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Trump Escalates Venezuela Pressure With Oil Tanker Blockade

18 14
18.12.2025

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the United States’ pressure campaign on Venezuela, charges against a suspect in Australia’s Bondi Beach mass shooting, and abortion access across the European Union.

U.S. President Donald Trump ordered a “total and complete blockade” on Tuesday of all sanctioned oil tankers carrying crude into or out of Venezuela, accusing the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of using oil revenue to finance “Drug Terrorism, Human Trafficking, Murder, and Kidnapping.”

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the United States’ pressure campaign on Venezuela, charges against a suspect in Australia’s Bondi Beach mass shooting, and abortion access across the European Union.

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U.S. President Donald Trump ordered a “total and complete blockade” on Tuesday of all sanctioned oil tankers carrying crude into or out of Venezuela, accusing the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of using oil revenue to finance “Drug Terrorism, Human Trafficking, Murder, and Kidnapping.”

It is unclear how Trump will impose the order, including whether he will deploy the U.S. Coast Guard to intercept vessels, as he did last week with the seizure of the Skipper, a previously sanctioned oil tanker falsely flying a Guyana flag.

The Trump administration has previously insisted that the ongoing U.S. military campaign in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific is aimed at countering drug trafficking to the United States. That effort began in early September, with a double-tap U.S. military strike on an alleged drug-trafficking boat in the Caribbean that U.S. lawmakers and legal experts have suggested may have violated domestic and international law. Since then, the U.S. military has carried out 25 strikes on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing at least 95 people.

As part of this campaign, the White House has deployed thousands of troops and nearly a dozen warships, including an aircraft carrier, to the region. In November, the U.S. State Department

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