operation

WASHINGTON — A highly confidential CIA assessment produced at the request of the White House warned President Trump of a wider conflict in Venezuela if he were to support the country’s democratic opposition once its president, Nicolás Maduro, was deposed, a person familiar with the matter told The Times.

The assessment was a tightly held CIA product commissioned at the request of senior policymakers before Trump decided whether to authorize Operation Absolute Resolve, the stunning U.S. mission that seized Maduro and his wife from their bedroom in Caracas over the weekend.

Announcing the results of the operation on Sunday, Trump surprised an anxious Venezuelan public when he was quick to dismiss the leadership of the democratic opposition — led by María Corina Machado, last year’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and Edmundo González Urrutia, the opposition candidate who won the 2024 presidential election that was ultimately stolen by Maduro.

Instead, Trump said his administration was working with Maduro’s handpicked vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, who has since been named the country’s interim president. The rest of Maduro’s government remains in place.

Endorsing the opposition would probably have required U.S. military backing, with the Venezuelan armed forces still under the control of loyalists to Maduro unwilling to relinquish power.

A second official said that the administration sought to avoid one of the cardinal mistakes of the invasion of Iraq, when the Bush administration ordered party loyalists of the deposed Saddam Hussein to be excluded from the country’s interim government. That decision, known as de-Baathification, led those in charge of Iraq’s stockpiles of weapons to establish armed resistance to the U.S. campaign.

The CIA product was not an assessment that was shared across the 18 government agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community, whose head, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, was largely absent from deliberations — and who has yet to comment on the operation, despite CIA operatives being deployed in harm’s way before and throughout the weekend mission.

The core team that worked on Absolute Resolve included Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who met routinely over several months, sometimes daily, the source added.

The existence of the CIA assessment was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Signs have emerged that Trump’s team was in communication with Rodríguez ahead of the operation, although the president has denied that his administration gave Rodríguez advance notice of Maduro’s ouster.

“There are a number of unanswered questions,” said Evan Ellis, who served in Trump’s first term planning State Department policy on Latin America, the Caribbean and international narcotics. “There may have a been a cynical calculation that one can work with them.”

Rodríguez served as a point of contact with the Biden administration, experts note, and also was in touch with Richard Grenell, a top Trump aide who heads the Kennedy Center, early on in Trump’s second term, when he was testing engagement with Caracas.

While the federal indictment unsealed against Maduro after his seizure named several other senior officials in his government, Rodríguez’s name was notably absent.

Rodríguez was sworn in as Venezuela’s interim president Monday in a ceremony attended by diplomats from Russia, China and Iran. Publicly, the leader has offered mixed messages, at once vowing to prevent Venezuela from becoming a colonial outpost of an American empire, while also offering to forge a newly collaborative relationship with Washington.

“Of course, for political reasons, Delcy Rodríguez can’t say, ‘I’ve cut a deal with Trump, and we’re going to stop the revolution now and start working with the U.S.,” Ellis said.

“It’s not about the democracy,” he said. “It’s about him not wanting to work with Maduro.”

In an interview with Fox News on Monday, Machado said she had yet to speak with Trump since the U.S. operation over the weekend, but hoped to do so soon, offering to share her Nobel Peace Prize with him as a gesture of gratitude. Trump has repeatedly touted himself as a worthy recipient of the award.

“What he has done is historic,” Machado said, vowing to return to the country from hiding abroad since accepting the prize in Oslo last month.

“It’s a huge step,” she added, “towards a democratic transition.”

The Galaxy will begin the new season the same way they finished the old one — with Riqui Puig on the sideline after knee surgery. That’s a big problem because Puig is about the closest thing MLS has to an irreplaceable player. And with training camp starting in a couple of weeks, the team has precious little time to try to replace him.

In 2024, the last time Puig was on the field, he led the league in touches and passes and set career highs for goals (13) and assists (15). With him directing the attack, the Galaxy set a record with four players scoring 10 or more times en route a sixth MLS title. It was one of the best seasons in franchise history.

In 2025, without Puig, the only records the Galaxy set were for futility, starting the season winless in their first 16 league matches and finishing with just seven wins, a franchise low for a full season. No reigning MLS Cup champion has fared so poorly.

The contrast is so stark because Puig doesn’t just define the way the team plays; he is the way the team plays. He’s the quarterback and the point guard. His speed, dribbling and passing ability make the Galaxy go, opening up space for opportunity for his teammates. He’s the rare player who truly makes everyone around him better.

Even Lionel Messi isn’t as important to his team as Puig is to the Galaxy.

“The game changes when Riqui’s on the field,” coach Greg Vanney said.

Puig first tore the ACL in his left knee in the Western Conference final in 2024, assisting on the game’s only goal after sustaining the injury. The Galaxy originally thought they’d have him back by late summer, in time for a playoff push. So last winter they felt comfortable trading Mark Delgado and Gastón Brugman, the two most likely fill-ins for Puig, largely to fit their payroll under the MLS salary cap.

In the interim, the plan was to make Marco Reus the team’s midfield maestro. But Reus had his own injury problems and didn’t start consecutive MLS games until early May. By then the Galaxy had gone winless through their first 10 matches.

Reus went on to play well at times, but the season was effectively over by then. There would be no playoff push, so the Galaxy felt no need to rush Puig back.

This winter the team’s entire offseason preparation was based on Puig’s return — both on and off the field.

Off the field, the Galaxy filmed a multi-part documentary called “Riqui Puig’s Road To Recovery” and used his return to hype ticket sales. On the field, believing the midfield to be set, general manager Will Kuntz added two top-tier defenders in Jakob Glesnes and Justin Haak, committing more than $2 million in salary to the pair.

