AMERICA’s special military operation in Venezuela was an “audacious” raid that boxed Nicolás Maduro in a corner where Donald Trump wanted.
After months of stepped-up pressure by Washington, the US forces hit Caracas with a large-scale strike and captured Maduro and his wife who were flown out of the country in an extraordinary nighttime raid.
In a series of fast-moving events, Caracas was rocked by explosions, accompanied by the sound of attack helicopters, around 2am local time.
The strikes, which targeted a major military base and an airbase, among other sites, continued for nearly an hour.
According to the country’s ruling party leader, Nahum Fernandez, Maduro and his wife were at their home within a military base when they were seized.
“That’s where they bombed,” he told The Associated Press.
“And, there, they carried out what we could call a kidnapping of the president and the first lady of the country.”
US broadcaster CNN reports the couple were “dragged from their bedroom”.
Citing two sources, they said they were “captured in the middle of the night as they were sleeping.
Military analyst Philip Ingram described the mission as a rare example of precision regime-targeting done correctly.
Mr Ingram told The Sun: “It was a very audacious, extremely well-planned and extremely well-executed military operation.
He said the operation was not only bold but carefully sequenced to fix Maduro in place long enough for a safe extraction.
“Identifying exactly where President Maduro would be, fixing him for the length of time it would take to get Special Forces in, execute his capture and exfiltration safely is a masterstroke,” the expert added.
Trump said Maduro and his wife were flown out of the country and taken to USS Iwo Jima – a huge aircraft carrier stationed in the Caribbean as part of the US military buildup over the last few months.
They are now being taken to New York, where they would face criminal charges after an indictment, US Attorney General Pam Bondi revealed.
They were captured by a team that included elite US special forces, including the US Army’s Delta Force, an official said.
Trump said the operation was carried out “in conjunction with US Law Enforcement.
Early Saturday, multiple explosions rang out and low-flying aircraft swept through the Venezuelan capital during the attack.
Video obtained from Caracas and an unidentified coastal city showed tracers and smoke clouding the landscape as repeated muted explosions illuminated the night sky.
Other footage showed cars passing on a highway as blasts illuminated the hills behind them.
Smoke was seen rising from the hangar of a military base in Caracas, while another military installation in the capital was without power.
Venezuelans had for months been bracing for attacks on their territory, following repeated threats by Trump to escalate his campaign against Maduro’s administration.
Trump hailed a “brilliant” operation which involved “a lot of good planning and a lot of great, great troops and great people,” in a brief phone interview with The New York Times.
Fort Tiuna, Venezuela’s largest military complex situated in Caracas, and Carlota airbase in the north were among the targets of the strikes.
La Guaira, north of the capital, where Caracas’ airport and port are located, was also struck.
The White House’s narrative of the strikes seemed to be a surgical military operation that was aimed at capturing and exfiltrating Maduro.
The US military action was now complete with “no further action in Venezuela now that Maduro is in US custody,” a senator quoted Secretary of State Marco Rubio as saying.
The strikes on Venezuela were designed to “protect and defend those executing the arrest warrant,” said Mike Lee, a Republican initially critical of the operation, wrote on X.
Long road ahead for Caracas
Trump has consistently framed Venezuela under Maduro as an illegitimate regime, accusing it of operating as a narco-state aligned with US adversaries.
And regime change in Caracas has been central to his view that Venezuela’s political reset is necessary to curb Russian and Chinese influence – and unlock the country’s vast oil potential.
Trump said that the US is now deciding what’s next for Venezuela after Maduro’s capture,
“We’ll be involved in it very much,” Trump told Fox News.
Ingram said the operation would not have been launched without a clear plan for the aftermath – a lesson that Washington has learned from the past.
“You don’t execute an operation like this unless you’ve got a plan for what comes next — militarily and diplomatically.”
He points to Iraq and Afghanistan as warnings of what happens when post-operation planning fails.
“That’s what went wrong in Afghanistan, that’s what went wrong in Iraq.”
And the timing was critical, he said.
“The Americans have been waiting for the opportunity where they could properly fix Maduro into a position to give them sufficient time to go in and get him out without him escaping and going on the run.”
Politically, Venezuela now faces a fragile transition period.
“We’ve already seen statements from the opposition saying they are ready to take over and run the government… but there will be a period of instability.”
By law, Vice President Delcy Rodrguez should take power, but there was no confirmation that had happened.
There was no immediate comment from Venezuela opposition leader Maria Corina Machado.
She was in hiding for almost a year before traveling to Norway last month to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
At a pro-Maduro protest in the capital, Caracas Mayor Carmen Meléndez joined a crowd that demanded that Maduro be returned immediately.
“Maduro, hold on, the people are rising up!” crowd chanted.
They also said: “We are here, Maduro. If you can hear us, we are here! Elsewhere, residents were still taking in the events.”
Trump warned that Maduro loyalists have a “bad future” if they remain loyal, adding that Washington will look at Machado’s bid to rule Venezueala.
Rubio, meanwhile, reposted a social media message from earlier this year in which he said Maduro was not the legitimate president of Venezuela following elections that international observers said were riddled with irregularities.
Rubio’s number two hailed a “new dawn” for Venezuela.
“The tyrant is gone. He will now – finally – face justice for his crimes,” Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau wrote on X.
Christopher Sabatini, a Latin America expert at the Chatham House international affairs think tank, said the US strikes open up an “entirely unforeseen, in many ways unexpected, series of events,” and it’s unclear what kind of government will emerge.
He said elements of the Trump administration and the Venezuelan opposition have held a dangerously naive belief that if you decapitate the regime, figuratively speaking, by removing Maduro that would somehow lead to a democratic transition.
Trump has given differing arguments for his campaign against Venezuela, including the claim that the country is a major drug exporter to the United States and that Venezuela seized US oil interests.
The US president said in December “it would be smart for [Maduro]” to step down and has also said that the Venezuelan leader’s “days are numbered.”
Trump had long threatened that he could order military strikes on targets on Venezuelan territory after months of attacks on boats accused of carrying drugs from the South American country.
The White House said Washington was in armed conflict with drug cartels to halt the flow of narcotics into the United States, while US officials alleged that Maduro supported the international drug trade.
Before the escalation, there had been 35 known strikes against alleged drug smuggling boats in South American waters since early September that killed at least 115 people, according to announcements from the Republican administration.
Washington’s pressure also included America’s biggest military mobilisation since the Iraq war that took shape in the Caribbean Sea.
Maduro previously said that the US military operations were a thinly veiled effort to oust him from power.