U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth warned that military operations against those engaged in illegal drug trafficking would not stop with yesterday’s attack on a Venezuelan boat.

“The U.S. has air, undersea, and surface assets deployed because this is a very serious mission for us, and it will not end with just this strike,” Hegseth said on Fox News.

“Anyone else engaged in illegal trafficking in these waters, whom we know to be designated narco-terrorists, will meet the same fate,” he added.

Warships in the Caribbean

Washington has recently deployed at least seven warships to the Caribbean as part of what it describes as a counter-narcotics operation. Trump has accused Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and members of his government of running a drug cartel.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated on X that the operation took place “in the southern Caribbean” against a vessel “that had departed from Venezuela.”

Tensions between Washington and Caracas continue to escalate. According to press reports, the U.S. has dispatched a naval armada off Venezuela’s coast under the pretext of blocking narcotics trafficking, just weeks after raising its bounty on President Maduro to $50 million, labeling him a “fugitive cartel leader.”

A U.S. defense official confirmed that seven American warships, including three amphibious assault ships, are sailing in the Caribbean, with another vessel in the Pacific as part of the operation.

Maduro’s Response

President Maduro has called the deployment of U.S. forces in the Caribbean the “greatest threat to Venezuela’s existence in the past century,” warning that the nation will resist any U.S. attempt at “regime change.”

“Eight warships armed with 1,200 missiles and a nuclear submarine have targeted Venezuela,” he told foreign journalists in Caracas on Monday, calling it an “unjustified, immoral, and absolutely illegal threat.”

Venezuela, he insisted, is ready for “armed struggle” to “defend its national territory.”