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Last Updated:December 18, 2025, 08:10 IST
Trump announces sweeping maritime and air restrictions, warning Maduro that “all options are on the table”.
Trump says the move is aimed at forcing President Nicolás Maduro to concede amid an escalating standoff with Caracas.
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday said Venezuela was “completely surrounded by the largest armada" in South American history and warned that the blockade would only expand. Trump said the move was aimed at pressuring Caracas to return oil, land and other assets he claimed belonged to the United States.
“We’re not going to be letting anybody go through who shouldn’t be going through," Trump told reporters. “You remember they took all of our energy rights. They took all of our oil not that long ago, and we want it back. They took it. They illegally took it."
US oil companies once dominated Venezuela’s petroleum industry until successive governments moved to nationalise the sector, first in the 1970s and later under former president Hugo Chávez and his successor Nicolás Maduro. Washington has long argued that compensation offered to US firms was inadequate. In 2014, an international arbitration panel ordered Venezuela’s socialist government to pay $1.6 billion to ExxonMobil.
Trump said all tankers carrying what he described as “sanctioned" oil would be blockaded and announced that the Nicolás Maduro-led government would be designated a foreign terrorist organisation.
“The illegitimate Maduro regime is using oil from these stolen oil fields to finance themselves, drug terrorism, human trafficking, murder and kidnapping," Trump wrote on social media.
Venezuela responded by accusing Washington of breaching international law. In a statement released on Tuesday, the Maduro government said Trump’s actions violated “international law, free trade and the principle of free navigation."
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Location :
Washington D.C., United States of America (USA)
First Published:
December 18, 2025, 07:07 IST
News world ‘Venezuela Completely Surrounded...’: Donald Trump Orders Total Blockade To Pressurise Maduro
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