smuggling drugs and that they were operated by “narcoterrorists,” as Trump calls them, questions about the legality of the attacks have now also been raised in the US Congress by Democrats and Republicans. There was already criticism from human rights organizations.
Last weekend, Trump declared that Venezuelan airspace was closed and called on airlines to stop flying over the South American country. On Sunday, Trump confirmed that he had spoken to Nicolás Maduro by telephone, but he did not specify what the conversation was about.