Trump team weighs targeting planes leaving Venezuela in new pressure push

WASHINGTON--President Donald Trump’s team is now weighing a significant escalation in its Venezuela pressure campaign: targeting small aircraft leaving the country that U.S. officials believe are transporting illegal drugs, according to people familiar with the administration’s discussions. Politico reported on Wednesday night that the idea, still under review, would expand the current focus beyond maritime interdictions and toward flights departing western Venezuela, where officials suspect narcotics are being loaded onto Cessnas and other small planes.

Two people familiar with the matter said the White House has studied options for widening strikes from boats to aircraft, though building a legal rationale for shooting down planes could be more complicated than targeting vessels at sea. A senior White House official suggested it would not be difficult to obtain photographic evidence of drugs being loaded onto planes, similar to declassified aerial imagery that has been used to show what appear to be narcotics aboard some of the boats the U.S. has already targeted.

The aircraft option is being considered alongside other potential pressure tools, including cyberwarfare, as the administration looks for new ways to force Nicolas Maduro’s government to give ground. The debate reflects a broader strategy that, for now, leans on incremental measures, even as the administration’s stated end goal remains Maduro’s removal from power, according to four people familiar with the Trump administration’s thinking.

One of the most visible elements of that incremental approach is Trump’s newly announced blockade of oil tankers off Venezuela’s coast, a move intended to further isolate Maduro rather than launch a large-scale operation inside the country, something Trump has sometimes hinted could be on the horizon. “The regime survives on three things: oil trafficking, drug trafficking, illegal gold trafficking. They’ve hit all three,” said one person close to the administration. “It’s really squeezing the regime in all angles. I don’t see how they survive.”

Inside the administration, there is also an acceptance that Maduro is unlikely to walk away voluntarily, a lesson officials say Washington learned during a first-term pressure drive. That dynamic, paired with the military actions and public rhetoric already deployed, has narrowed the space for stepping back. “Whether they meant to or not, the White House has raised expectations to the point that there is no easy off ramp,” a second person familiar with the administration’s discussions said. “At the same time, Maduro is pretty stubborn and he knows the U.S. can get easily distracted. Maduro is playing for time while Trump is playing to win, which means that neither side wants to back down.”

Trump has steadily layered on pressure in recent months, portraying the Maduro government as a U.S. threat tied to narcotics trafficking from Venezuelan territory. The United States does not formally recognize Maduro’s government as Venezuela’s legitimate authority, arguing he is widely believed to have stolen his elections. Without congressional approval, the administration has carried out airstrikes on roughly two dozen boats alleged to be transporting drugs, strikes that have killed nearly 100 people. It has also imposed additional sanctions, including on Maduro’s relatives, and labeled gangs and cartels it says are linked to the regime as terrorist organizations, while using security, financial, and other enforcement tools to tighten compliance and amplify pressure through public threats.

A recent operation at sea underscored the administration’s willingness to act aggressively. U.S. law enforcement agents boarded and seized an oil tanker off the Venezuelan coast by rappelling from a helicopter, footage later released by U.S. officials. Trump said the U.S. would keep the oil, valued at about $10 million, and the blockade suggests similar actions could follow. Trump has also said he has authorized covert CIA activity inside Venezuela.

The administration’s public explanations have shifted between homeland protection and outright regime change, and even within the White House there is debate over which aim is paramount. Still, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, in comments to Vanity Fair published Tuesday, framed the campaign as explicitly about forcing Maduro out. Trump, she said, “wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle. And people way smarter than me on that say that he will.”

A senior White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, said the primary objective is “stopping narco-terrorists,” while arguing that removing Maduro is central because of his alleged links to drug cartels. “If Maduro is not in power, that shuts down a lot of the operations,” the official said.

Critics, however, point out that Venezuela is a relatively minor contributor to U.S.-bound drug flows compared with other countries, and they argue that the administration’s actions, including seizing oil, blur the stated justification. After Trump announced the blockade, deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller suggested on social media that the policy is also grounded in a claim of lost U.S. property tied to Venezuela’s oil industry. “American sweat, ingenuity and toil created the oil industry in Venezuela,” Miller wrote on X. “Its tyrannical expropriation was the largest recorded theft of American wealth and property. These pillaged assets were then used to fund terrorism and flood our streets with killers, mercenaries and drugs.” Miller appeared to be referencing past nationalization of oil assets by Venezuelan governments.

Trump echoed that framing in remarks to reporters Wednesday afternoon. “They took our oil rights. We have a lot of oil there. As you know, they threw our companies out, and we want it back,” he said.

As the administration considers next steps, cyber operations remain another possible front. Venezuela’s state-run oil company PDVSA reportedly claimed Monday that it was hit by a cyberattack that officials blamed on the United States. POLITICO said it could not confirm the cyberattack, and a U.S. source familiar with the matter suggested it was “possibly an inside job carried out by people within PDVA.”

With backchannel talks failing to produce results, some officials have raised the possibility that even a ramped-up pressure campaign may not persuade Maduro to flee, leaving the United States facing choices that could include strikes on Venezuelan soil. Yet Trump has not delivered a formal address laying out a clear public case for the actions, something presidents often do when military operations begin. Richard Haass, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said that kind of explanation is especially important because the rationale has become increasingly muddled.

“If the rationale is drugs, it doesn’t make sense,” Haass said, noting that Venezuela’s primary drug export is cocaine, not fentanyl as Trump has implied. “If the rationale is immigration, well, 8 million people have left. I don’t think we’re worried about a million more people leaving. If the rationale is access to energy, that’s interesting, and the question is, do you need regime change to do that? It would be very nice if the president or the secretary of State stood up and explained the policy.”

Source: With reporting by Politico.com