Top United States officials were set to meet at the White House to discuss Venezuela, as the administration of US President Donald Trump continued to defend a controversial double strike on alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean.

The planned meeting on Monday, as reported by Reuters news agency, came as the US military continued to surge assets to the Caribbean. That has sparked concerns over a possible land invasion aimed at toppling the government of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro even as Trump has sent mixed messages in recent days.

Last week, the US president said that land operations against criminal groups in Venezuela could begin “very soon”, in what would be an escalation of the US military’s months-long strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug smugglers in international waters in the Caribbean.

Days earlier, the US designated the Cartel de los Soles, which officials describe as a drug trafficking cartel led by Maduro, as a “foreign terrorist organization” (FTO). Experts have pushed back on the characterisation, saying the “Cartel de los Soles” has traditionally referred to a loose network of corruption within the Venezuelan government.

In a Saturday post on his Truth Social account, Trump said airspace over Venezuela should be considered closed “in its entirety”, in what some observers saw as the final preparations for military action.

But on Sunday, Trump told reporters not to “read anything into” the move.

Reporting from Washington, DC on Monday, Al Jazeera’s chief US correspondent Alan Fischer said “no one quite knows” why Trump announced the airspace closure. He added that reports in US media indicate the announcement happened without Pentagon notification.

“When asked about it … on Air Force One, [Trump] said that you shouldn’t read too much into it. But of course, that didn’t stop the speculation, because normally no-fly zones are imposed before there’s some sort of military operation,” Fisher said.

He added that many observers in Washington have read the threats and asset build-up as an effort to force Maduro to flee the country before any military action is taken. Others have pointed to Trump’s past statements on Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, sparking concerns he could pursue a “war for oil”.

“Of course, in all of this, Donald Trump has to balance his MAGA [Make America Great Again] supporters because he campaigned on the fact that he wouldn’t get involved in what he described as stupid foreign wars,” Fisher said.

Reporting from the US territory of Puerto Rico, the staging ground of the military’s Caribbean build-up, Al Jazeera’s Phil Lavelle said there has been a flurry of activity, but it remained difficult to discern if any operations were imminent.

“We’ve got about 15,000 or so military personnel in this part of the world as this readiness is under way,” Lavelle said.

“We’ve also obviously got the sea systems: We’ve got the USS Gerald F Ford, the largest aircraft carrier strike group in the world, currently off the coast … Also, the USS Winston S Churchill and the USS Bainbridge,” he said.

Renewed scrutiny over boat strikes

The build-up has persisted as the Trump administration has faced renewed pressure over its lethal strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug smugglers in international waters in the Caribbean.

Over the weekend, Republican and Democratic leaders on the US House and Senate armed services committees announced they were upping oversight of the strikes.

That came after the Washington Post and CNN reported last week that US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth gave a verbal order to kill all people aboard a boat suspected of smuggling drugs from Venezuela.

Subsequently, military officials reportedly ordered a so-called “follow-on” strike on the vessel after two individuals appeared to survive the first strike.

While legal scholars have long said US strikes on vessels carrying alleged “narco-terrorists” in international waters may be illegal under both international and domestic law, the defence secretary explicitly ordering forces to kill all people on board the vessels ventures into even more precarious legal grounds.

In a letter, a group of former US military lawyers said the orders “if true” would “constitute war crimes, murder, or both”.

Responding to the report, Hegseth said all military actions in the Caribbean were “in compliance with the law of armed conflict”.

He has since doubled down in defiance, posting on social media on Sunday a mock image of children’s character Franklin targeting boats with a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launcher.

Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Trump said that Hegseth had denied giving the kill order.

“He did not say that, and I believe him 100 percent,” he said.

On Monday, the White House confirmed that a second strike did occur, with spokesperson Karoline Leavitt saying Admiral Frank Bradley gave the order for the follow-on attack.

Bradley “worked well within his authority and the law directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated,” Leavitt told reporters. She characterised the attack as in the “self-defence” of the US.

Also on Monday, Venezuela’s National Assembly was set to meet for an extraordinary session to debate forming a commission on the strikes.

However, the meeting was postponed until Tuesday, with no reason given.