US lawmakers have shared their concerns over escalating tensions between the US and Venezuela after US forces seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela. Senator Rand Paul told NewsNation, as reported by the Hill, that the action “sounds a lot like the beginning of a war” and it was not “the job of the American government to go looking for monsters around the world, looking for adversaries and beginning wars”. The major escalation of Donald Trump’s four-month pressure campaign against the South American country’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro, was described by the Venezuelan government as “an act of international piracy”. Trump confirmed the operation on Wednesday, saying: We’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela – a large tanker, very large, the largest one ever seized actually. “It was seized for a very good reason,” the US president added, declining to say who owned the vessel. This image from video posted on attorney general Pam Bondi’s X account, and partially redacted by the source, shows an oil tanker being seized by US forces off the coast of Venezuela. PPam Bondi, the US attorney general, posted footage of the seizure on X.
