A “large-scale strike” in Venezuela saw its President, Nicolás Maduro, apprehended and imprisoned in the United States with his wife, Cilia Flores, over the weekend. He is facing drugs and weapons charges.
Following the operation, Donald Trump said the US would “run” Venezuela before a transition took place. Politician Delcy Rodríguez has been named as the country’s interim leader.
But Mr Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio has suggested the US will not govern Venezuela day-to-day, other than enforcing an existing “oil quarantine”. But the US President reiterated on Sunday night that “we’re in charge”. Meanwhile, Ms Rodriguez invited the Republican president “to collaborate”.
“We’re going to run it, fix it,” Mr Trump told reporters.
Mr Rubio told CBS: “And so that’s the sort of control the president is pointing to when he says that.”
He added: “We continue with that quarantine, and we expect to see that there will be changes, not just in the way the oil industry is run for the benefit of the people, but also so that they stop the drug trafficking.”
Maduro and Flores face charges of participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy. Maduro is due to make his first appearance today in Manhattan’s federal court.
He and other Venezuelan officials were indicted in 2020, with the US Justice Department releasing a new indictment of Mr Maduro and his wife that alleged his administration was a “corrupt, illegitimate government” fueled by a drug-trafficking operation that transported cocaine to the US.
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The US does not recognise Maduro as Venezuela’s leader.
Mr Rubio insisted that the US’s actions are not comparable to those taken by the country in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He said: “The whole foreign policy apparatus thinks everything is Libya, everything is Iraq, everything is Afghanistan,” Mr Rubio said.
“This is not the Middle East. And our mission here is very different. This is the Western Hemisphere.”
Trump’s foreign policy lead also suggested the US would give Mr Maduro’s subordinates now in charge of Venezuela time to govern, saying: “We’re going to judge everything by what they do.”