Socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro on Monday threatened Venezuela will “enter a period of armed struggle” if the United States “invades,” which he has repeatedly claimed to be an imminent danger.
Maduro issued the threat during an international press conference hosted in the capital city of Caracas, in which he accused the United States of allegedly creating “a narrative that is absurd, to say the least” through its ongoing efforts to combat drug cartels in Caribbean international waters.
“They [the United States] have wanted to move toward what they call maximum pressure, in this case military pressure, and in the face of maximum military pressure, we have declared maximum preparedness for the defense of Venezuela,” he said.
Maduro added that “if Venezuela were attacked, it would immediately enter a period of armed struggle in defense of the national territory and the history and people of Venezuela.”
The Venezuelan dictator and numerous members of his authoritarian regime have repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that the United States’ ongoing actions in the Caribbean are part of a plan to “invade” Venezuela and oust him from power. He has thus ordered Venezuela to be under a “maximum preparation” special period.
Maduro claimed to reporters on Monday that the United States’ actions are “the greatest threat our continent has seen in the last 100 years,” further condemning it as an “extravagant, unjustifiable, immoral, and absolutely criminal threat” allegedly comparable to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
Maduro is actively wanted by U.S. authorities on multiple narco-terrorism charges. He is believed to be a top figure of the Cartel of the Suns, an international cocaine trafficking organization run by the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and the Venezuelan military long accused of attempting to “flood” the United States with cocaine to harm its people.
In July, the United States included the Cartel of the Suns in its list of Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) entities. Several days later, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that the United States had doubled its bounty on information that can lead to Maduro’s arrest from $25 million to $50 million.
“The Maduro regime is not the legitimate government of Venezuela. It is a narco-terror cartel,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters in August.
President Donald Trump’s administration deployed a fleet of warships to the southern Caribbean Sea in August to target drug trafficking in the region and to curb the flow of drugs entering the United States. According to reports, the deployment features as many as 4,000 sailors and Marines prepared to intercept drug shipments in international waters.
Further reports detailed that the United States deployed the USS Lake Erie guided missile cruiser and the USS Newport News, a nuclear-powered attack submarine, to reinforce the initial deployment.
The presence of U.S. troops stationed in the Caribbean has drawn the ire of the Maduro regime, which deems it as a “threat” and has gone as far as to denounce it at the United Nations and at CELAC, a regional “U.S.-free” bloc. In both instances, the regime urged that the United States stop its drug-fighting efforts in the region and withdraw its seaborn military presence.
Last week, Maduro sent a letter to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres expressing his concerns over the “escalation of aggressions” allegedly committed by the United States against Venezuela.
The Venezuelan dictator and members of his socialist regime have repeatedly denied all of the drug trafficking and Cartel of the Suns-related accusations. Maduro once again denied the accusations on Monday and instead accused U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio of seeking to “stain” Trump’s hands with blood with a purported “invasion” of Venezuela.
According to Maduro, who presented no evidence to substantiate his accusations, the United States’ foreign policy towards Latin America has become “Miamized” by purported extremists sectors in Miami and asserted that “threatening Venezuela is threatening the entire continent.”
“You [Trump] have to take care of yourself because Marco Rubio wants to stain his hands with South American, Caribbean, Venezuelan blood. They want to lead him into a bloodbath and stain his name forever with a massacre against the people of Venezuela,” Maduro said.
As part of his regime’s preparations against the United States’ purported “invasion” plans, Maduro recently ordered the deployment of 4.5 million members of the state militia, a renewable 30-day nationwide ban on drones, and the deployment of 15,000 security operatives to Venezuela’s border with Colombia, among other actions. In recent days, the Maduro regime launched a weekend enlistment campaign to bolster the militia’s ranks.
Despite the Maduro regime’s media apparatus claiming the enlistment drive was such an overwhelming success it required extending the campaign for an additional weekend, footage obtained from international and local independent media showed little to no civilian participation, leading to barren recruitment spots. Maduro claimed on Monday that the militia now has “8.2 million” registered Venezuelans among its ranks following the recent enlistment campaign.
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