Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Sunday that the Trump administration was keeping a military “quarantine” in place around Venezuela to prevent oil tankers on a U.S. sanctions list from entering and leaving the country in order to exert leverage on the new leadership there.
“That remains in place, and that’s a tremendous amount of leverage that will continue to be in place until we see changes, not just to further the national interest of the United States, which is No. 1, but also that lead to a better future for the people of Venezuela,” he said in an interview with “Face the Nation” on CBS News.
Mr. Rubio’s was responding to a question about how the U.S. government planned to “run” Venezuela, as President Trump asserted it would in a news conference on Saturday.
Mr. Rubio said the large U.S. naval force that Mr. Trump massed in the Caribbean Sea near Venezuela over recent months would remain in place to enforce the quasi-blockade, with the intention of “paralyzing that portion of how the regime, you know, generates revenue.” And he added that Mr. Trump could put U.S. troops on the ground in Venezuela beyond the recent operation to extract Mr. Maduro, if it served American interests.
The president “does not feel like he is going to publicly rule out options that are available for the United States,” Mr. Rubio said.
As Mr. Trump did in his news conference on Saturday, Mr. Rubio focused in the interview on oil as the main prize for the United States in its operation against Nicolás Maduro, the leader of the country who is now in detention with his wife, Cilia Flores, in New York City. Mr. Trump said on Saturday that “we’re going to be taking out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground.”
On Sunday, Mr. Rubio said that the oil industry in Venezuela, which is controlled by the government and under U.S. sanctions, needed to be “reinvested in.”
“It’s obvious they do not have the capability to bring up that industry again,” he said. “They need investment from private companies who are only going to invest under certain guarantees and conditions.”
Mr. Rubio’s remarks and Mr. Trump’s earlier comments suggested that the administration intends to push the acting leader of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, a vice president under Mr. Maduro, to allow American companies to invest and operate in the country under favorable conditions.
For years, Chevron has been the only U.S. oil company operating in the country, in several joint ventures with the state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., or PDVSA. The Biden and second Trump administrations gave Chevron a license to operate there as an exception to sanctions imposed on Venezuela’s oil industry by Mr. Trump in his first term.
U.S. forces boarded two oil tankers last month that were transporting oil from Venezuela to Asia. The first one, the Skipper, was on a Treasury Department sanctions list for taking oil to Iran, and a federal court had granted the Justice Department a warrant to seize the tanker based on the history with Iranian oil. The second one, the Centuries, was not on the department’s sanctions list.
For days, the U.S. Coast Guard has been pursuing another tanker on the sanctions list, the Bella 1, which had been going to Venezuela to pick up oil. That tanker changed its flag to that of Russia and renamed itself the Marinera during the trans-Atlantic pursuit, and the Russian foreign ministry told the U.S. government formally on Dec. 31 to stop chasing the tanker.
The Trump administration has said it hopes to work with Ms. Rodríguez, and Mr. Rubio deflected questions on Sunday about why it was not supporting any leadership bid by Venezuela’s main opposition figures.
He was in contact throughout last year with figures in the opposition movement. And as a senator from Florida, he signed a formal letter of support for María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader, to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. She was awarded that prize last year, which frustrated Mr. Trump, who had been openly campaigning to win it himself.
On Saturday, Mr. Trump said in his news conference that Ms. Machado lacked the “respect” within Venezuela to govern, even though international election experts say a candidate she supported, Edmundo González, beat Mr. Maduro in a 2024 election by a wide margin. In January 2025, right after starting his new job, Mr. Rubio spoke with both Ms. Machado and Mr. González, whom he called the “rightful president,” and ”reaffirmed the United States’ support for the restoration of democracy in Venezuela,” according to a State Department summary of the call.
On Saturday, Ms. Rodríguez sounded a defiant tone, denouncing the U.S. raid against Mr. Maduro and saying he was the country’s rightful president. When asked on Sunday about whether the United States could work with her, Mr. Rubio said: “We’re going to make an assessment on the basis of what they do, not what they say publicly in the interim, not what we know of what they’ve done in the past in many cases, but what they do moving forward,” he said. “So we’re going to find out.”
Mr. Rubio also said there were no immediate plans to send U.S. troops into Venezuela to seize other officials who have also been indicted by the U.S. Justice Department on drug trafficking charges, as Mr. Maduro was in 2020, during the first Trump administration. He said that had not been a consideration in planning for the operation to take Mr. Maduro.
Mr. Rubio said that the United States planned to ensure that Venezuela stopped trafficking drugs. The Trump administration stated last year that curbing “narco-terrorism” from Venezuela was a main reason for its campaign against the country, including legally questionable military strikes on boats that have killed more than 100 people.
However, Venezuela’s role in the drug trade is limited. Mr. Maduro allowed some Colombian cocaine producers to send their product through Venezuela, mainly to Europe, but the country does not produce fentanyl, which has long been Mr. Trump’s stated focus.
In another interview on Sunday, on “This Week” on ABC News, Mr. Rubio said that congressional authorization of the military operation to seize Mr. Maduro was not necessary because it was “a law enforcement operation” rather than an “invasion.” He also said notifying members of Congress ahead of the operation would have led to leaks of the military plans and endangered American soldiers.
Minho Kim contributed reporting.
Edward Wong reports on global affairs, U.S. foreign policy and the State Department for The Times.
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