But then, one day into the new year, Puig and the team learned he needed another operation and would have to miss a second season, throwing all of the Galaxy’s plans into the dumpster.

The Galaxy never blamed their troubles last season on Puig’s absence, but they didn’t have to. It was obvious. And if they couldn’t replace the irreplaceable last season, what confidence should anyone have that they can do it this season?

The team’s biggest mistake last year was not planning for Puig’s absence. The team entered the winter knowing he’d miss most of the season and didn’t act accordingly. They even kept Puig’s $5.8-million salary and designated-player roster spot on the books in the hopes he’d play at some point.

Don’t expect them to make the same mistakes this time. Instead, the Galaxy are all but certain to place him on the season-ending injury list, opening up a DP slot and erasing the hit his salary takes on the budget cap.

The good news, if there is any, is that Vanney believes the Galaxy eventually figured out how to play without Puig last year. After going winless in their first 16 MLS games, the Galaxy went 7-6-5 in league play and finished third in the Leagues Cup, earning a spot in the CONCACAF Champions Cup.

“By the end of the year, we were beating MLS playoff teams and we beat the top teams in Mexico,” Vanney said. “We found how this group could be successful without the pieces that were missing.”

Now they’ll have to do that again.

What exactly happened with Puig hasn’t been made clear. He was more than a year into his rehab when he returned home to Barcelona for the holidays. Puig had trained alongside the team last fall and he continued training in Spain. The recovery seemed to be going well.

But something — a quick move or an uncertain cut — sent Puig back to the doctor and a day later he underwent a second operation.

ACL revision surgeries (multiple procedures) are not rare, with some studies suggesting they are needed between 10% to 20% of the time, especially for athletes who play so-called pivoting sports such as soccer. Most commonly, a second surgery is needed because the first graft has re-torn.

Christen Press, a two-time World Cup champion, torn the ligament in her right knee eight games into her first season with Angel City and needed four operations to repair the damage. She started just three more matches over the next 3 ½ seasons before retiring.

But Press was 33 when she was injured. Puig is 26. And though that suggests the odds for a full recovery are high, Puig’s age also adds to the poignancy of the situation since the injury will now take two years off his career when he was at his prime.

Another season like 2024 could have had Puig, who played 42 games over four seasons for Barcelona, planning for a return to Europe or at least another big payday in MLS. Now he won’t play another game until he’s 27 and in the final year of his contract, when the pressure to prove he’s healthy and still a dynamic game-changing player will be immense.

In the meantime, the Galaxy find themselves once again trying to replace the irreplaceable.

⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.

US President Donald Trump says no Americans, but some soldiers ‘on the other side’ were killed in the ‘complex’ military operation that abducted Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.

WASHINGTON — President Trump has made broad but vague assertions that the United States is going to “run” Venezuela after the ouster of Nicolás Maduro but has offered almost no details about how it will do so, raising questions among some lawmakers and former officials about the administration’s level of planning for the country after Maduro was gone.

Seemingly contradictory statements from Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have suggested at once that the U.S. now controls the levers of Venezuelan power or that the U.S. has no intention of assuming day-to-day governance and will allow Maduro’s subordinates to remain in leadership positions for now.

Rubio said the U.S. would rely on existing sanctions on Venezuela’s oil sector and criminal gangs to wield leverage with Maduro’s successors.

The uncertainty on definitive next steps in Venezuela contrasts with the years of discussions and planning that went into U.S. military interventions that deposed other autocratic leaders, notably in Iraq in 2003, which still did not often lead to the hoped-for outcomes.

‘Disagreement about how to proceed’

The discrepancy between what Trump and Rubio have said publicly has not sat well with some former diplomats.

“It strikes me that we have no idea whatsoever as to what’s next,” said Dan Fried, a retired career diplomat, former assistant secretary of state and sanctions coordinator who served under both Democratic and Republican administrations.

“For good operational reasons, there were very few people who knew about the raid, but Trump’s remarks about running the country and Rubio’s uncomfortable walk back suggests that even within that small group of people, there is disagreement about how to proceed,” said Fried who is now with the Atlantic Council think tank.

Supporters of the operation, meanwhile, believe there is little confusion over the U.S. goal.

“The president speaks in big headlines and euphemisms,” said Rich Goldberg, a sanctions proponent who worked in the National Energy Dominance Council at the White House until last year and is now a senior adviser to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish think tank.

Goldberg does not see Rubio becoming “the superintendent of schools” but “effectively, the U.S. will be calling the shots.”

“There are people at the top who can make what we want happen or not, and we right now control their purse strings and their lives,” he said. “The president thinks it’s enough and the secretary thinks it’s enough, and if it’s not enough, we’ll know very soon and we’ll deal with it.”

If planning for the U.S. “to run” Venezuela existed prior to Maduro’s arrest and extradition to face federal drug charges, it was confined to a small group of Trump political allies, according to current U.S. officials, who note that Trump relies on a very small circle of advisers and has tossed aside much of the traditional decision-making apparatus.

These officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss their understanding of internal deliberations, said they were not aware of any preparations for either a military occupation or an interim civilian governing authority, which has been a priority for previous administrations when they contemplated going to war to oust a specific leader or government. The White House and the State Department’s press office did not return messages seeking comment.

Long discussion among agencies in previous interventions

Previous military actions that deposed autocratic leaders, notably in Panama in 1989 and Iraq in 2003, were preceded by months, if not years, of interagency discussion and debate over how best to deal with power vacuums caused by the ousters of their leaders. The State Department, White House National Security Council, the Pentagon and the intelligence community all participated in that planning.

