Dec. 1 (UPI) — President Donald Trump plans to host a White House meeting Monday evening about Venezuela as the president increases pressure on the country and its President Nicholas Maduro.
Important Cabinet and security team members will join the meeting, scheduled for 5 p.m., including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.
The U.S. military has sent more than a dozen warships and 15,000 troops to the region. The Pentagon has called the move “Operation Southern Spear.” Since Sept. 2, the United States has also struck multiple boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific that it claims were drug smuggling boats, killing about 80 people.
In a recent phone call, Trump reportedly gave Maduro an ultimatum to step down, but he said no and demanded a “global amnesty” for himself and his allies, The Guardian reported. The president confirmed the call on Sunday, but didn’t provide details. The call is believed to have happened on Nov. 21.
“I wouldn’t say it went well or badly, it was a phone call.”
But sources told the Miami Herald that Trump said, “You can save yourself and those closest to you, but you must leave the country now,” offering safe passage for Maduro, his wife and his son, but “only if he agreed to resign right away.”
Maduro immediately declined and reportedly demanded worldwide immunity from prosecution and that he would step down from his position but wanted to keep control of the military.
Maduro has reached out to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries for help with the president’s “growing and illegal threats,” Al Jazeera reported.
Maduro sent a letter to his fellow members of OPEC on Sunday accusing the United States of trying to seize Venezuela’s oil reserves, which are the world’s largest.
“I hope to count on your best efforts to help stop this aggression, which is growing stronger and seriously threatens the balance of the international energy market, both for producing and consuming countries,” Maduro said, according to a copy published by Venezuela state broadcaster TeleSUR.
Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves, estimated at 303 billion barrels as of 2023. But it exported just $4.05 billion worth of crude oil in 2023, far below other major-oil producing countries, Al Jazeera reported. Part of the reason for this is that the U.S. in the first Trump administration sanctioned the country.
On Saturday, Trump said that Venezuela airspace is “closed in its entirety.”
“To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
Trump doesn’t have the legal authority to close Venezuelan airspace but that type of announcement is sometimes made before airstrikes are launched.
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