US President Donald Trump will meet with his national security team on Monday to discuss next steps regarding Venezuela, the White House has confirmed, as tensions have been running high for days amid concerns that the Republican president might order attacks on targets within the South American country. The White House also confirmed that on September 2, when US forces sank the first drug-trafficking boat in the Caribbean as part of their anti-drug campaign, a second attack was carried out, killing the two survivors detected after the first strike.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will be among the participants in this afternoon's meeting. Also attending will be, among others, Secretary of State Marco Rubio; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine; and Trump's Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, as well as Wiles's deputy and the president's top domestic policy advisor, Stephen Miller. The meeting in the Oval Office—not in the Situation Room, as would be the case in the event of an ongoing operation—is scheduled for 5:00 p.m. Washington time (11:00 p.m. Spanish time). White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt indicated that, in addition to Venezuela, a number of other topics will be discussed.
The meeting comes just 24 hours after Trump acknowledged having a phone conversation with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro two weeks ago, but he has given no indication as to whether that call yielded any results. “I wouldn’t say it was good or bad; it was a phone call,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One as he returned to Washington Sunday night, after spending Thanksgiving at his private Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago.
The day before, the president had set off alarm bells by announcing to international airlines that they should consider Venezuelan airspace “completely closed,” in what appeared to be a warning that some kind of US action was imminent. But in his remarks to the press on Sunday, he seemed to try to calm the waters and cautioned against “making a big deal out of it” or “reading too much between the lines.”
Direct contact between the two presidents had raised hopes for a diplomatic solution to the conflict between the two governments. Washington accuses Maduro of “narco-terrorism” and of leading the Cartel of the Suns, a term used to refer to corrupt groups and individuals within the Venezuelan government and armed forces linked to drug trafficking. Last week, the State Department added the Cartel of the Suns to its list of foreign terrorist organizations. The United States also considers the Chavista leader an illegitimate president due to irregularities in the electoral processes, particularly those of 2023.
The fight against drug trafficking is the argument Washington uses to justify the massive military deployment it has maintained in the Caribbean since August. Since September 2, US forces have carried out at least 21 attacks against suspected drug-running boats in international waters in that sea and the eastern Pacific, killing at least 83 people in what has come to be known as “Operation Southern Spear.” The inclusion of the Cartel of the Suns on the list of terrorist organizations provides Washington, in the opinion of this administration, with new tools to launch a new phase of the operation that includes targets in Venezuelan territory.
Among those attending Monday's meeting, Rubio is a well-known hawk against the Chavista regime. He is one of the key architects of the hardline policy toward Caracas, including the US military deployment.
Hegseth, meanwhile, is embroiled in a major controversy after The Washington Post published a report that, if confirmed, could make the head of the Pentagon guilty of war crimes, according to several lawmakers. According to the Post, on September 2, in the first attack against a suspected drug-trafficking boat carrying 11 people, two survived and were seen clinging to the wreckage. The Secretary of Defense—or Secretary of War, as he prefers to be called—had verbally ordered, “Kill them all,” which led to a second attack that finished off the remaining occupants.
In her weekly press conference this Monday, Leavitt confirmed that the second attack did indeed occur. She explained that the decision came from the head of Special Operations Command, Admiral Frank Bradley, for reasons of “self-defense,” in “international waters,” and “in accordance with the laws of armed conflict.” The admiral “acted within his authority” in giving that order, the spokeswoman emphasized, exonerating Hegseth of any responsibility.
Leavitt has not provided any arguments to justify that the second attack complied with the laws of armed conflict. The Pentagon's 2023 Warfare Law manual specifically cites as an example an order to attack shipwrecked individuals following an action at sea as a case in which an order from a superior officer must be refused.
In its article, the Post indicates that Bradley “told people on a teleconference that the survivors were still legitimate targets because in theory they could call other smugglers to rescue them and their cargo, according to two sources. The admiral ordered the second attack to fulfill Hegseth’s directive to kill them all.”
The Pentagon and Hegseth confirmed the information published by the Post. On Sunday night, the Secretary of Defense posted a supposedly humorous image about the attack campaign on his social media account. It is a parody of a children's book, featuring the title"Franklin Targets Narco-Terrorists" and depicting a turtle opening fire on alleged drug-running boats.
Trump has also rejected the accusations against his Pentagon chief, albeit more ambiguously. “I don’t know anything about this,” he declared aboard Air Force One. The president also stated: “We’ll take a look at that. [...]. No, I wouldn’t have wanted that. Not a second attack. The first attack was very lethal, it was good. And if there had been two people left…” After leaving that supposition hanging, he insisted again: “Pete said that didn’t happen.” When asked again, he referred once more to what the Secretary of Defense had told him: “I don’t know. We’re going to get it sorted out. But Pete said he didn’t order the killing of those two men.”
