Why did Donald Trump attack Venezuela and take over Maduro?

“The United States will run Venezuela until a safe, appropriate and wise transition is achieved,” President Donald Trump said.

This comes after the U.S. military arrested Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in an airstrike on the country.

Maduro fled Venezuela with his wife and was indicted on drug charges in New York.

The airstrikes inside Venezuela come after a U.S. pressure campaign against Maduro’s government, which the Trump administration accuses of flooding the country with drugs and gangs.

This is what led to this moment.

Trump blames Nicolas Maduro for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants arriving in the United States.

They are among an estimated eight million Venezuelans estimated to have fled the country’s economic crisis and repression since 2013.

Without providing evidence, Trump accused Maduro of “emptying prisons and mental hospitals” and “forcing” prisoners to move to the United States.

President Trump has also focused on stopping the flow of drugs, particularly fentanyl and cocaine, into the United States.

He designated two Venezuelan criminal groups, Tren de Aragua and Cartel de los Soles, as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs), which he claimed were led by Maduro himself.

Analysts have pointed out that Cartel de los Soles is not a hierarchical group, but rather a term used to refer to corrupt officials who allowed cocaine to pass through Venezuela.

Trump also announced he would double the reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest and designate Maduro’s government as an FTO.

Maduro has strongly denied being a cartel leader and has accused the United States of using the “war on drugs” as an excuse to oust him and take control of Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.

Since President Trump began his second term in office in January last year, pressure on the Maduro government has intensified.

First, the Trump administration doubled the reward it offered for information leading to Maduro’s arrest.

Last September, U.S. forces began targeting ships accused of transporting drugs from South America to the United States.

Since then, there have been more than 30 attacks on such ships in the Caribbean and Pacific, killing more than 110 people.

The Trump administration claims it is involved in a non-international armed conflict with suspected drug traffickers whom it accuses of waging an irregular war against the United States.

Many legal experts say the strikes are not against “legitimate military targets.” The first attack on September 2 attracted special scrutiny because there were not one, but two attacks, and survivors of the first attack were killed in the second.

The former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court told the BBC that US military operations generally fall into the category of planned and systematic attacks against civilians in peacetime.

In response, the White House said it acted under the laws of armed conflict to protect the United States from cartels “that seek to bring poison to our shores and destroy American lives.”

In October, President Trump said he had authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela.

He also threatened ground attacks against what he described as “narco-terrorists.”

He said the first of those attacks was carried out on December 24, but gave few details, saying only that it targeted a “dock area” where boats were believed to be loading drugs.

Before Maduro’s arrest, President Trump repeatedly said Maduro was “not a friend of the United States” and that “it would be wise for him to go.”

He also stepped up financial pressure on Maduro by declaring a “total naval blockade” of all authorized oil tankers entering or leaving Venezuela. Oil is the Maduro government’s main source of foreign revenue.

The United States has also deployed a large military presence in the Caribbean aimed at stopping the flow of fentanyl and cocaine into the United States.

The unit not only targeted ships accused of drug smuggling, but also played a key role in the U.S. naval blockade.

Counter-drug experts say Venezuela plays a relatively small role in global drug trafficking, acting as a transit country for drugs produced elsewhere.

Neighboring Colombia is the world’s largest producer of cocaine, but most of it is thought to enter the United States through routes other than Venezuela.

According to a 2020 U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) report, it is estimated that nearly three-quarters of cocaine entering the United States is trafficked through the Pacific Ocean, with only a small percentage arriving via speedboats from the Caribbean.

Most of the early attacks carried out by the United States were in the Caribbean, but recent attacks have been concentrated in the Pacific.

In September, President Trump told U.S. military leaders that the targeted boats were “piled with bags of white powder, mostly fentanyl and other drugs.”

Fentanyl is a synthetic drug that is 50 times more potent than heroin and has become the leading cause of opioid overdose deaths in the United States.

On December 15, President Trump signed an executive order designating fentanyl a “weapon of mass destruction,” claiming that fentanyl is “closer to a chemical weapon than a narcotic.”

However, fentanyl is produced primarily in Mexico and reaches the United States almost exclusively by land via the southern border.

Venezuela was not mentioned in DEA’s 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment as a source of fentanyl smuggled into the United States.

Nicolás Maduro rose to prominence under leftist President Hugo Chávez and the leadership of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).

Maduro, a former bus driver and union leader, has served as president since 2013, succeeding Chavez.

During the 26 years that Chávez and Maduro were in power, their political parties controlled key institutions, including the National Assembly, the judiciary, and the electoral commission.

In 2024, Maduro was declared the winner of the presidential election, despite a landslide victory for his candidate, Edmundo González, according to voting results collected by the opposition.

González replaced main opposition leader Maria Corina Machado on the ballot after she was barred from running for public office.

She won the Nobel Peace Prize in October “for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”

Machado defied the travel ban and went into hiding for months before heading to Oslo in December to collect his award.

She said she planned to return to Venezuela, which would put her at risk of arrest as Venezuelan authorities declare her a “fugitive.”

The United States has deployed 15,000 troops and various aircraft carriers, guided-missile destroyers, and amphibious assault ships to the Caribbean.

Among the U.S. fleet is the USS Gerald Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier.

The US military helicopter reportedly took off from Venezuela on December 10 before US forces intercepted the oil tanker there.

The United States said the tanker was “used to transport oil subject to sanctions from Venezuela and Iran.” Venezuela defined this act as an act of ‘international piracy.’

Since then, the United States has targeted two additional oil tankers off Venezuela.

“The American fleet is still in place,” Trump said after Saturday’s strike.

Maduro has long accused the Trump administration of trying to oust him so the United States can control Venezuela’s oil wealth, pointing to comments Trump made after the United States seized its first oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast.

Asked by reporters what would happen to the tankers and their cargo, he said, “I think we’ll keep the oil.”

But U.S. officials have previously denied Venezuela’s claims that the move against Maduro’s government was an attempt to secure access to the country’s untapped oil reserves.

Venezuela has the world’s largest proven crude oil reserves, and revenues from the oil sector finance more than half of the government budget.

However, exports were hit by sanctions, lack of investment, and poor management by Venezuela’s state-run oil company.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), Venezuela produced only 0.8% of the world’s crude oil in 2023.

It currently exports about 900,000 barrels per day, with China by far the largest buyer.