In Panama, the George H.W. Bush administration had nearly a full year of preparations to launch the invasion that ousted Panama’s leader Manuel Noriega. Panama, however, is exponentially smaller than Venezuela, it had long experience as a de facto American territory, and the U.S. occupation was never intended to retake territory or natural resources.

By contrast, Venezuela is vastly larger in size and population and has a decadeslong history of animosity toward the United States.

“Panama was not successful because it was supported internationally because it wasn’t,” Fried said. “It was a success because it led to a quick, smooth transfer to a democratic government. That would be a success here, but on the first day out, we trashed someone who had those credentials, and that strikes me as daft.”

He was referring to Trump’s apparent dismissal of opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, whose party is widely believed to have won elections in 2024, results that Maduro refused to accept. Trump said Saturday that Machado “doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country” to be a credible leader and suggested he would be OK with Maduro’s No. 2, Delcy Rodríguez, remaining in power as long as she works with the U.S.

Hoped-for outcomes didn’t happen in Iraq and Afghanistan

Meanwhile, best-case scenarios like those predicted by the George W. Bush administration for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq that it would be a beacon of democracy in the Middle East and hopes for a democratic and stable Afghanistan following the ouster of the Taliban died painfully slow deaths at the tremendous expense of American money and lives after initial euphoria over military victories.

“Venezuela looks nothing like Libya, it looks nothing like Iraq, it looks nothing like Afghanistan. It looks nothing like the Middle East,” Rubio said this weekend of Venezuela and its neighbors. “These are Western countries with long traditions at a people-to-people and cultural level, and ties to the United States, so it’s nothing like that.”

The lack of clarity on Venezuela has been even more pronounced because Trump campaigned on a platform of extricating the U.S. from foreign wars and entanglements, a position backed by his “Make America Great Again” supporters, many of whom are seeking explanations about what the president has in mind for Venezuela.

“Wake up MAGA,” Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who has bucked much of his party’s lockstep agreement with Trump, posted on X after the operation. “VENEZUELA is not about drugs; it’s about OIL and REGIME CHANGE. This is not what we voted for.”

Sen. Rand Paul, also a Kentucky Republican, who often criticizes military interventions, said “time will tell if regime change in Venezuela is successful without significant monetary or human cost.”

“Easy enough to argue such policy when the action is short, swift and effective but glaringly less so when that unitary power drains of us trillions of dollars and thousands of lives, such as occurred in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam,” he wrote on social media.

In addition to the Venezuela operation, Trump is preparing to take the helm of an as-yet unformed Board of Peace to run postwar Gaza, involving the United States in yet another Mideast engagement for possibly decades to come.

And yet, as both the Iraq and Afghanistan experiences ultimately proved, no amount of planning guarantees success.

Lee writes for the Associated Press.

Jan. 6 (UPI) — Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado praised U.S. President Donald Trump for ousting former President Nicolas Maduro, calling it a giant achievement for humanity, for which Trump should rightly receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

“Jan. 3 will go down in history as the day justice defeated tyranny. It’s a milestone, and it’s not only huge for the Venezuelan people and our future, I think it’s a huge step for humanity, for freedom, and human dignity,” Machado told Fox News on Monday night.

She said Trump’s action to begin dismantling Maduro’s “narco-terrorist regime,” bringing him to justice, and with it, bringing democracy within reach for 30 million Venezuelans, proved beyond doubt that he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize, said Machado, herself the recipient of this year’s peace prize.

However, she issued a warning to the Trump administration that the woman who was sworn in as Maduro’s replacement, interim president Delcy Rodriguez, was not to be trusted, accusing her of being “one of the main architects of torture, persecution, corruption, narco-trafficking,” in Venezuela.

“She’s a main ally and liaison of Russia, China, Iran, certainly not an individual who could be trusted by international investors and she’s really rejected by the Venezuelan people.”

Trump said Monday night that Rodriguez was cooperating with his administration but insisted there had been no deal with any individuals or group inside Venezuelan to take down Maduro.

He said there was no communication with Rodríguez prior to Friday night’s military operation to capture Maduro, adding that a decision was imminent on whether earlier sanctions imposed on her would remain in place.

He also strongly denied that his preference for Rodriguez had anything to do with the fact he beleived the peace prize should have gone to him, rather than Machado.

The Wall Street Journal repored Monday that Trump determined Rodriguez and other members of Maduro’s inner circle were best placed to head a transition administration and keep stability in Venezuela in the event Maduro lost power, based on a CIA intelligence assessment of various scenarios.

The classified report was, in part, responsible for Trump’s decision to support Maduro’s vice president over Machado.

Publicly, he has said she lacked sufficient “support” and “respect” in her home country, despite the fact that Machado won the presidential primary in December 2023, but was barred from running by Maduro.

Machado was replaced on the ballot by Edmundo Gonzales, who is widely regarded to have won the presidency by most Western countries.

Machado, who is in Norway after being smuggled out of Venezuela in December to travel to Oslo to collect her award, vowed to return to Venezuela as soon as possible and that her opposition movement, which had the 2024 election stolen from it by Maduro, wanted the transition to democracy to move forward.

“We won an election by a landslide under fraudulent conditions. In free and fair elections, we will win over 90% of the votes, I have no doubt about it,” said Machado.

However, Trump quashed speculation that elections could be held as soon as next month, saying Venezuela had to be fixed first.

“You can’t have an election. There’s no way the people could even vote. No, it’s going to take a period of time. We have — we have to nurse the country back to health,” said Trump.

As a stunned world processes the U.S. government’s sudden intervention in Venezuela — debating its legality, guessing who the ultimate winners and losers will be — a company founded in California with deep ties to the Golden State could be among the prime beneficiaries.

Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves on the planet. Chevron, the international petroleum conglomerate with a massive refinery in El Segundo and headquartered, until recently, in San Ramon, is the only foreign oil company that has continued operating there through decades of revolution.

Other major oil companies, including ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil, pulled out of Venezuela in 2007 when then-President Hugo Chávez required them to surrender majority ownership of their operations to the country’s state-controlled oil company, PDVSA.

But Chevron remained, playing the “long game,” according to industry analysts, hoping to someday resume reaping big profits from the investments the company started making there almost a century ago.

Looks like that bet might finally pay off.

In his news conference Saturday, after U.S. Special Forces snatched Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife in Caracas and extradited them to face drug-trafficking charges in New York, President Trump said the U.S. would “run” Venezuela and open more of its massive oil reserves to American corporations.

“We’re going to have our very large U.S. oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country,” Trump said during a news conference Saturday.

While oil industry analysts temper expectations by warning it could take years to start extracting significant profits given Venezuela’s long-neglected, dilapidated infrastructure, and everyday Venezuelans worry about the proceeds flowing out of the country and into the pockets of U.S. investors, there’s one group who could be forgiven for jumping with unreserved joy: Chevron insiders who championed the decision to remain in Venezuela all these years.

But the company’s official response to the stunning turn of events has been poker-faced.

“Chevron remains focused on the safety and well-being of our employees, as well as the integrity of our assets,” spokesman Bill Turenne emailed The Times on Sunday, the same statement the company sent to news outlets all weekend. “We continue to operate in full compliance with all relevant laws and regulations.”

Turenne did not respond to questions about the possible financial rewards for the company stemming from this weekend’s U.S. military action.

Chevron, which is a direct descendant of a small oil company founded in Southern California in the 1870s, has grown into a $300-billion global corporation. It was headquartered in San Ramon, just outside of San Francisco, until executives announced in August 2024 that they were fleeing high-cost California for Houston.

Texas’ relatively low taxes and light regulation have been a beacon for many California companies, and most of Chevron’s competitors are based there.

Chevron began exploring in Venezuela in the early 1920s, according to the company’s website, and ramped up operations after discovering the massive Boscan oil field in the 1940s. Over the decades, it grew into Venezuela’s largest foreign investor.

The company held on over the decades as Venezuela’s government moved steadily to the left; it began to nationalize the oil industry by creating a state-owned petroleum company in 1976, and then demanded majority ownership of foreign oil assets in 2007 under Chávez.

Venezuela has the world’s largest proven crude oil reserves — meaning they’re economical to tap — about 303 billion barrels, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

But even with those massive reserves, Venezuela has been producing less than 1% of the world’s crude oil supply. Production has steadily declined from the 3.5 million barrels per day pumped in 1999 to just over 1 million barrels per day now.

Currently, Chevron’s operations in Venezuela employ about 3,000 people and produce between 250,000 and 300,000 barrels of oil per day, according to published reports.

That’s less than 10% of the roughly 3 million barrels the company produces from holdings scattered across the globe, from the Gulf of Mexico to Kazakhstan and Australia.

But some analysts are optimistic that Venezuela could double or triple its current output relatively quickly — which could lead to a windfall for Chevron.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Open-source tracking data and spotters on the ground are showing a sudden surge of U.S. aircraft to Europe. The deployments include C-17 Globemaster III cargo jets, possibly packed with helicopters, emanating from the home of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), AC-130J Ghostrider gunships, and a shadowy special operations turboprop aircraft. While U.S. aircraft routinely transit to and through that continent, the number of flights and their origin have raised speculation of potential future special operations missions in the region, and that speculation could be well founded.

The deployments of these aircraft increasingly seem like they are in support of a future operation to board the Russian-flagged Crude Oil Tanker Marinera, which until recently has been known as the Bella-1, and has been pursued by the Coast Guard since last month. CBS News on Monday afternoon reported that the U.S. will likely try to intercept the vessel, now in the North Atlantic. We’ll discuss that more later, including why the 160th SOAR may be needed for such an operation, in this story.

Here is what we have seen over the past 36 hours. Online flight tracking data shows that there were at least 10 Globemaster flights that left the U.S. for Europe on Jan. 3. At least four of these flights were from Fort Campbell in Kentucky, fueling unconfirmed speculation of an influx of U.S. special operations aviation assets. Fort Campbell is home to the 160th SOAR, also known as the Night Stalkers, the elite aviation unit that played a key role in locating and capturing Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro and his wife. You can read more about that in our story about Operation Absolute Resolve here.

There are claims that several of the Night Stalkers’ highly modified MH-47 Chinooks and MH-60M Black Hawks, presumably dropped off by the C-17s, were seen at RAF Fairford; however, no visual evidence has emerged to confirm that. 

“As I think we have offered many times previously, we do not comment on the operational activity of other nations, including use of UK bases,” a U.K. Defense Ministry (MoD) official told us. “Likewise, neither the MOD or RAF would offer comment on speculation on what [U.S. bases in England] assets are or indeed are not doing.”

The 160th did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Beyond the possibility of the helicopters being delivered, at least two AC-130J Ghostrider gunships landed Sunday at RAF Mildenhall, where they still remain, according to Andrew McKelvey, a local spotter who was kind enough to share his photos of the aircraft with us. U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command, which operates those aircraft, declined to comment.

AC-130 GUNSHIPS ARRIVE IN UK

One of the U.S. Air Force’s shadowy CASA CN-235 intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance planes was also deployed to RAF Fairford.

U.S. European Command, which oversees American military operations in that region, declined to offer any specifics about the nature of these flights.

 “U.S. European Command routinely hosts transient U.S. military aircraft (and personnel) in accordance with access, basing, and overflight agreements with Allies and partners,” the command told us in an early Monday morning email. “Taking into account operational security for U.S. assets and personnel, further details are not releasable at this time.”

