Donald Trump is refusing to disclaim he might go to war with Venezuela and needs to depose its president, Nicolas Maduro.
Asked by NBC News on Friday whether a full-scale conflict was on the table, he said: ‘I don’t rule it out, no.’
The US president recently ordered an enormous build-up of warships and aircraft carriers within the Caribbean after American forces seized a Venezuelan oil tanker and blockaded other tankers.
The move ramped up tensions with the South American nation following months of deadly strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats in nearby waters.
The White House has accused Maduro of using ‘stolen’ oil to finance his government, which is widely viewed as a dictatorship, and helping drug gangs infiltrate US territory.
Maduro denies the allegations, claiming the US motion is geared toward overthrowing him and gaining control of Venezuela’s huge oil resources.
In his NBC interview, Trump refused to make clear whether he’s planning to overthrow Maduro.
‘He knows exactly what I need. He knows higher than anybody.’
The 79-year-old also repeated his warning that more sanctioned oil tankers will probably be seized near Venezuelan waters.
‘In the event that they’re silly enough to be sailing along, they’ll be sailing along back into one in all our harbours,’ he said.
What is happening with Trump’s Venezuela blockade?
Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves, although its oil production is comparatively very low as a result of problems with its industry.
Local firms and infrastructure tied to the industry have suffered as a result of years of sanctions imposed by the US, EU and several other other countries after the Venezuelan government’s violent repression of protests within the 2010s.
Venezuela now sells most of its oil to China, which the White House sees as a strategic rival.
Experts have said that Trump might even see the proximity of a rustic with potentially strong oil output allied to his opponents as a threat.
‘The concept that you could have this country, with oil, and minerals, and rare earths in our hemisphere and its foremost allies being China and Russia, that’s something that doesn’t really fit into Trump’s view of the world’, said David Smilde, a Venezuela expert at Tulane University.
Get in contact with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.
MORE: Deadline to release Epstein files looms after years of conspiracy theories
MORE: Donald Trump downgrades weed on eve of Epstein Files deadline
MORE: Are we ‘zombified’ to our phones? Readers discuss