The US’s first military action against Venezuelan soil since it began targeting Venezuelan shipping in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific in September 2025 was confirmed by US President Donald Trump this week.
Speaking to reporters as he met in Florida with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump said there had been “an explosion in Venezuela”, at a facility where boats the US believes to be carrying drugs usually “load up”.
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He claimed that there was a “major explosion” in the dock area where drugs were being loaded up the boats. “They load the boats up with drugs, so we hit all the boats, and now we hit the area. The implementation area is it. That’s where they implement. And that has vanished.
Trump did not reveal more details about the strikes.
Trump’s Venezuela strike was just the latest in a string of his administration’s military attacks since its inauguration in January, despite portraying himself as the “president of peace” deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize, he claims.
Armed Conflict Location &, Event Data or ACLED, the nonpartisan conflict monitor, told Al Jazeera that the US had carried out – or been a partner to – 622 overseas bombings in all, using drones or aircraft, since January 20, 2025, when Trump took office.
His campaign promises to end US involvement in international conflicts are met with opposition from the attacks.
Which countries has the US bombed this year?
In total, the US launched military operations in 2025 against seven nations.
Venezuela and the Caribbean Sea
As part of the Trump administration’s growing war against ships it claims are smuggling drugs from the country to the US, the US confirmed one strike this week on a docking facility on Venezuelan territory.
No details about where the strike took place have been released.
That came after the US Navy seized two oil tankers off the Venezuelan coast earlier in December, allegedly as a blow to Maduro’s main economic ally. Washington claims the vessels are part of a “shadow fleet” of tankers smuggling sanctioned oil.
The US has accumulated the largest military presence in the Caribbean Sea since August, alarming both the US and the countries concerned. The Trump administration claims this is warranted because the trafficking of drugs to the US constitutes a national emergency, but multiple reports have shown that Venezuela is not a major source of drugs , being transported across borders.
The US began striking small boats in the Caribbean on September 2 under the guise of drug trafficking. It is thought it has struck more than 30 vessels since then. The Tren de Aragua group and the Colombian National Liberation Army are “terrorist” organizations operating the vessels, according to the Trump administration. However, it has provided no evidence for this.
Human Rights Watch accused Washington of “extrajudicial killings” on December 16 by revealing that at least 95 people had died as a result of the boat strikes.
In early December, US lawmakers from both Republican and Democratic sides urged the Pentagon to release full footage of the first strike on September 2, which has proved even more controversial following revelations that the vessel was subject to a “double tap” attack – two survivors of the first attack clinging to debris in the water following a first strike were killed in a follow-up strike.
The footage won’t be made public, according to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Caracas accuses the US of using claims of drug trafficking as a cover for seeking a government change in Venezuela. Trump, on the other hand, has referred to Venezuela as a “narco state” and said Nicolas Maduro’s days “are numbered.”
Nigeria
On Christmas Day, the US launched the first of what Trump said would be “powerful and deadly” strikes against groups Washington claims are affiliated with ISIL (ISIS) in Northwest Nigeria’s Sokoto State.
It came after weeks of diplomatic pressure on the Nigerian government, which Trump and senior conservative Republicans, including Ted Cruz, have accused of facilitating a “Christian genocide” in a nation with a nearly equal share of Muslims and Christians.
Nigeria has been plagued by violence from armed groups linked to al-Qaeda or ISIL, operating in the predominantly Muslim northeast and northwest regions. Abuja disputes claims that the violence has harmed both Muslim and Christian communities.
Furthermore, alleged attacks on Christian farmers in Nigeria have taken place in a completely different part of the country. In October 2025, US Senator Ted Cruz first charged the country’s government with allowing a “massacre” against Christians, citing a rise in attacks  against the community in the country’s central Middle Belt, which is independent of the violence in the north.
Even though these two issues are separate, Abuja, under pressure, agreed to the US military operation in the north of the country on December 25.
Details of that strike are still being worked out. The US Africa Command said in a statement that “multiple ISIS terrorists were killed in the ISIS camps”, and Nigeria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the strike was “successful”.