While the nature of these flights remains unclear, there was a similar surge from Fort Campbell in the days leading up to Operation Absolute Resolve.

The 160th SOAR works across the globe on a daily basis, deploying for operational tasking to execute a huge array of mission sets. These include training and large-force exercises and combat operations. Night Stalker crews get experience all over the world in many environments. Movements of this kind are not that unusual, but after the Venezuelan mission, they certainly are drawing more attention.

The Marinera is another connection to Venezuela. The vessel is laden with Venezuelan oil and part of a so-called shadow fleet transporting oil for Russia, Iran and Venezuela in violation of sanctions imposed by the United States and other countries. The Trump administration said this weekend they would continue to interdict these vessels. The Coast Guard attempted to board the ship on Dec. 20, but the crew refused to allow it. As we saw last month, personnel fast-roping from helicopters played a key role in the seizure of the M/V Skipper, another sanctioned oil tanker. Night Stalker assets could very well assist in any attempt to capture the Marinera, which could be considered a more dangerous operation due to the intelligence gathered and interactions with its crew.

You can see video of the boarding of the Skipper below.

Today, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Homeland Security Investigations, and the United States Coast Guard, with support from the Department of War, executed a seizure warrant for a crude oil tanker used to transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran. For multiple… pic.twitter.com/dNr0oAGl5x

— Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) December 10, 2025

Highlighting the potential danger of this kind of operation, CBS News reported that “Venezuelan officials had discussed placing armed military personnel on tankers — disguising them as civilians for defense purposes — as well as portable Soviet-era air defense systems.” The discussions took place before the capture of Maduro and his wife, the network added.

Night Stalkers are far better prepared for taking down a defended ship like this, including with their defensive systems and the ability to provide their own air support. The AC-130J is also capable of making pinpoint gun strikes on vessels for exactly this kind of operation as we have showcased in our previous reporting.

27th Special Operations Wing conducts sinking exercise during RIMPAC 2024

Bolstering the theory that a special operations boarding mission may be imminent, U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft have been observed by online trackers following the Marinera.

Other nations are following the oil tanker. Irish Air Corps C-295W maritime search aircraft have also been observed by flight trackers operating near the location of the Marinera.

There are other potential reasons for the special operations aviation assets to be deployed to Europe. One possibility is a NATO exercise called Steadfast Dart 2026 that kicked off on Jan. 2.

The exercise “is a Joint Deployment Exercise to test and train the operational deployment and reinforcement of the [Allied Reaction Force] ARF 25 Elements to NATO Vigilance Area Center under peacetime conditions,” according to NATO. However, given that this was a long-planned exercise, the snap nature of the deployments from Fort Campbell and elsewhere makes it unlikely there is a connection.

Meanwhile, SOAR is also conducting a recruiting drive in Germany that begins Jan. 6, the regiment stated on X. It is unclear how many, if any, SOAR aircraft have been forward deployed for the recruitment effort. SOAR did not immediately respond to our request for comment.

KATTERBACH / ANSBACH,GERMANY. The 160th SOAR recruitment team will hold career opportunity briefs on 06 JANUARY 2026 at Katterbach/Ansbach. Looking to Go Beyond the Conventional in your military aviation career you’ll want to attend. Learn More & Apply at https://t.co/lM8G5cgcF9. pic.twitter.com/aTixBcpAm8

— Go160thSOAR (@Go160thSoar) January 4, 2026

Beyond these possibilities, there has been speculation that some U.S. assets might be heading to the Middle East ahead of a potential future conflict with Iran. We saw similar movements in the run-up to Operation Midnight Hammer, the June attack on Iran that saw U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirit stealth bombers drop 14 30,000-pound GBU-57/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bunker buster bombs on Iran’s Fordow and Natanz nuclear facilities.

It is also possible that the cargo flights to the Middle East are routine. There is a lot of air traffic back and forth from that region.

For example, five US Air Force C-17s landed in the region Wednesday, i didn’t even post about it because it is very normal, i dont do fearmongering pic.twitter.com/ZgfjXlJ0LS

— MenchOsint (@MenchOsint) January 4, 2026

Still, given that other major U.S. operations have followed these kinds of aircraft deployments, and the situation with the now Russian-flagged Marinera tanker and reports of it being a harder target than what has been seen in other recent boarding operations, the 160th SOAR may be back at it on a world stage very soon.

Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com

WASHINGTON — Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard had yet to weigh in on the U.S. operation to remove Nicolás Maduro from power in Caracas as of Saturday night, more than 24 hours since President Trump approved the audacious mission that captured the Venezuelan leader.

Her silence on the operation surprised some in the U.S. intelligence community, which laid the groundwork for the mission over several months, and which had assets in harm’s way on the ground in Venezuela as the operation unfolded.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe, by contrast, accompanied Trump in Mar-a-Lago throughout the night as the extraction was underway, and stood beside the president as he conducted a news conference announcing the results.

“Teamwork at its finest,” Ratcliffe wrote on social media, posted alongside photos of him with the president’s team in the temporary situation room set up at Trump’s Florida estate.

Gabbard, a native of Hawaii who, according to her X account, spent the holidays in her home state, made a name for herself as a member of Congress campaigning against “regime change wars,” particularly the U.S. war in Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein.

In a speech at Turning Point USA’s annual conference last month, Gabbard criticized “warmongers” in the “deep state” of the intelligence community she leads trying to thwart Trump’s efforts to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine.

“Too often we, the American people, are told we must choose between liberty or security, and which side often wins out in that proposition,” she told the gathered crowd. “Liberty loses, and the warmongers claim that they are doing what they are doing for the sake of our security. It’s a lie.”

