Published On 3 Jan 2026
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Published On 3 Jan 2026

In a dramatic overnight military attack that followed months of rising tensions, United States President Donald Trump announced on Saturday morning that his country’s forces had bombed Venezuela and taken First Lady Cilia Flores and President Nicolas Maduro.
Venezuela’s government said that the US had struck three states apart from the capital, Caracas, while neighbouring Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro released a longer list of places that he said had been hit.
There are few, if any, parallels between the operation and contemporary history. The US has previously captured foreign leaders, including Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Panama’s Manuel Noriega, but after invading those countries in declared wars.
What we know about the US attacks and the events that caused this escalation is as follows:
At least seven explosions were reported from Caracas, a city of more than three million people, at about 2am local time (06: 00 GMT), as residents said they heard low-flying aircraft. According to Lucia Newman, editor of Al Jazeera’s Latin America program, at least one of the explosions appeared to be coming from Fort Tiuna, Venezuela’s principal military base.
Earlier, the US Federal Aviation Administration had issued instructions to American commercial airlines to stay clear of Venezuelan airspace.
As soon as the explosions occurred, Maduro declared a state of emergency, naming the US as the perpetrator of the attacks, claiming that it had struck Caracas as well as the nearby states of Miranda, Aragua, and La Guaira.
The US embassy in Bogota, Colombia, referred to the reports of the explosions and asked American citizens to stay out of Venezuela, in a statement. However, the diplomatic mission did not confirm US involvement in the attacks. That came more than three hours after the bombings, from Trump.

Trump claimed in a post on his Truth Social platform that the US had “successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who has been captured and flown out of the country along with his wife, shortly after 09:00 GMT.”
Venezuela has not yet confirmed that Maduro was taken by US troops — but it also has not denied the claim.
Trump claimed that the attack was carried out with US law enforcement, but he did not specify who was in charge of it.
Trump announced that there would be a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida at 11am local time (16: 00 GMT) on Friday, where more details would be revealed.

While neither the US nor Venezuelan authorities have pinpointed locations that were struck, Colombia’s Petro, in a social media post, listed a series of places in Venezuela that he said had been hit.
They include:

Trump has claimed that Maduro is responsible for the Venezuelan president’s involvement in the Tren de Aragua gang, which Washington has labeled a foreign terrorist organization in recent months.
But his own intelligence agencies have said that there is no evidence that Maduro is linked to Tren de Aragua, and US data shows that Venezuela is not a major source of contraband narcotics entering the country.
The US military launched a number of strikes on alleged narcotics-carrying ships in the Caribbean Sea in September. More than 100 people have been killed in at least 30 such boat bombings, but the Trump administration is yet to present any public evidence that there were drugs on board, that the vessels were travelling to the US, or that the people on the boats belonged to banned organisations, as the US has claimed.
The US’s largest military deployment in the Caribbean Sea, spearheaded by the USS Gerald Ford, the largest aircraft carrier in the world, came just as the US made its biggest military deployment in the area in at least ten years.
In December, the US hijacked two ships carrying Venezuelan oil, and has since imposed sanctions on multiple companies and their tankers, accusing them of trying to circumvent already stringent American sanctions against Venezuela’s oil industry.
Then, last week, the US attacked a “dock” in Venezuela where Trump claimed drugs were loaded onto boats.

Trump has so far portrayed his military and pressure tactics against Venezuela and the Caribbean Sea as being motivated by a desire to stop the flow of dangerous drugs into the US.
But he has increasingly also sought Maduro’s departure from power, despite a phone call in early December that the Venezuelan president described as “cordial”.
Venezuela’s oil reserves, which are unmatched anywhere in the world, totaled 303 billion barrels (Bbbl) in 2023, have been the subject of more senior aides of the US president’s aides in recent weeks.
On December 17, Trump’s top adviser Stephen Miller claimed that the US had “created the oil industry in Venezuela” and that the South American country’s oil should therefore belong to the US.
However, international law is clear: sovereign states, in this case Venezuela, own the natural resources within their borders under the principle of Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources (PSNR), despite US companies being the first to drill for oil in Venezuela in the early 1900s.
Venezuela nationalised its oil industry in 1976. Venezuela has a tense relationship with the US since Hugo Chavez, Maduro’s mentor and predecessor, took office in 1999.
Still,  , one major US oil company, Chevron, continues to operate in the country.
The Venezuelan opposition, led by Maria Corina Machado, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has publicly demanded that the US step in and help with Venezuela’s new dispensation.
Oil has long been Venezuela’s biggest export, but US sanctions since 2008 have crippled formal sales and the country today earns only a fraction of what it once did.