It appeared to be aimed at the recently-released “Lakurawa” organization, which conflict monitors claim is made up of Mali and Nigeri armed fighters who might be affiliated with ISIL or al-Qaeda.
The group is known to operate in forested corridors between Sokoto and Kebbi states. Jabo town in Sokoto was hit by at least one US missile or piece of debris. The Nigerian military, speaking to local media, later confirmed strikes on armed group hideouts in Buani Forest, but did not reveal casualty numbers.
The US and Nigeria have collaborated on security for many years through training and sharing intelligence, but the West African nation’s Christmas strikes were the first time they had engaged in kinetic military action.
It was timed, analysts say, to appease Trump’s Christian supporters as Washington doubles down on a narrative of “saving” Nigerian Christians, although Nigerian authorities insist the strikes are not about any one religion.
Trump claimed additional strikes would follow.
Somalia
The US has long trained Somali forces and carried out airstrikes against armed groups, including al-Shabab, a branch of al-Qaeda, which has launched numerous attacks in Somalia and neighboring Kenya. They also target an ISIL offshoot known as ISIS-Somalia.
In south-central Somalia, Al-Shabab, which has about 7, 000 fighters, controls large swathes of land, while ISIS-Somalia, which has about 1, 500 fighters, operates in Puntland, which is a province in northern Somalia’s mountainous regions. In the past year, 7, 289 people have been killed by armed group activity, according to the US-based Africa Center for Strategic Studies.
Most US troops left the country in his first term as president, but the Biden administration redistributed them in May 2022.
In Trump’s second term, the US has remained active in the country, at Somalia’s urging. The New America Foundation claims that since February, Washington has significantly increased its air attacks.
Overall, at least 111 strikes have been recorded this year, surpassing the number carried out under the George Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden administrations combined, monitors say.
In the attacks in Somalia, civilians have been killed. Investigative site Drop Site News revealed in December that at least 11 civilians, seven of them children, were killed in a strike in the Lower Juba region, in Somalia’s southwest, just last month.
The US won’t disclose how many people have died in Somalia as civilians.
Syria
US strikes on 70 ISIL-positions in Syria on December 19 were carried out in retaliation for a shooting in Palmyra which killed two US soldiers and a civilian interpreter a week earlier.
The shooting caused injuries to two members of Syria’s security forces and three other Americans. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but Trump placed the blame on ISIL.
A later statement from Syria’s Ministry of Interior revealed that a person who attacked US troops was a member of the state security service and was being fired for anti-religious sentiments.
The US retaliatory operation, dubbed “Hawkeye” in reference to Iowa, the “Hawkeye State” where both killed soldiers were from, damaged several ISIL weapons storage facilities in locations across Syria, an official told CNN.
Trump posted on Truth Social on December 19th, “I am hereby announcing that the United States is inflicting very serious retaliation, as I promised, on the murderous terrorists responsible.”
“We are striking very strongly against ISIS strongholds in Syria, a place soaked in blood which has many problems, but one that has a bright future if ISIS can be eradicated”, he added, warning against further attacks on US service members.
Hegseth claimed in a post on X the same day that the strikes were an “declaration of vengeance” against ISIL.
US troops have long been stationed in Syria to target ISIL, which once controlled large areas of land across Syria and Iraq in the mid-2010s.
Up until December 2024, the Pentagon reported that about 900 US troops were stationed in the nation as a result of the Bashar al-Assad government’s collapse. The US has carried out more than 80 operations aimed at neutralising armed operatives in Syria, according to the US military’s Central Command.
Trump, the president-elect, issued a warning against US interference at the time. He posted on Truth Social: “Syria is a mess, but is not our friend, &, THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. NOT OUR FIGHT IS THIS.
Fewer than 1, 000 troops remained in Syria by April, according to the Pentagon.
Iran
Amid short-lived hostilities which broke out between Iran and Israel earlier this year, the US intervened and struck three key nuclear sites in Iran on June 22. The US Air Force and Navy were involved in a highly sophisticated mission, according to analysts.
In a televised address, Trump justified the attacks on Iran’s Natanz, Isfahan, and Fordow nuclear sites, saying they would curtail the “nuclear threat” posed by Tehran.
