Wendy Schiller, Professor of Political Science at Brown University, discusses the US’s seizure of a sanctioned ship off the Venezuela coast, President Trump’s latest approval rating drop, and the outlook for midterm elections.
US forces intercepted and seized a sanctioned oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, marking a serious escalation of tensions between the two countries.
“We’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela — large tanker, very large, largest one ever seized, actually,” President Donald Trump said at the White House. “And other things are happening.”
A senior Trump administration official referred to the ship as “a stateless vessel” that was last docked in Venezuela. Bloomberg News was first to report the seizure.
The US action may make it much harder for Venezuela to export its crude, as other shippers are now likely to be more reluctant to load its cargoes. Most of the nation’s oil goes to China, usually through intermediaries, at steep discounts owing to sanctions risk. Brent futures edged higher after the news.
Read more: What Trump’s Saber Rattling Means for Venezuela’s Oil
A few hours later, US Attorney General Pam Bondi posted a video on X showing heavily armed forces descending to the ship’s deck from a Black Hawk helicopter, in a standard commando-style tactic called “fast roping.”
“For multiple years, the oil tanker has been sanctioned by the United States due to its involvement in an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organizations,” she wrote.
It was unclear from the video whether the personnel involved were members of the Coast Guard or US special operations forces.
Venezuela in a statement labeled the seizure a “blatant theft” and an “act of piracy,” adding the country would defend its sovereignty and natural resources “with absolute determination.”
“The true reasons for the aggression against Venezuela have finally been revealed,” the statement read. “It was always about our natural resources, our oil.”
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