Vice President Delcy Rodrigues told state-owned VTV that Maduro and First Lady Flores had lost contact with Venezuela and had not received any information about their whereabouts, even though Venezuela has not confirmed their whereabouts.
She demanded that the US provide “proof of life” of Maduro and Flores, and added that Venezuela’s defences were activated.
The Venezuelan government previously stated in a statement that it “rejects, repudiates, and denounces” the attacks.
It said that the aggression threatens the stability of Latin America and the Caribbean, and places the lives of millions of people at risk. It claimed that the US had attempted to impose a colonial war and to impose a regime change, and that these efforts would fail.

In a statement posted on X, Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that Maduro and his wife have been indicted in the Southern District of New York.
According to Bondi, Maduro has been accused of “Narco-Terrorism Conspiracy” and “Cocaine Importation Conspiracy” among other crimes. It was unclear if his wife is facing the same charges, but she referred to the Maduro couple as “alleged international narco traffickers”.
She continued, “They will soon face the full wrath of American justice in American courts.”
Mike Lee, a Republican senator from Utah, earlier posted on X that he had spoken to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who had told him that Maduro had been “arrested by US personnel to stand trial on criminal charges in the United States, and that the kinetic action we saw tonight was deployed to protect and defend those executing the arrest warrant”.
US prosecutors charged Maduro with operating a cocaine-trafficking network in 2020.
But US officials remain silent on the illegality of Maduro’s capture and the attacks on Venezuela, which violate UN charter principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity of nations.
Close Maduro allies, Cuba and Russia, both condemned the attack. Colombia, which neighbours Venezuela and has itself been in Trump’s crosshairs, said that it “rejects the aggression against the sovereignty of Venezuela and of Latin America” – even though Bogota itself does not recognise Maduro’s government.
Most other countries have so far responded to US aggression with a relatively muted tone.

If Maduro has been allegedly sucked out of Venezuela by the US, then Rodriguez, the vice president, is constitutionally the one in charge.
Other senior leaders seen as close to Maduro and influential within the Venezuelan hierarchy include Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, National Assembly President — and Delcy’s brother — Jorge Rodriguez, and military chief General Vladimir Padrino López.
However, it’s not clear whether Chavez and Maduro’s meticulous construction of the state apparatus will survive without it.
“Maduro’s capture is a devastating moral blow for the political movement started by Hugo Chavez in 1999, which has devolved into a dictatorship since Nicolas Maduro took power”, Carlos Pina, a Venezuelan analyst based in Mexico, told Al Jazeera.
Machado could be a front-liner contender to take Venezuela’s top job if the US does engineer a regime change, despite the uncertainty of how well-known that might be. In a November poll in Venezuela, 55 percent of participants were opposed to military intervention in their country, and an equal number were opposed to economic sanctions against Venezuela.
According to Christopher Sabatini, a senior research fellow for Latin America, the US and North America program at Chatham House, Trump might be mistaken if he believes the US can survive the chaos that will likely follow in a post-Maduro Venezuela.
“Assuming even if there is regime change – of some sort, and it’s by no means clear even if it does happen that it will be democratic – the US’s military action will likely require sustained US engagement of some sort”, he said.

Nicolas Maduro, president of Venezuela, and his wife have been captured by the US. Teresa Bo from Al Jazeera examines his political career and how his relationship with the US came to define his rule.
Published On 3 Jan 2026

