It was a confusing statement, the severity of which the interviewer did not even seem to notice. Supermarket billionaire John Catsimatidis, owner of the New York radio station WABC, spoke last Friday with the president of the United States, Donald Trump, but the audio did not capture the attention of social networks until this Sunday. Trump said this: “They have a big plant or a big facility that the ships leave from. Two nights ago we took it out.”
The Republican was talking about Venezuela. And if he said what he seemed to want to say, he was confirming an attack, the first, after months of threatening that he would do so; with which the offensive against the Government of Nicolás Maduro would escalate. Neither the US nor those in Caracas authorities have given more details of the military operation, launched on Christmas Eve.
This Monday, Trump himself explained about this operation at the beginning of a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which was “quick.” “There was a big explosion in the dock area where the boats are loaded with drugs. We already went for those boats, and now we have attacked the area, so that area of operations no longer exists,” he added.
When asked if the United States Army was behind the operation, Trump did not answer if it had been carried out by the Army, which this Monday attacked a new alleged drug boat and murdered two crew members in the Pacific without prior trial, or another American organization such as the CIA. “I don’t want to say that,” he said. “I know exactly who did it, but I don’t want to say it. But you know, it was along the coast,” he added.
CNN published hours later that it was the work of the CIA and that the attack against an installation of the Tren de Aragua criminal gang was with drones and that no one was killed.
In the radio interview last Friday, Catsimatidis asked Trump about the military campaign that the United States calls , which since last September has taken the form of attacks against alleged drug boats that have already resulted in more than a hundred extrajudicial murders of their crew members. Then came the interceptions of oil tankers, two, to date, entering or leaving Venezuela. If the attack on that “large facility” was confirmed, the third phase would have begun on the ground.
Trump did not give the exact location of the plant. Because it was not there, it was not entirely clear that the attack was directed against Venezuela. US authorities have declined to share details about this, including the location of the target, how the operation was developed, or the role of the destroyed plant in drug trafficking from Venezuela, a country that has a residual participation in the trafficking of cocaine that reaches the United States, and that does not send fentanyl, a powerful opioid responsible for the largest crisis of overdose deaths in the history of the North American country. The illegal production of this substance corresponds to Mexico and China.
Several senior US officials have supported Trump’s statements and confirmed The New York Times that the plant attacked was a drug trafficking facility, although they did not share more information. Both the CIA and the White House declined to comment on the matter.
It is striking in this nebulous matter that Caracas has not reported the attack, or that more information on the ground has emerged.
Washington’s military operations against Venezuela, which the Pentagon has supported with an unprecedented naval deployment in the Caribbean, seek (no one tries to hide it anymore) to exert pressure on Maduro to force a regime change.
The United States has also shown interest in the South American country’s oil in recent weeks. On December 10, its army intercepted a cargo ship sanctioned by the Department of Commerce, the Skipperwhich was sailing with 1.9 million barrels of crude oil. Trump assured last week that the intention was to keep that burden.
The threats to move to a “second phase” with ground attacks (third, if you count the oil tankers, in addition to the alleged drug boats) began months ago. Trump has acknowledged to the press several times that he had already granted permission to plan covert actions in Venezuela. At this time, it has been unclear what form these might take. Added to these unknowns is whether the new phase of harassment of Chavismo began on Christmas Eve with the attack on a facility in a location yet to be determined.
