The planned meeting on Monday comes as the US military continues to increase assets in the Caribbean, Reuters news agency reports. That has raised concerns over a possible land invasion aimed at toppling the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, while Trump has sent mixed messages in recent days.
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Last week, the US President said a land campaign against criminal groups in Venezuela could begin “very soon”, which would be an escalation of the US military’s months-long attacks on alleged Venezuelan drug traffickers in international waters in the Caribbean.
Days earlier, the US had designated the Cartel de los Soles, which officials describe as a drug trafficking gang led by Maduro, as a “foreign terrorist organization” (FTO). Experts have pushed back at the characterization, saying that “Cartel de los Soles” traditionally referred to the loose network of corruption within the Venezuelan government.
In a Saturday post on his Truth social account, Trump said Venezuelan airspace should be considered “completely” closed, which some observers saw as a final preparation for military action.
But on Sunday, Trump told reporters not to read anything into the move.
Reporting from Washington, DC, on Monday, Al Jazeera’s chief US correspondent Alan Fischer said “no one knows” why Trump announced the airspace closure. He said US media reports indicated that the announcement occurred without Pentagon notification.
Fischer said, “When asked about it … on Air Force One, (Trump) said you shouldn’t read too much into it. But of course, that didn’t stop the speculation, because no-fly zones are usually put in place before some type of military operation.”
He said many observers in Washington read the threats and asset freeze as an attempt to force Maduro to flee the country before any military action was taken. Others have pointed to Trump’s past statements on Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, leading to concerns that he could wage a “war for oil”.
“Of course, in all of this, Donald Trump has to balance his MAGA (Make America Great Again) supporters because he campaigned on the fact that he would not get involved in what he called a senseless foreign war,” Fischer said.
Reporting from the US territory of Puerto Rico, which is the staging ground for the military’s Caribbean build-up, Al Jazeera’s Phil Lavelle said there had been a flurry of activity there, but it was difficult to understand whether an operation was imminent.
“We have about 15,000 or more military personnel in this part of the world as this preparation gets underway,” Lavelle said.
“We’ve obviously got maritime systems as well: We’ve got the USS Gerald F. Ford, which is the world’s largest aircraft carrier strike group, currently off the coast… Also, there’s the USS Winston S. Churchill and the USS Bainbridge,” he said.
Fresh investigation into boat attacks
The surge continues as the Trump administration faces new pressure over deadly attacks on alleged Venezuelan drug smugglers in international waters in the Caribbean.
Over the weekend, Republican and Democratic leaders on the U.S. House and Senate Armed Services committees announced they were increasing oversight of the attacks.
It comes after The Washington Post and CNN reported last week that US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a verbal order to kill everyone on board a boat suspected of drug smuggling from Venezuela.
Subsequently, military officials reportedly ordered a so-called “follow-on” attack on the ship after two men survived the first attack.
While legal scholars have long said that U.S. attacks on ships carrying alleged “narco-terrorists” in international waters may be illegal under both international and domestic law, the fact that the Secretary of Defense has explicitly ordered forces to kill all people on ships is on even more uncertain legal grounds.
In a letter, a group of former US military lawyers said the orders “if true” would amount to “war crimes, murder, or both”.
Responding to the report, Hegseth said that all military actions in the Caribbean were “in compliance with the law of armed conflict”.
He has since doubled down in defiance, posting on social media on Sunday a fake image of children’s character Franklin targeting boats with a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launcher.
Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Trump said that Hegseth denied ordering the killing.
“He didn’t say that and I believe him 100 percent,” he said.
On Monday, the White House confirmed that a second attack had taken place, with spokeswoman Carolyn Leavitt saying that Admiral Frank Bradley had ordered the follow-up attack.
“Bradley acted well within his authority and within the law and ensured that the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States was eliminated,” Leavitt told reporters. He described the attack as America’s “self-defense.”
Also on Monday, Venezuela’s National Assembly was scheduled to meet in an extraordinary session to debate creating a commission on strikes.
However, the meeting was adjourned till Tuesday without giving any reason.
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