The US claimed that enriched uranium had reached or was approaching “weapons grade” and was being produced or stored at the three sites.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi later confirmed that some of the sites had sustained extensive damage, and the Pentagon estimated the attack set back Iran’s nuclear program by about two years.
Iran struck a US airbase in Qatar the day after the US attacks, which was likely symbolic because no fatalities or injuries were reported.
On June 22, Trump declared a ceasefire between Iran and Israel, bringing the 12-day war to an end. During the live hostilities, more than 1,100 Iranians and 28 Israelis were killed.
But during his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week, Trump threatened to hit Iran again.
He said, “We’re going to have to knock them down,” referring to Iran’s nuclear program, as I’ve heard it’s trying to build up again. “We’ll knock the hell out of them”.
As a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1970, Iran is prohibited from developing nuclear weapons. In 2015, it also signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Western powers, including the US, agreeing to limit uranium enrichment levels in exchange for sanctions relief.
Trump withdrew the US from that pact in 2018 under his first administration as president, claiming it had been poorly negotiated.
Yemen
Since January 12, 2024, the US has targeted Yemen’s Houthis, an Iran-aligned group that controls much of Yemen’s populous northwest, in a series of air and naval attacks.
In order to show solidarity with Gaza, the US claims that strikes were carried out in retaliation for Houthi attacks on Israeli-linked vessels passing through the Red Sea.
The strikes escalated to daily attacks in March 2025 under the new Trump administration, under a mission codenamed Operation Rough Rider.
In addition to killing thousands of people, the attacks severely damaged infrastructure in Sanaa and Hodeidah, including ports, airports, radar systems, air defenses, ballistic launch sites, and even migrant holding facilities.
The US strikes finally came to an end on May 6, following a truce brokered by Oman.
123 people, most of whom were civilians, had been killed by April, according to Yemen’s Houthi-run Ministry of Health, compared to the US’s claim of killing about 500 Houthis.
As many as 247 people, including many women and children, were injured, the ministry said.
Iraq
A prominent ISIL member was killed by US airstrikes on Iraq’s al-Anbar province on March 13, according to Central Command of the US military.
The group’s second-in-command, Abdallah “Abu Khadijah” Malli Muslih al-Rifai, and another unnamed operative were reported to have been killed in the strikes.
Both men were alleged to be holding weapons and wearing unexploded “suicide vests” at the time of the strikes. The US also said the strikes were carried out jointly with Iraqi intelligence, and that both sides confirmed the deaths through DNA tests.
Trump praised the actions of US troops in a celebratory post on Truth Social the following day.
“Today, the fugitive leader of ISIS in Iraq was killed”, Trump wrote.
Our intrepid warfighters relentlessly pursued him. His miserable life was terminated, along with another member of ISIS, in coordination with the Iraqi Government and the Kurdish Regional Government. “PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH”
Iraq’s prime minister, in a statement on X, also on March 14, said “Adu Khadija” was known as ISIL’s “deputy caliph” overseeing operations in Iraq and Syria, and that he was “one of the most dangerous terrorists in Iraq and the world”.
In 2014, the Obama administration authorized strikes on ISIL locations in Iraq.
What has Trump said about US military action overseas in the past?
When Trump pledged during his first term as president to put “America First” and stop the US involvement in foreign conflicts, Trump won wide support from many Americans who were sick of their country’s costly involvement in the Middle East.
In one presidential debate, Trump accused the former Bush administration of failing in its handling of the fallout of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York in September 2001, and said “the war in Iraq is a big fat mistake … We spent two trillion dollars, thousands of lives (lost)”.
Trump pledged to end ongoing global conflicts by beginning his second term in January 2025. His success, he said during his inaugural address, would be judged, “by the battles we win, but also by the wars that we end – and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into”.
While Trump undoubtedly contributed to some conflicts in the world this year, according to Sarang Shidore, head of Global South at the US-based Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, his efforts lack “the delicate, sustained, behind-the-scenes diplomacy typically required in global conflicts.”
Furthermore, in South America in particular, Trump appears to be reverting to the old days of the 20th century, when US intervention toppled multiple governments from Brazil to Bolivia.
Source: Aljazeera
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