At least 10 people have been killed in the demonstrations over Iran’s ailing economy as a result of the 86-year-old Khamenei’s first comments on Saturday.
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The demonstrations continue, and President Trump has threatened Iran on Friday that if Tehran “violently kills peaceful protesters,” Washington “will come to their rescue.”
Trump’s comments sparked an immediate, angry response from Iranian officials, especially in the wake of a massive US military attack on Venezuela and the alleged capture of its president Nicolas Maduro.
Amir Saeid Iravani, the UN Security Council president and the UN secretary-general, has written to Trump’s “unlawful threats” toward Tehran.
According to Ali Larijani, the Supreme National Security Council’s secretary, US interference “is equivalent to chaos across the entire region and the destruction of American interests.”
Since 2022, when the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody sparked nationwide demonstrations, the protests have grown to be the largest in Iran.
However, the protests have not yet reached as far-reaching and intense as those involving Amini’s death because she was ordered to remove her hijab or headscarf.
State television broadcast Khamenei’s remarks to an audience in Tehran that attempted to separate “rioters” from the concerns of protesting Iranians upset over the rial’s collapse.
The officials must talk to protesters, Khamenei said, “we talk to them.” Talking to rioters is not helpful, though. Rotors must be replaced, ” “
Without providing any proof, he reiterated a claim that Iranian officials have been repeatedly making that foreign powers like Israel or the US are promoting the protests. He also attributed Iran’s rial collapse to “the enemy.”
He claimed that “a number of people are chanting slogans against Islam, Iran, and the Islamic Republic” while being incited or hired by the enemy. The most important thing is this.
Khamenei added that the region needs and will be occupied by the US.
America must and will leave this region, he said, “with the determination of the region’s nations.”
Under reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s civilian government has been making an effort to talk to protesters.
Pezeshkian has acknowledged that the Iranian rial has quickly depreciated, so he must be careful not to underestimate his potential. The initial protests were prompted by that.
According to Iranian authorities, the protests have resulted in numerous clashes in several cities, which have resulted in several deaths and dozens of arrests.
Tehran has struggled to recover its economy since its June 2016 conflict with Israel, during which US bombs also target Iranian nuclear sites.
Iran recently stated that it was stopping enriching uranium at any location in Iran in an effort to show that it is still open to discussions over its atomic program in order to ease sanctions.

Delcy Rodriguez, Venezuela’s vice president, claims that Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores are unknown to the government.
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Rodriguez claimed that the government was looking for evidence that Maduro and Flores are still alive in an audio message that was broadcast on state television on Saturday.
Following numerous deadly attacks by US forces on what it claims are drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, as well as an attack on a docking area for alleged Venezuelan drug boats, the rapidly escalating developments come.
The US reportedly seizes Maduro, which brings back memories of earlier times when other leaders, such as former president Saddam Hussein and former military leader Manuel Noriega, were seized by the US.
In a second direct intervention in Latin America, the US invaded Panama in 1989, citing undemocratic practices, corruption, and the illegal drug trade as justifications for the US’s invasion.
Prior to its 1988 indictment of Noriega for drug smuggling in Miami, the US also indicts Maduro.
Prior to the operation, Noriega supported anti-US sentiment in the country by forcing Nicolas Ardito Barletta to resign in 1985, cancelled the elections in 1989, and supported the operation’s outcome.
The US’s largest combat mission since the Vietnam War was conducted in Panama at the time. The US government cited a number of reasons for the operation, including sending Noriega to the US to face drug-trafficking charges, to improve the situation of Panamanians.
However, Washington declared the general persona non grata when he started to show signs of being less obedient to regional US designs.
After being flown to the US, he was tried on the Miami indictment and held there until 2010, when he was required to be taken back to France to stand a second trial. Then, a year later, France sent him back to Panama.
Noriega passed away in Panama in 2017, where he was completing a sentence for his crimes.
Nine months after the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq began, Saddam Hussein was taken by US forces on December 13, 2003, based on false information that Baghdad had WMD in possession.
Similar to Noriega, Saddam had long been a key player in the Iraq-Iran war that resulted in the death of one million people in 1980.
In addition, the US asserted without justification that Saddam supported armed organizations like al-Qaeda in the run-up to the 2003 conflict.
However, the nation has never discovered any WMDs.
In a hole close to Tikrit, where Saddam was discovered hidden in a ditch.
He was tried in an Iraqi court and was given the death penalty, which led to his execution on December 30, 2006 by hanging for crimes against humanity.
Hernandez’ case in Honduras exemplifies what some observers claim is a US policy that is hypocritical.
In February 2022, Hernandez was only days away from leaving his position as president of his nation when he was kidnapped in his Tegucigalpa home during an operation carried out by US agents and Honduran forces.
He was extradited to the US in April 2022 for his alleged involvement in corruption and the illegal drug trade, and he received a 45-year prison sentence the same year.
However, US President Donald Trump pardoned Hernandez on December 1, 2025.

Saudi-backed forces are seizing new areas in Hadramout and heading towards the Yemeni city of Mukalla. As rival forces battle for control of southern Yemen, rival forces are preparing for escalating clashes with the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC).
Published On 3 Jan 2026