Updates: Donald Trump says Venezuela airspace now closed as tensions surge

Here’s a comprehensive news story wrapping all the US-Venezuela tensions that escalated today.

For a timeline of 26 years of fraught US-Venezuela relations, see here.

And check out our dedicated Venezuela page here.

This live page is about to close. Here are the day’s main developments:

• US President Donald Trump declared the airspace above and surrounding Venezuela “closed in its entirety” in a post on his Truth Social platform.
• The statement comes as Trump’s administration piles pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s government with a major military deployment in the Caribbean that includes the world’s largest aircraft carrier.
• Venezuela has denounced Trump’s “colonialist threat”, calling it an “extravagant, illegal, and unjustified aggression”.
• Cuba has reaffirmed its support for Venezuela with a statement from the foreign minister describing Trump’s move as “an escalation of military aggression and psychological warfare”.
• The White House has not responded to questions about what Trump posted, and it remains unclear whether he’s announcing a new policy or simply reinforcing his campaign against Maduro.

In 2023, China was Venezuela’s second-largest trading partner, accounting for almost 10 percent of its total exports, half of which were petroleum coke.

In 2023, crude petroleum accounted for half of Venezuela’s exports. The US was Venezuela’s largest trading partner, buying half of Venezuela’s exports, mostly crude petroleum.

The US military has carried out at least 21 deadly strikes on vessels off Venezuela’s coast, in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean since September 2, marking the most intense US military activity in Latin America since the US invasion of Panama in 1989.

The strikes, conducted under the authority of the US Southern Command, have killed at least 83 people, according to statements by US President Donald Trump and senior US defence officials.

The map below shows the approximate locations of these attacks, according to data compiled by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data.

Most of the strikes occurred close to the Venezuelan coast and in international waters, raising questions about the legality of the US use of force, especially when no imminent threat was present.

Read more here.

The Reuters news agency in the last couple of hours has been reporting that officials at the Pentagon weren’t prepared for this. Effectively, what Donald Trump is doing is announcing a no-fly zone.

It takes a great deal of logistics, it takes a great deal of operational coordination, and it takes a lot of planning and resources. And while there’s a lot of US military in the area at the moment, it appears they were not geared up to start enforcing a no-fly zone.

Clearly, Venezuela is very angry and says what is happening here is very colonial, lacks respect for the country, and also for international law.

On social media, there are a number of people, particularly on the left, who are saying that Trump campaigned on no stupid foreign wars, and going into Venezuela would be exactly that. Surprisingly, they’re supported by a number of Trump’s own supporters.

One of the big things that stands out is, 24 hours ago, Trump announced he’s going to pardon the former Honduran president, who was convicted of smuggling 400 tonnes of cocaine into the United States. Many people would say Venezuela is nowhere near that size of operation.

The US armed forces dwarfs Venezuela’s, which is debilitated by a lack of training, low wages, and deteriorating equipment.

Although President Maduro, in power since 2013, has enjoyed military loyalty by placing officers in government roles, rank-and-file soldiers earn just $100 a month in local currency, about one-fifth of what studies say an average family needs to meet its basic needs.

Sources say desertions, which already occur in many units, could increase in the event of a US military attack.

The primary experience of Venezuelan troops in recent years has been confronting unarmed civilians during street protests.  Maduro has said there are eight million civilians training in militias.

The military’s equipment – much of it Russian-made and decades-old – is lacking. Caracas bought some 20 Sukhoi fighter jets in the 2000s, but they are considered lacking in comparison with US aircraft. Venezuela’s Russian-made helicopters, tanks, and shoulder-fired missiles are also outdated.

Venezuela is home to the largest known reserves of oil estimated at 303 billion barrels (Bbbl) as of 2023.

However, according to data from the Observatory of Economic Complexity, Venezuela exported just $4.05bn worth of crude oil in 2023. This is far below other major exporters, including Saudi Arabia ($181bn), the US ($125bn) and Russia ($122bn).

