By. Scott Jackson
12.30.2025
Last week on the night of December 24th, the CIA carried out a covert drone strike on a port facility located on the coast of Venezuela. This report is based off the statements made by the White House, CNN’s exclusive coverage of the incident and video from the facility that has been online since before the attack was linked to the U.S.
The attack targeted an out of the way port in Maracaibo, that the U.S. believed to have been used by Tren de Aragua in the packing and transport of drugs. Drugs were allegedly stored at a warehouse on the port and then later loaded onto boats for smuggling. The building is owned by Primazol, a chemical production company. According to CNN’s source nobody was present at the time of the attack.
The CNN report said two of their sources told them that the strike was carried out with the help of US Special Operations Forces. The report goes on to say that this claim was denied. Col. Allie Weiskopf, a spokesperson for US Special Operations Command said “Special Operations did not support this operation to include intel support.”So if they did participate, they aren’t saying, which is kind of the nature of special forces, so no surprise there. We know that the White House last month authorized special forces and the CIA to carry out operations in the region.
This operation was first revealed by the President himself in a much overlooked comment last week however, he kept most of the details to himself. On Monday the president was asked about the strike by Republican doner, John Catsimatidis who has a radio show, to which the president responded “We just knocked out — I don’t know if you read or you saw — they have a big plant, or a big facility, where the ships come from. Two nights ago, we knocked that out. So we hit them very hard,”
Trump was later asked for more details and said “there was a major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs” and that an “implementation area” was “no longer around.”
One of the sources that CNN is referencing in their article claims that while the strike was successful destroying the building and the boats(as well as the alleged drugs), the source says it’s mostly symbolic because of the amount of similar facilities.
The U.S. has launched 30 strikes on boats allegedly loaded with drugs and bound for the states. Targeting the boats is only a temporary fix for a complex problem. Land strikes were always going to be required if the goal of the White House was ending the flow of drugs from Venezuela, which supplies tons and tons of cocaine which when it reaches the US is often turned into crack cocaine, a much more potent and deadly version of the drug.
US Intel has long pointed at high ranking members of the Nicolás Maduro regime as the leaders of the Tren de Aragua cartel. With Maduro right at the head. These strikes and the buildup of military forces are aimed squarely at putting pressure on president Maduro. The question that’s been raised is “to what end?”
The U.S. is gathering a large number of forces into the Caribbean, likely to support more ground strikes in the future. The U.S. has also implemented a blockade on all oil products leaving Venezuela having detained at least two ships already.
Global Conflict Reporting 
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