The United States has made its latest move against Venezuela, the interception of a third oil tanker, according to reports released Sunday.
Officials who spoke anonymously to Reuters did not identify the vessel being intercepted or disclose the exact location of the operation.
The move is the latest escalation in the relationship between the US and Venezuelan dictator Nicholas Maduro.
It is also the third such interception by the US military, after President Donald Trump announced a ‘blockade’ of all oil tankers under sanctions entering and leaving Venezuela last week.
So far, the Trump administration’s drone strike campaign against Venezuelan boats have killed 95 people.
The White House claims these boats are ferrying illegal drugs to the US at the direction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his government. No evidence has been provided to the public to substantiate allegations of Maduro’s involvement.
Tensions have escalated between the two nations in recent months, and some members of Congress have pushed for the US to get directly involved in a conflict with Venezuela.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth appeared on Capitol Hill earlier this week to brief Senators on strikes conducted by US military forces in the Caribbean on targets that the administration has described as Venezuelan drug boats.
A boat sails in front of a crude oil tanker anchored on Lake Maracaibo near Maracaibo, Zulia state, Venezuela, on December 18, 2025
South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham noted after one of those Tuesday briefings that Hegseth and Rubio did not provide details about what the White House’s plan is for dealing with Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro.
‘It was confusing… I want to know what’s going to happen next. Is it the policy to take Maduro down? It should be if it’s not,’ Graham said at the time.
Oklahoma Senator James Lankford, another Republican, told CNN State of the Union host Kasie Hunt on Sunday that he would support regime change in Venezuela, but did not commit to providing US arms or boots on the ground in the country.
‘I would tell you, the United States’ position for now six years, I believe, has been that [Maduro] is not the recognized leader of Venezuela,’ Lankford told Hunt.
‘We have supported the opposition leaders, the past two opposition leaders in Venezuela. We put sanctions on them,’ he added.
When asked about providing boots on the ground and arms in the country, Lankford said ‘arms is a different issue. That’s a very different issue in that case. We — if you break it, you buy it,’
‘We have seen that when we pushed out the leadership in Libya, and it’s just a collapsed, fail state at this point,’ he also noted, before concluding by saying that ‘Venezuela is destabilizing the entire Western Hemisphere,’ and that America ‘should not allow that to happen.’
Democrat Senator Tim Kaine, however, said that despite his previous criticism of Maduro being an illegitimate leader, the US should not be pursuing a regime change.
Instead, Kaine told NBC’s Meet The Press moderator Kristen Welker that sanctions and other tools should be used to punish Maduro, adding that ‘we definitely should not be waging war without a vote of Congress.’
