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UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres hold a press briefing on the 9th African Union–United Nations annual conference at UN Headquarters in New York City, United States on November 12, 2025. [Selçuk Acar – Anadolu Agency]
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said on Wednesday that there was a “fundamental wrong” in Israeli management of its military operation in the Gaza Strip. He added that there are “strong reasons” to believe war crimes have been committed there.
In an interview at the Reuters NEXT conference in New York, Guterres said: “I think there was something fundamentally wrong in the way this operation was conducted with total neglect in relation to the deaths of civilians and to the destruction of Gaza,”
He also stressed that ending the Russian-Ukrainian war should abide by international law and the territorial integrity of states,” adding: “I believe we are still far from a solution.”
Regarding recent US strikes on ships near Venezuela, Guterres said they were not compatible with international law.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAOrcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
Interior minister and PSUV leader Diosdado Cabello flanked by party militants in a mass demonstration in Caracas on November 25, 2025. Photo: Francisco Trias
Demonstrators marched through central Caracas and demanded an end to military threats against Venezuela. For his part, Trump is keeping the lines of communication open with Caracas while increasing pressure on Chavista leaders.
On November 25, tens of thousands of Venezuelans marched to defend national sovereignty. The event, dubbed the “Great Civic-Military, Police March for our National Flag and the Sword of Bolívar”, brought together various groups of military personnel, police, and civilians who demanded an end to Washington’s pressure on the Caribbean country.
Since August, the Pentagon has deployed its troops in the Caribbean Sea to, according to the Trump administration, stop the entry of drugs which allegedly come out of Venezuela. At the same time, they have declared the Cartel de los Soles an international terrorist organization and identified the Venezuelan government leadership as part of that organization.
However, Caracas has categorically rejected the accusations, which, according to Chavismo, are a crude and false attempt to pave the way for the overthrow of President Nicolás Maduro and establish a puppet government allied with the demands and needs of the United States, which would be after Venezuela’s mineral and oil reserves, the largest in the world.
Tuesday’s demonstration took place in the center of Caracas, the country’s capital, and sought to showcase and strengthen the mass popular defense of Venezuela’s sovereignty in the face of possible US military intervention. “Bolívar is more alive than ever among us, the anti-imperialist Bolívar, the genius Bolívar…” said PSUV secretary and Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello.
For several weeks, Chavismo has been preparing for a possible scenario in which it must face an invasion by the world’s largest military power. To this end, it has carried out coordination exercises between the organized bases of Chavismo, the National Bolivarian Militia, and the army and police.
In this regard, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino emphasized that Washington’s recent actions are intended to cause fear and intimidate the Venezuelan people: “Bombers, ships, destroyers, submarines, all equipped with guided missiles; fighter planes approaching the coast, trying to intimidate a people.” Despite this, he affirmed that Venezuelan forces are ready to respond to any scenario.
During the mobilization, Maduro told attendees: “Venezuela faces a decisive moment for its existence… There is no excuse for anyone, whether civilian, politician, military, or police, to make excuses. Failure is not an option! Our homeland demands our utmost effort and sacrifice.”
Thousands participated in a mass mobilization in the center of Caracas on November 25, 2025. Photo: Francisco Trias
Trump’s ambiguity
For its part, the Trump administration continues to maintain an ambiguous stance on the situation in Venezuela. On the one hand, it has ordered the Cartel de los Soles to be declared a terrorist organization, which, according to Washington’s official line, makes Maduro the leader of a terrorist group.
However, Trump is aware of the enormous political damage that an attack on Venezuela could cause his administration. Perhaps that is why he is not ruling out the possibility of forcing Maduro out through hard diplomacy, namely through the pressure his troops are exerting on Venezuela’s borders in the Caribbean Sea.
On November 25, Trump said: “If we can save lives, if we can do things the nice way, that’s fine… [But] if we have to do it the hard way, that’s fine too.”
Many have seen the upcoming visit to the Dominican Republic by Pete Hegseth, the US Secretary of War, as a new maneuver to strengthen their military positions. Dominican President Luis Abinader, an ally of Washington, reported that the purpose of the visit is to strengthen the joint fight against drug trafficking in the region, which can be interpreted as an alliance in preparation for a war scenario in the Caribbean Sea.
Similarly, the Chief of Staff of the United States, Dan Caine, has been touring the Caribbean. Caine is one of the architects of Operation Southern Spear, the US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) mission launched on November 13, 2025 by US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to “removes narco-terrorists from our Hemisphere, and secures our Homeland from the drugs that are killing our people.” Presumably, though it is not clarified, the operation is a continuation of the military deployment and pressure campaign that began in August which has seen 15,000 soldiers stationed in the Caribbean and the launching of attacks on dozens of boats, resulting in the extrajudicial killings of over 80 people in international waters who, according to Washington, were carrying drugs in their boats, although several human rights organizations have strongly questioned these claims.