Venezuela’s oil reserves are concentrated primarily in the Orinoco Belt, a vast region in the eastern part of the country that stretches across roughly 55,000sq km (21,235sq miles).

The Orinoco Belt holds extra heavy crude oil, which is highly viscous and dense, making it much harder and more expensive to extract than conventional crude. Producing oil from this region requires advanced techniques, such as steam injection and blending with lighter crudes to make it marketable.

The White House has not responded to questions about what President Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, and it’s unclear whether he is announcing a new policy or simply reinforcing his campaign against Venezuela’s Maduro.

The Republican president addressed his call for an aerial blockade to “Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers” – not Maduro.

US military forces have conducted bomber flights near Venezuela and the USS Gerald R Ford, its most advanced aircraft carrier, was sent to the area.

The Ford rounds off the largest buildup of US firepower in the region in generations. With its arrival, the Operation Southern Spear mission includes nearly a dozen naval ships and about 12,000 sailors and marines.

It remains unclear how much genuine public support Nicolas Maduro commands, despite being declared the winner in Venezuela’s latest election.

The vote handed Maduro another term and delivered sweeping gains for his ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), according to official results. But analysts say the numbers do not necessarily reflect broad backing.

The National Electoral Council said PSUV and its allies won more than 80 percent of the vote with turnout at about 42 percent. The opposition rejected that result saying the process was neither free nor fair.

Key figures were barred from running – including Edmundo Gonzalez, whom the US and several other countries recognise as the winner of the July 2024 presidential election. “We witnessed an event that attempted to disguise itself as an election, but failed to deceive the country or the world,” Gonzalez said at the time.

Low turnout and the exclusion of major opposition parties have made it difficult to gauge Maduro’s real domestic support, especially as tensions with Washington continue to rise.

The United States’s deadly “counter-narcotics mission” off Venezuela’s coast hinges on an unproven drug-smuggling narrative – a familiar pretext for regime change, and one the mainstream media have been quick to echo.

Meanwhile, Venezuelans face escalating repression at home. Watch below:

US warplanes are “constantly” patrolling the international airspace near Venezuela during “counternarcotics operations”, a news report says.

The Washington Post quoted an unnamed US official making the comments as President Trump intensified his threat against Venezuela’s leader Nicolas Maduro by saying the country’s airspace “should be considered closed in its entirety”.

Trump provided no more details leaving observers wondering exactly what he intends to do. Analysts say the move could signal the launch of US air strikes on targets in Venezuela.

Others, however, suggest it could be Trump’s way of forcing concessions from Maduro in negotiations to prevent an attack on the oil-rich South American country.

Adolfo Franco, a lawyer and Republican strategist, predicts that a US military intervention is likely to come soon against Venezuela.

“The US has declared no-fly zones in the past … What that means is that military activity is imminent, and you enter that airspace at your own risk. So, therefore, it has a deterrent effect, a de facto practical effect of closing the airspace for commercial travel because the risks are just too high,” Franco told Al Jazeera.

“It’s unclear what Trump will do, although I believe something will come from this. It’s just too much has happened,” Franco said.

“The Venezuelan regime is a dictatorship. We don’t recognise it as legitimate. Most Western countries do not. We believe the elections were fraudulent, and we believe most Venezuelans are opposed to that regime,” he added.

“Therefore, any kind of military action by the United States will probably cause some chaos and unrest and lead … to the desired change from within.”

Questions continue to be raised about the real motivations of the United States as it cites “narco-trafficking” for its military threats against Venezuela with some observers noting it could be more about regime change than stopping the flow of drugs.

One example of that is President Donald Trump saying on Friday he will pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez.

In March last year, Hernandez was convicted in a US court of conspiring to import cocaine into the US and sentenced him to 45 years in prison.

Trump has sought to apply pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, ordering a series of strikes against boats suspected of carrying drugs, and building up the US military presence in the Caribbean with warships – including its most advanced aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R Ford.

The US has accused Maduro of leading a major drug cartel that is bringing in drugs into the country, an allegation Venezuela’s government denies.