The U.S. government formally designated the cartel linked to Nicolas Maduro a foreign terrorist organization on Monday, the latest maneuver to apply pressure to the Venezuelan leader they consider illegitimate.
Designating the “Cartel de los Soles” as a foreign terrorist organization will give the administration more ability to target them with sanctions and block access to the U.S. banking system, but an FTO designation does not automatically authorize lethal military force.
While U.S. military action has not yet escalated beyond targeting purported drug smuggling vessels headed for the U.S., President Donald Trump has said Maduro’s days are numbered while leaving open the option for military intervention to remove him from power, but also a possible diplomatic resolution.
“Well, [the designation] brings a whole bunch of new options to the United States,” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said in an interview with One America News Network last week, adding that it gives “more tools to our department to give options to the president to ultimately say our hemisphere will not be controlled by narco-terrorists.”
It’s unlawful for Americans to knowingly provide “material support or resources” to any FTO-designated organization; members of the FTO can be removed from the U.S., and any U.S. financial institution that has control of funds of an FTO has to retain possession of the funds and report it to the Treasury Department.
“It’s just about options, and we plan better than any organization in the world here; we want to make sure the president has options to include doing a whole lot, to include doing, you know, the cartel mission that we’re doing there as well,” Hegseth said of the terrorist designation. “So nothing’s off the table, but nothing’s automatically on the table.”
The U.S. military, which currently has its largest build-up of forces in the Caribbean in decades, has carried out more than 20 lethal strikes on purported vessels killing more than 80 people that the administration has said were drug smugglers intended for America. The U.S. presence in the region exceeds the requirements needed to carry out the operations targeting vessels.
U.S. officials maintain that stopping the flow of drugs is the primary mission, but the president’s own comments since the strikes began in early September suggest regime change could be a possible objective. The president has publicly said he approved the CIA to carry out covert operations in Venezuela and that he was open to talking to Maduro “at a certain time.”
Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (SEAC) David L. Isomis are in Puerto Rico visiting service members on Monday. They will also visit and thank sailors operating at sea in the Caribbean.
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Hegseth has named the mission to target the drug smuggling apparatus “Operation Southern Spear.”
The military has conducted several nearby training demonstrations as shows of force near Venezuela.
The Federal Aviation Administration issued an advisory last Friday warning about “potential risk to aircraft at all altitudes” because of the “worsening security situation and heightened military activity in or around Venezuela.”