For his part, Albert Ramdin, the Secretary General of the Organization of American States, has called for a halt to a possible attack on Venezuela, despite his critical stance against the Chavista government: “We do not want any war in our hemisphere. Peace is, ultimately, what everyone in this hemisphere wants. No one wins in a war.”
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US war ships in the Caribbean. Photo: US Secretary of Defense/War
The US aggression against Venezuela has fomented divisions within the Caribbean, with many calling on countries like Trinidad and Tobago to refuse cooperation with the US in its military endeavors against the peoples of the region
US President Donald Trump has authorized the USS Gerald R. Ford to enter the Caribbean. It now floats north of Puerto Rico, joining the USS Iwo Jima and other US navy assets to threaten Venezuela with an attack. Tensions are high in the Caribbean, with various theories floating about regarding the possibility of what seems to be an inevitable assault by the US and regarding the social catastrophe that such an attack will occasion. CARICOM, the regional body of the Caribbean countries, released a statement affirming its view that the region must be a “zone of peace” and that disputes must be resolved peacefully. Ten former heads of government from Caribbean states published a letter demanding that “our region must never become a pawn in the rivalries of others”.
Former Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Stuart Young said on August 21, “CARICOM and our region is a recognized zone of peace, and it is critical that this be maintained”. Trinidad and Tobago, he said, has “respected and upheld the principles of non-intervention and non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries and for good reason”. On the surface, it appears as if no one in the Caribbean wants the United States to attack Venezuela.
However, the current Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Kamla Persad-Bissessar (known by her initials as KPB), has openly said that she supports the US actions in the Caribbean. This includes the illegal murder of eighty-three people in twenty-one strikes since September 2, 2025. In fact, when CARICOM released its declaration on the region being a zone of peace, Trinidad and Tobago withdrew from the statement. Why has the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago gone against the entire CARICOM leadership and supported the Trump administration’s military adventure in the Caribbean?
Backyard
Since the Monroe Doctrine (1823), the United States has treated all Latin America and the Caribbean as its “backyard”. The United States has intervened in at least thirty of the thirty-three countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (90 percent of the countries, in other words) – from the US attack on Argentina’s Malvinas Islands (1831-32) to the current threats against Venezuela.
The idea of the “zone of peace” emerged in 1971 when the UN General Assembly voted for the Indian Ocean to be a “zone of peace”. In the next two decades, when CARICOM debated this concept for the Caribbean, the United States intervened in, at least, the Dominican Republic (after 1965), Jamaica (1972-1976), Guyana (1974-1976), Barbados (1976-1978), Grenada (1979-1983), Nicaragua (1981-1988), Suriname (1982-1988), and Haiti (1986).
In 1986, at the CARICOM summit in Guyana, the Prime Minister of Barbados, Errol Barrow, said “My position remains clear that the Caribbean must be recognized and respected as a zone of peace… I have said, and I repeat, that while I am prime minister of Barbados, our territory will not be used to intimidate any of our neighbors be that neighbor Cuba or the USA.” Since Barrow made that comment, Caribbean leaders have punctually affirmed, against the United States, that they are nobody’s backyard and that their waters are a zone of peace. In 2014, in Havana, all members of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) approved a “zone of peace” proclamation with the aim “of uprooting forever [the] threat or use of force” in the region.
Persad-Bissessar or KPB has rejected this important consensus across political traditions in the Caribbean. Why is this so?
Betrayals
In 1989, trade union leader Basdeo Panday formed the United National Congress (UNC), a centre-left formation (whose former name was the Caucus for Love, Unity, and Brotherhood). KPB joined Panday’s party and has remained in the UNC since then. Throughout her career till recently, KPB stayed at the center of the UNC, arguing for social democratic and pro-welfare policies whether as opposition leader or in her first term as Prime Minister (2010-2015). But even in her first term, KPB showed that she would not remain within the bounds of the centre-left but would tack Far-Right on one issue: crime.
In 2011, KPB declared a State of Emergency for a “war on crime”. At her home in Phillipine, San Fernando, KPB told the press, “The nation must not be held to ransom by groups of thugs bent on creating havoc in our society”, “We have to take very strong action”, she said, “very decisive action”. The government arrested seven thousand people, most of them released for lack of evidence against them, and the government’s Anti-Gang Law could not be passed: this was a policy that mimicked the anti-poor campaigns in the Global North. Already, in this State of Emergency, KPB betrayed the legacy of the UNC, which she dragged further to the Right.
