Senior Trump administration officials held three meetings at the White House this week to discuss options for possible military operations in Venezuela, officials told Reuters, amid a growing U.S. military presence in the Caribbean.
US President Donald Trump ordered the deployment of F-35 fighter jets, warships, and a nuclear submarine to the region as part of a military buildup following two months of attacks on vessels linked to drug trafficking off the coast of Venezuela. Earlier this week, the Gerald Ford carrier strike group moved to Latin America, bringing with it more than 75 military aircraft and over 5,000 troops.
The New York Times detailed that Trump held consecutive meetings at the White House over the past two days, reviewing military options, including the use of Special Operations forces and direct action inside Venezuela.
On Friday, the president suggested that a decision could soon be made on whether or not to undertake military action against drug trafficking in Venezuelan territory.
“I can’t tell you what it will be, but I’ve already made up my mind about Venezuela,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One.
Four U.S. officials and a source familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to Reuters, said that national security council meetings took place this week, with three of the officials confirming that one of them was on Friday.
One of the officials said that a small group met on Wednesday, followed on Thursday by a much larger meeting that included Vice President JD Vance and senior administration officials. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
According to a source close to the matter, Trump attended Thursday's meeting in the Crisis Room and was briefed on various options.
For its part, The Washington Post detailed that Trump was accompanied in Friday's deliberations by the aforementioned Vice President JD Vance, the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth; the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine; the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio; and the Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller.
Earlier on Friday, an administration official told the newspaper that the president had been presented with “a wide variety of options.”
Trump is “very skilled at maintaining strategic ambiguity, and one thing he does very well is not dictating or revealing to our adversaries what his next steps are,” the official said.
So far, US military forces in the region have conducted operations against vessels suspected of drug trafficking. The Pentagon has carried out at least 20 attacks in the Caribbean and the Pacific, resulting in 80 deaths.
A Reuters investigation has found that the U.S. military is modernizing a long-abandoned Cold War-era naval base in the Caribbean, suggesting preparations for sustained operations that could support potential actions inside Venezuela.
The regime in Venezuela, for its part, is deploying weapons, including decades-old Russian-made equipment, and plans to organize a guerrilla-style resistance or sow chaos in the event of a US air or ground attack.
Tensions between the United States and Colombia, Venezuela's neighbor, have also intensified in recent weeks, with Trump and Colombian President Gustavo Petro exchanging accusations.
Trump has labeled Petro a “drug kingpin” and imposed sanctions on him. The Colombian president, a leftist, has accused the United States of committing murder with its attacks.