Outside of government, during Trump’s first term, Gabbard also criticized advocates for regime change in Venezuela, writing in 2019, “It’s about the oil … again.”

“The United States needs to stay out of Venezuela,” Gabbard wrote at the time. “Let the Venezuelan people determine their future.

“We don’t want other countries to choose our leaders,” she added, “so we have to stop trying to choose theirs.”

Details are still emerging about the U.S. operation to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, an effort known as Absolute Resolve. We now have access to satellite imagery that provides an intriguing look at some of the key targets that were struck by the U.S. military during the operation, which are also indicative of the precision of the weapons employed.

You can catch up with our previous rolling coverage of the operation here.

At this point, we do not know for sure where Maduro and his wife were taken from. One very strong possibility is the major military complex at Fuerte Tiuna, in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas. This is widely reported to accommodate a Maduro compound, and Venezuelan ruling party leader Nahum Fernández told The Associated Press that Maduro and his wife were there when they were captured. U.S. President Trump said the couple was in “a house that was more like a fortress,” which would also fit the description. Certainly, there were U.S. airstrikes concentrated at Fuerte Tiuna, as seen in the satellite imagery that follows in this article.

In terms of the platforms that carried out airstrikes, the Pentagon has confirmed that assets involved included F-22s, F-35s, F/A-18s, EA-18s, and B-1 bombers, as well as numerous drones, any of which could have been delivering munitions. Meanwhile, helicopters of the U.S. Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment spearheaded the operation to capture Maduro. It appears that a Night Stalker MH-60 and possibly more rotorcraft may have touched down at or near Fuerte Tiuna.

In our early reporting, we looked at just some of the peculiar fortified locations on the base grounds at Fuerte Tiuna.

Man… there is some very ‘interesting’ features at this base pertaining to what is built into the hillside.

— Tyler Rogoway (@Aviation_Intel) January 3, 2026

This military installation is a known center of gravity for the Venezuelan military, and it has some unique features, including bunkers/tunnels built into the side of the mountain it butts up against. Three examples of the unusual constructions at Fuerte Tiuna are seen in the images immediately below that were taken over the years, long before the operation:

The view of Fuerte Tiuna dated December 22, seen below, shows the site as it looked before the raid:

In the satellite image below, dated January 3, we see the aftermath of the U.S. operation at Fuerte Tiuna, in particular, toward the top of the picture, where U.S. strikes clearly destroyed three long buildings that were part of an original group of six. We can also see significant destruction at an adjacent site, to the left, which is partially surrounded by forest, and is claimed by some unverified sources to have been close to the partly concealed entrance to the Maduro compound.

Reportedly, these U.S.-made Dragoon 300 armored fighting vehicles (essentially a scaled-up version of the V-150 Commando) were among those damaged at Fuerte Tiuna.

Damaged Venezuelan Dragoon 300 APC at Fort Tiuna following US airstrikes, January 3, 2026.

Note that the vehicle has been modified into similar configuration to Cadillac Gage V-100 Commandos.

2026 United States strikes in Venezuela pic.twitter.com/ThfPnqdC5m

— Buschlaid (@BuschModelar) January 3, 2026

The 312th “Ayala” Armored Cavalry Battalion of the Venezuelan Army appears to have had all of its equipment and most of its armored vehicles entirely destroyed in last night’s strike operation by the United States, which heavily targeting the Fuerte Tiuna Military Complex in the… pic.twitter.com/VXmVHRK4ha

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) January 3, 2026

This next image, also from December 22, provides an even closer pre-strike view of the same area:

Next, we can see another close-up view, this time from after the raid, with the three long buildings clearly knocked out. The scale of the damage means that we cannot immediately identify what kind of equipment the buildings contained, although at least some military vehicles can be seen destroyed.

The same area is seen below in even greater detail, in an image dated December 22. At least six green-painted military trucks can be made out, as well as a handful of apparently civilian-looking semi-trailers, and around a dozen apparent cargo containers.

The next image provides a post-strike view of the same area, providing a better idea of the scale of destruction, consistent with an airstrike, presumably involving some kind of submunitions, since no obvious large craters are visible.

Now we move to another part of Fuerte Tiuna, namely the area that is partly surrounded by forest. The area is seen here as it appeared on December 22. The primary targets in this particular location are revealed as the two red-roofed storage buildings, one somewhat longer than the other. The shortened building reveals the presence of what look like relatively long trucks or possibly semi-trailers. These may well be associated with air defense systems, which we know were among the main targets of the U.S. airstrikes.

For comparison, this is the same partly wooded area as it appeared today, with extensive destruction evident. The two red buildings and their contents are entirely destroyed.

U.S. forces also targeted what are understood to be gate security buildings at the complex, which can be seen below in another image dated December 22. These buildings were located on a bend in the road, in a wooded area. They may also be another entrance into an underground area.

As of January 3, those same gate security buildings are entirely obliterated:

The final image we have received shows Palacio Miraflores, also in Caracas, as it appeared on January 1. This is the head office of the President of Venezuela. It is located on Urdaneta Avenue, in the Libertador Bolivarian Municipality, and is another, less likely option as to where the Venezuelan leader was seized.

The building was among the targets struck by U.S. forces, in line with early reporting of the operation. Soon after it had begun, videos emerged showing armored vehicles in position, protecting nearby roads. In the event, Maduro may well not have been home, but instead located in the presumed safer location at Fuerte Tiuna.

A V-150 “Commando” Armored Wheeled-Gun with the Venezuelan Army spotted near Miraflores Presidential Palace in the capital of Caracas. pic.twitter.com/ToYWjTRlMn

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) January 3, 2026

For now, we still await much more information to provide a better understanding of how Maduro was captured, and from where, exactly.

