{"id":4196,"date":"2025-12-02T01:07:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T01:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/?p=4196"},"modified":"2025-12-02T01:07:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T01:07:10","slug":"report-trump-issues-major-ultimatum-to-maduro-as-venezuelan-conflict-heats-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/?p=4196","title":{"rendered":"REPORT: Trump Issues Major Ultimatum To Maduro As Venezuelan Conflict Heats Up"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

President Donald Trump slapped Venezuelan strongman Nicol\u00e1s Maduro with a blunt, take-it-or-leave-it exit deal before shutting down the country\u2019s skies, the Miami Herald reported \u2014 a high-stakes gambit that\u2019s now rattling Caracas and signaling the regime\u2019s most dangerous moment yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the outlet, Washington delivered its warning in a tense phone call offering safe evacuation for Maduro, his wife Cilia Flores, and their son. The catch: he had to step down immediately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talks fizzled fast. U.S. officials said Maduro tried to haggle for \u201cglobal amnesty for any crimes he and his group had committed, and that was rejected.\u201d He also pushed to keep control of the armed forces, mirroring the deal struck in Nicaragua in 1991 with Violeta Chamorro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Washington said no, and demanded Maduro resign on the spot. He refused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within hours, the Trump administration escalated.\u00a0 On Saturday, the president declared Venezuelan airspace \u201cclosed in its entirety,\u201d a move that hit Caracas like a thunderclap. The Herald reported that Maduro\u2019s government attempted to schedule another call with Washington, but got radio silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, experts say the regime is staring down its most serious threat yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think the operations will start imminently,\u201d former Venezuelan diplomat Vanessa Neumann told Fox News Digital. She called the airspace shutdown \u201ca very clear public warning that missiles might be coming to take out command and control infrastructure or retaliatory infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis will not be like breaking a jar into a thousand pieces, this is where you can lift the concentration of power, and it\u2019s easier to manage,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Maduro speaks at his second inauguration in 2019<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Neumann added that U.S. operatives have spent years mapping targets. \u201cSo they\u2019re well-mapped. This is a capture-or-kill scenario, but there\u2019s a limit to how many people you can remove quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, when pressed Sunday aboard Air Force One, Trump told reporters not to \u201cread anything into\u201d the declaration of closed airspace when asked if a strike was imminent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neumann warned that the regime is in no shape to withstand a fight. \u201cMaduro also doesn\u2019t have that many options, and his military is very weak,\u201d she said. \u201cYou can\u2019t go after 30 people simultaneously, who are spread all around, but certainly high on the list would be Maduro himself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Venezuela\u2019s armed forces, once feared across the region, are now a hollow shell\u00a0after years of graft, defections, sanctions, and rotting hardware.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTheir material is extremely old, decayed, and has not been serviced,\u201d Neumann said. \u201cThey\u2019ve got junk from the Russians. The stuff they originally had from the Americans is decades old and has not been serviced. So, they have neither the personnel, foreign support, nor the material.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just before sealing the country\u2019s skies, Washington officially designated the Cartel de los Soles \u2014 the shadowy network allegedly tied to Maduro\u2019s government \u2014 as a foreign terrorist organization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump slapped Venezuelan strongman Nicol\u00e1s Maduro with a blunt, take-it-or-leave-it exit deal before shutting down the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4105,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4196"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4198,"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4196\/revisions\/4198"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/states-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}