United States President Donald Trump had ordered the deployment of F-35 stealth fighter jets to Puerto Rico amid a report he is weighing options for strikes targeting drug cartels operating inside Venezuela, according to news organisations.
Sources in the US told news agencies on Friday that 10 of the advanced fighter jets are being sent to an airfield in Puerto Rico as part of operations against Latin American drug cartels designated “narco-terrorist” organisations by Washington.
American broadcaster CNN, citing multiple sources, reported on Friday that the Trump administration is considering attacks on drug trafficking groups inside Venezuela, which would mark a dramatic escalation in already surging tensions between Washington and Caracas.
Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro called on Friday for the US to “abandon its plan of violent regime change in Venezuela and in all of Latin America”.
The US should “respect sovereignty, the right to peace, to independence,” Maduro said.
“I respect Trump. None of the differences we’ve had can lead to a military conflict,” he said.
“Venezuela has always been willing to converse, to dialogue.”
Maduro has mobilised Venezuela’s military, which numbers about 340,000 soldiers, amid weeks of US threats, and reservists and militia members, which he claimed exceed eight million.
“If Venezuela were attacked, it would immediately enter a period of armed struggle,” Maduro told reporters earlier this week.
Trump said on Friday that the US was “not talking” about regime change in Venezuela.
“But we are talking about the fact that you had an election which was a very strange election, to put it mildly,” Trump said, referring to Maduro’s return to office in January following claims of vote irregularities in the country’s presidential election.
Trump: ‘They’ll be shot down’
The reported deployment of F-35 warplanes comes on top of a US naval build-up in the southern Caribbean, where American warships and a large number of Marines, as well as a nuclear-powered fast-attack submarine, have been deployed just outside Venezuelan territorial waters.
On Thursday, the US Department of Defense accused Venezuela of carrying out a “highly provocative” move by sending two F-16 fighter planes to fly near the guided-missile destroyer USS Jason Dunham.
The Dunham is one of at least seven US warships deployed to the Caribbean, carrying more than 4,500 sailors and Marines.
Trump later warned Venezuela that the US military had authorisation to shoot down the jets if ship commanders believe they pose a threat to their vessels, saying: “If they do put us in a dangerous position, they’ll be shot down.”
Venezuela’s Communications Ministry did not respond to a request for comment about the reported F-35s deployment or US claims that Venezuelan fighter jets flew over a US warship.
On Tuesday, US forces blew up a speedboat in the Caribbean that Trump said belonged to Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan criminal organisation that he has tied to Maduro.
Trump said 11 people were killed in the US attack that Caracas labelled an “extrajudicial killing” of civilians, and which law experts have questioned regarding its legality.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio this week defended Trump’s military approach towards what Washington calls “narco-terrorist” groups.
“What will stop them is when you blow them up, when you get rid of them,” Rubio said of drug cartels, while in Mexico on Wednesday.
“If you’re on a boat full of cocaine or fentanyl headed to the United States, you’re an immediate threat to the United States.”
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