What is already clear is that this was a meticulously planned and extremely complicated operation involving multiple assets and agencies, fought across various domains, with many more facets of it still to be revealed.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

President Trump’s decision to send U.S. forces into Venezuela to capture President Nicolás Maduro and his wife and return them to the U.S. to face drug charges elicited condemnation from legal experts and other critics who argued that the operation — conducted without congressional or United Nations approval — clearly violated U.S. and international law.

Such criticism came from Democratic leaders, international allies and adversaries including Mexico, France, China and Russia, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and experts on international law and wartime powers.

“Nicolás Maduro was a thug and an illegitimate leader of Venezuela, terrorizing and oppressing its people for far too long and forcing many to leave the country. But starting a war to remove Maduro doesn’t just continue Donald Trump’s trampling of the Constitution, it further erodes America’s standing on the world stage and risks our adversaries mirroring this brazen illegal escalation,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) wrote on X.

A U.N. spokesman said Guterres was “deeply alarmed” by the U.S. operation and “deeply concerned that the rules of international law have not been respected.”

China’s foreign ministry said “such hegemonic acts of the U.S. seriously violate international law and Venezuela’s sovereignty,” while France’s foreign minister said the U.S. operation “contravenes the principle of the non-use of force that underpins international law.”

Republicans largely backed the president, with both House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) defending the operation as “decisive” and legally justified. However, other Republicans questioned Trump’s authority to act unilaterally, and raised similar concerns as Schiff about other world leaders citing Trump’s actions to justify their own aggression into neighboring nations.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) defended Trump’s actions as “great for the future of Venezuelans and the region,” but said he was concerned that “Russia will use this to justify their illegal and barbaric military actions against Ukraine, or China to justify an invasion of Taiwan.”

Trump defended the operation as a legitimate law enforcement action necessary to combat threats to the U.S. from Maduro, whom he accused of sending violent gang members and deadly drugs across the U.S. border on a regular basis.

“The illegitimate dictator Maduro was the kingpin of a vast criminal network responsible for trafficking colossal amounts of deadly and illicit drugs into the United States,” Trump said at a news conference. “As alleged in the indictment, he personally oversaw the vicious cartel known as Cartel de los Soles, which flooded our nation with lethal poison responsible for the deaths of countless Americans.”

However, Trump also made no secret of his interest in Venezuela’s oil. He said U.S. officials would be running Venezuela for the foreseeable future and ensuring that the nation’s oil infrastructure is rebuilt — to return wealth to the Venezuelan people, but also to repay U.S. businesses that lost money when Maduro took over the industry.

Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi announced that Maduro, who had previously been indicted in the U.S. in 2020, is now the subject of a superseding indictment charging him, his wife and several others with narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices and conspiracy to possess such weapons and devices.

“They will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts,” Bondi wrote on X.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio also framed the operation as a law enforcement effort, and defended the lack of advance notice to Congress.

“At its core, this was an arrest of two indicted fugitives of American justice, and the Department of War supported the Department of Justice in that job,” Rubio said. “It’s just not the kind of mission that you can pre-notify, because it endangers the mission.”

Trump said Congress could not be notified in advance because “Congress will leak, and we don’t want leakers.”

Michael Schmitt, an international law professor at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom and a professor emeritus of international law at the U.S. Naval War College, said Trump’s actions were a “clear violation” of international law.

He said the U.S. had no authority from the U.N. Security Council to conduct military operations in Venezuela, nor any legitimate justification to act in self-defense against an armed attack — which drug trafficking does not amount to.

Schmitt said the operation in Venezuela went far beyond a normal law enforcement action. But even if it were just a law enforcement action, he said, the U.S. would still lack legal authority under international law to engage in such activity on Venezuelan soil without the express permission of Venezuelan authorities — which it did not have.

“International law is clear. Without consent, you cannot engage in investigations or arrest or seizure of criminal property on another state’s territory,” he said. “That’s a violation of that state’s sovereignty.”

Because the operation was illegitimate from the start, the resulting occupation and interference in Venezuela’s oil industry are also unlawful, Schmitt said — regardless of whether the country’s nationalizing of U.S.-tied oil infrastructure was also unlawful, as some experts believe it was.

“That unlawfulness — of seizing U.S. business interests, nationalizing them, in a way that was not in accordance with the required procedures — is not a basis for using force,” Schmitt said.

Matthew Waxman, chair of the National Security Law Program at Columbia Law School, said that in the days ahead, he expects the Trump administration to try to justify its actions not just as a law enforcement operation, but “as part of a larger campaign to defend the United States against what it has characterized as an attack or invasion by Maduro-linked drug cartels.”

“All modern presidents have claimed broad constitutional power to use military force without congressional authorization, but that is always hotly contested. We’ll see if there’s much pushback in Congress in this case, which will probably depend a lot on how things now play out in Venezuela,” Waxman said. “Look at what happened last year in Iran: The president claimed the power to bomb nuclear program infrastructure, and when the operation didn’t escalate, congressional opponents backed off.”

Already on Saturday, some members of Congress were softening their initial skepticism.

Within hours of posting on X that he was looking forward “to learning what, if anything, might constitutionally justify this action in the absence of a declaration of war or authorization for the use of military force,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) had posted again, saying Rubio told him that the military action was “to protect and defend those executing the arrest warrant” for Maduro.

Such action “likely falls within the president’s inherent authority under Article II of the Constitution to protect U.S. personnel from an actual or imminent attack,” Lee added.

Others remained more skeptical.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said Trump’s remarks about taking over the country and controlling its oil reserves did not seem “the least bit consistent” with Bondi’s characterization of the operation as a law enforcement effort.

