President Donald Trump is weighing military strikes against drug cartels inside Venezuela, CNN reported Friday, citing multiple sources.
Such action would mark a sharp escalation in U.S. tensions with the South American nation. Earlier this week, U.S. forces sank a Venezuelan boat in the southern Caribbean, killing 11 people. Trump said the vessel was carrying narcotics.
CNN reported the strike marked the start of a broader U.S. effort to curb narcotics trafficking in the region and potentially weaken Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s hold on power.
Neither the White House nor Venezuela’s communications ministry responded to Reuters’ requests for comment.
Trump was asked on Friday if he was considering a ‘regime change’ operation to take out the country’s leadership. “We’re not talking about that, but we are talking about the fact that you had an election which was a very strange election, to put it mildly,” he said.
Maduro later on Friday called on the U.S. to respect his country’s sovereignty.
“The government of the United States should abandon its plan of violent regime change in Venezuela and in all of Latin America and respect sovereignty, the right to peace, to independence,” he said, per Reuters.
