Venezuela must cut ties with Iran and Hezbollah, Rubio demands

President Nicolas Maduro 'cosied up' to Iran, Hezbollah and drug gangs, and 'rejected numerous chances to live in exile'

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro escorted by Drug Enforcement Administration agents at Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh, New York. Reuters

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Caracas must sever ties to Iran and Hezbollah, stop drug trafficking and ensure Venezuela’s oil industry does not benefit adversaries of Washington.

Speaking a day after the capture of Nicolas Maduro, Mr Rubio said Venezuela's President had been given numerous opportunities to leave the country and live in exile but chose not to.

Facing criticism about the launch of another overseas military operation without clear legal authorisation, Mr Rubio also suggested regime change in Venezuela would not echo past failures of western interventions across the Middle East.

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Mr Rubio, who is also interim National Security Adviser, spoke to US networks after US special forces seized Mr Maduro and his wife during an hours-long, predawn raid on his compound in Caracas, before sending him to jail in New York City, where he will eventually face several charges including narco-terrorism and drug smuggling.

US military intervention in Venezuela, a country which President Donald Trump says Washington will now run indefinitely, has prompted concerns the US is again becoming embroiled on foreign territory with unpredictable results. Mr Trump is facing criticism from within his own party, particularly the Make America Great Again (Maga) wing, which says he has betrayed his pledge to end overseas conflicts.

“I still think that a lot of people analyse everything that happens in foreign policy through the lens of what happened from 2001 through 2015 or '16,” Mr Rubio said in an interview with CBS News.

“The whole foreign policy apparatus thinks everything is Libya, everything is Iraq, everything is Afghanistan. This is not the Middle East. And our mission here is very different. This is the Western Hemisphere.”

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He added that Venezuela was a country that had “cosied up” to Iran, Hezbollah and narco-drug trafficking gangs.

“No more drug trafficking, no more Iran/Hezbollah presence there … and no more using the oil industry to enrich all our adversaries around the world and not benefiting the people of Venezuela or, frankly, benefiting the United States and the region,” Mr Rubio told NBC News in a separate interview.

He said the US wants a transition to democracy but thought it premature to predict when elections might be held.

“There has to be a little realism here,” he told CBS. “They've had this system of 'Chavismo' in place for 15 or 16 years and everyone's asking, 'why, 24 hours after Nicolas Maduro was arrested, there isn't an election scheduled for tomorrow?' That's absurd.”

Later on Sunday, Mr Trump suggested that another likely target for US military intervention is Colombia, whose leftist President Gustavo Petro has been a frequent source of condemnation from the Trump administration, again on grounds of failure to address drug trafficking.

“It sounds good to me,” Mr Trump said when asked aboard Air Force One if there would be a military operation in Colombia.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and President Donald Trump speak to the press following US military actions in Venezuela. AFP

New York jail

Mr Maduro and his wife were captured in a raid on what Mr Trump described as their “heavily fortified military fortress in the heart of Caracas”. Heavy gunfire and explosions could be heard throughout.

No US troops were killed, Mr Trump has said. A large ⁠part of Mr ​Maduro's security ‌team was ​killed in the raid, Venezuelan ⁠Defence Minister General Vladimir Padrino said.

A Venezuelan source told The New York Times about 40 people were killed in the attack.

The operation, which was months in the planning, came after Mr Maduro had refused a number of “generous” offers to live in exile but refused, Mr Rubio said.

“He could have left Venezuela as recently as a week and a half ago,” he said. The New York Times, citing anonymous Americans and Venezuelans, reported Mr Maduro had been offered the possibility of living in “gilded” exile in Turkey.

Instead, he is now in a jail cell in New York City, having been ferried there by military ship and aircraft. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani said he had spoken to Mr Trump to register his opposition to Mr Maduro's capture.

He called the President to voice his opposition “to this act and to make clear that it was an opposition based on being opposed to a pursuit of regime change, to the violation of federal international law, and a desire to see that be consistent each and every day,” Mr Mamdani said.

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Global reaction to Mr Maduro's capture poured in. China's Foreign Ministry said Beijing is “deeply shocked and strongly condemns the use of force by the US against a sovereign country”.

In Brazil, which shares about 2,200km of border with Venezuela, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said the “bombings on Venezuelan territory and the capture of its President cross an unacceptable line”.

“Attacking countries in flagrant violation of international law is the first step towards a world of violence, chaos and instability, where the law of the strongest prevails over multilateralism.”