WASHINGTON — An audacious overnight raid by elite U.S. forces that seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from his bedroom in Caracas plunged the country into turmoil on Saturday, prompting international concern about Venezuela’s future and President Trump’s decision to take control of a sovereign nation.

Trump justified the stunning attack by accusing Maduro of sending “monsters” into the United States from Venezuelan prisons and claiming his involvement in the drug trade. But Trump focused more on Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, accusing the Venezuelan government of stealing U.S. oil infrastructure in the country decades prior and vowing that, under new U.S. government control, output would increase going forward.

The president spoke little about democracy in Venezuela, dismissing a potential role for its longstanding democratic opposition in running the country in the immediate aftermath of the operation. Instead, Trump said his team was in touch with Maduro’s hand-picked vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, whom he called “very gracious” and said was “essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to Make Venezuela Great Again.”

“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said. “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure and start making money for the country.”

“We’re not afraid of boots on the ground,” he added.

President Trump, alongside Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, speaks to the media on Saturday following U.S. military actions in Venezuela.

(Jim Watson / AFP via Getty Images)

The president did not offer a timeline for how long a transition would take, or which Venezuelan factions he would support to assume leadership.

Maria Corina Machado, a leader of the Venezuelan opposition and a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, said Saturday that she and her team were prepared to assume control of Venezuela.

“The hour of freedom has arrived,” she wrote on social media. “We are prepared to assert our mandate and take power.”

But in a surprising statement, Trump told reporters on Saturday that he did not believe Machado had the “respect” needed to run the country.

Trump instead focused on how the United States intends to run Venezuela in the immediate aftermath, saying American oil companies are ready to descend on the oil-rich country and begin “taking out tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground.”

“That wealth is going to the people of Venezuela and people from outside of Venezuela that used to be in Venezuela, and it goes to the United States of America, in the form of reimbursement for the damages caused to us by that country,” Trump said.

The operation began with explosions throughout Caracas, as more than 150 U.S. aircraft, including F-35 fighter jets, B-1 bombers and remotely piloted drones, cleared away Venezuelan air defenses to make way for the interdiction team, which included U.S. law enforcement officers. Electricity was cut throughout much of the city as the assault unfolded, Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters.

A Delta Force unit penetrated Maduro’s heavily fortified compound at 2:01 a.m. local time, capturing him and his wife as they attempted to escape into a safe room, U.S. officials said. Only one helicopter in the U.S. fleet was hit by Venezuelan fire, but was able to continue flying through the mission. No U.S. personnel were killed, Caine said.

Trump, who had ordered the CIA to begin monitoring Maduro’s movements months ago, watched as the operation unfolded from a room at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, “literally like I was watching a television show,” the president said in an interview with Fox News on Saturday morning.

From there, Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were taken to the USS Iwo Jima, stationed in the Caribbean alongside a third of the U.S. naval fleet, before the ship set course for New York, where Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said Maduro will face “the full wrath of American justice” over his alleged ties to illicit drug trafficking.

“If you would’ve seen the speed, the violence,” Trump told Fox. “Amazing job.”

In Caracas on Saturday, the mood was tense. Long lines formed at supermarkets and pharmacies as shoppers, fearful of uncertainty, stocked up on essentials.

Maduro’s supporters gathered throughout the city, many bearing arms, but seemed unsure of what to do next. Across Latin America, reaction to the U.S. operation was mixed. Right-leaning allies of Trump including Argentina’s Javier Milei and Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa backed the U.S. attack, while leftists broadly condemned it.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro criticized an “aggression against the sovereignty of Venezuela and Latin America” and said he was ordering the deployment of the Colombian armed forces along his nation’s 1,300-mile-long border with Venezuela.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said that the U.S. “crossed an unacceptable line” and compared the action to remove Maduro to “the darkest moments of [U.S.] interference in Latin America and the Caribbean.”

Trump, meanwhile, boasted that the U.S. operation in Venezuela would help reassert U.S. dominance in Latin America.

“American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again,” he said. “We are reasserting American power in a very powerful way in our home region.”

Caracas, January 3, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – US President Donald Trump has claimed that US Special Forces have captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro during a miltary operation against Venezuela in the early hours of Saturday.

In a social media message, Trump stated that the US had “successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela” and that Maduro and first lady Cilia Flores had been “captured and flown out of the country.”

Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez confirmed that Maduro and Flores’ whereabouts are unknown and demanded that the Trump administration provide proof of life.

US attacks began around 2 am local time, with loud explosions felt in the capital and nearby states.

Multiple military sites, including Fuerte Tiuna in Caracas, were reportedly bombed. Social media users reported low flying aircraft and active air defenses. The port in La Guaira was likewise among infrastructures hit.

Videos on social media also showed helicopters flying over the Venezuelan capital, with military analysts claiming that US Special Forces were deployed.

In a statement published on state outlets, the Venezuelan government accused the United States of carrying out a military attack against Venezuelan territory, describing it as a violation of the UN Charter and a threat to regional peace.

Authorities announced the activation of national defense plans, the deployment of the armed forces, and the declaration of a state of “External Commotion” nationwide. The Maduro government also called for popular mobilization and said it would raise formal complaints before international bodies, including the United Nations.

Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez issued a statement confirming US bombings in Caracas and surrounding areas.

Padrino reported that Venezuelan authorities are assessing damages and casualties from the attacks, claiming that US helicopters fired missiles on residential areas. The armed forces chief urged the international community to condemn Washington’s “criminal aggression.”

The Trump administration has escalated regime-change threats against Caracas im recent months and vowed to strike land targets.

[Story in development]