President Trump on Tuesday ordered a “complete blockade” on sanctioned oil tankers going to and from Venezuela, an escalation of his administration’s monthslong pressure campaign against Nicolás Maduro, the leader of Venezuela.
“Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media. “It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before.”
The move could hobble Venezuela’s oil exports, which are the lifeblood of the country’s economy. Venezuela relies entirely on tankers to export its oil to world markets. There were more than 30 vessels operating in Venezuela earlier this month that had been sanctioned by the United States, according to the independent tracking service Tanker Trackers.
Last Wednesday, the United States seized a tanker in the Caribbean Sea that was carrying Venezuelan oil for Cuba and China. A federal judge had issued a warrant for the seizure based on the fact that the tanker had recently transported oil from Iran.
The U.S. military has been building up a large naval force in the Caribbean in recent months, and Mr. Trump has threatened strikes inside Venezuela. Since September, the U.S. military has been carrying out airstrikes on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, many of them near Venezuela, in a campaign that has killed at least 95 people in 25 attacks.
Mr. Trump has said those attacks are aimed at stopping drug trafficking to the United States. But Venezuela is not a drug producer, and the cocaine that transits through the country and the waters around it is generally bound for Europe. Many legal experts say that the attacks are illegal and that the military is killing civilians.
Behind the scenes, Trump administration officials have also focused intently on Venezuela’s oil reserves, the largest in the world.
In his social media announcement on Tuesday, Mr. Trump wrote in all capital letters that he was ordering a “a total and complete blockade,” which by itself would have been a substantial step. In international law, a blockade prevents all vessels from entering and leaving the ports of an enemy country during an armed conflict. But Mr. Trump added the qualifier “of all sanctioned oil vessels,” which changed the meaning.