When KPB returned to power in 2025, she began to mimic Trump with “Trinidad and Tobago First” rhetoric and with even harsher language against suspected drug dealers. After the first US strike on a small boat, KPB made a strong statement in support of it: “I have no sympathy for traffickers, the US military should kill them all violently”. Pennelope Beckles, who is the opposition leader in Trinidad and Tobago, said that while her party (the People’s National Movement) supports strong action against drug trafficking, such action must be “lawful” and that KPB’s “reckless statement” must be retracted. Instead, KPB has furthered her support of the US militarization of the Caribbean.
Trinidad and Tobago PM Kamla Persad-Bissessar with US Joint Chief of Staff General Dan Caine on November 25, 2025. Photo: US Embassy / X
Problems
Certainly, Trinidad and Tobago faces a tight knot of economic vulnerability (oil and gas dependence, foreign exchange shortages, slow diversification) and social crises (crime, inequality, migration, youth exclusion). All of this is compounded by the weakness of State institutions to help overcome these challenges. The weakness of regionalism further isolates small countries such as Trinidad and Tobago, which are vulnerable to pressure from powerful countries. But KPB is not only acting due to pressure from Trump; she has made a political decision to use US force to try and solve her country’s problems.
What could be her strategy? First, get the United States to bomb small boats that are perhaps involved in the centuries-old Caribbean smuggling operations. If the US bombs enough of these little boats, then the small smugglers would rethink their transit of drugs, weapons, and basic consumer commodities. Second, use the goodwill generated with Trump to encourage investment into Trinidad and Tobago’s essential but stagnant oil industry. There might be short-term gain for KPB. Trinidad and Tobago requires at least USD 300 million if not USD 700 million a year for maintenance and for upgrading its petrochemical and Liquified Natural Gas plants (and then it needs USD 5 billion for offshore field development and building new infrastructure). ExxonMobil’s massive investment in Guyana (rumored to be over USD 10 billion) has attracted attention across the Caribbean, where other countries would like to bring in this kind of money. Would companies such as ExxonMobil invest in Trinidad and Tobago? If Trump wanted to reward KPB for her unctuousness, he would tell ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods to expand on the deepwater blocks investment his company has already made in Trinidad and Tobago. Perhaps KPB’s calculation to set aside the zone of peace ideas will get her some more money from the oil giants.
But what does this betrayal break? It certainly disrupts further any attempt to build Caribbean unity, and it isolates Trinidad and Tobago from the broader Caribbean sensibility against the use of the waters for US military confrontations. There are real problems in Trinidad and Tobago: rising gun-related violence, transnational trafficking, and irregular migration across the Gulf of Paria. These problems require real solutions, not the fantasies of US military intervention. US military interventions do not resolve problems, but deepen dependency, escalate tensions, and erode every country’s sovereignty. An attack on Venezuela is not going to solve Trinidad and Tobago’s problems but might indeed amplify them.
The Caribbean has a choice between two futures. One path leads toward deeper militarization, dependency, and incorporation into the US security apparatus. The other leads toward the revitalization of regional autonomy, South-South cooperation, and the anti-imperialist traditions that have long sustained the Caribbean’s political imagination.
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US Air Force personnel patrol the area surrounding José Aponte de la Torre Airport, the former Roosevelt Roads Naval Station, September 11, 2025, in Ceiba, Puerto Rico. (Photo by Miguel J. Rodríguez Carrillo/Getty Images)
Meanwhile, newly released documents suggest the administration is gearing up to have troops in the region until the end of Trump’s term.
Following reports that the Trump administration is eyeing a “deadly new phase” of military actions against Venezuela, including land strikes, a new report suggests that the US troops stationed near the South American nation are being denied holiday leave in anticipation of immediate action.
On Monday, NewsNationWhite House Correspondent Kellie Meyer reported via social media that the United States Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) is “restricting/limiting leave over the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays in preparation for possible land strikes in the next 10 days to two weeks.”
SOUTHCOM has denied the claim, with a spokesperson saying: “Our service members and civilian employees are always afforded the opportunity to take leave throughout the year, and that includes holiday periods.”
As of yet, reports only suggest that the US may be planning imminent airstrikes against Venezuela. But as documents reported Tuesday by The Interceptrevealed, the US is planning to maintain “a massive military presence in the Caribbean almost to the end of President Donald Trump’s term in office—suggesting the recent influx of American troops to the region won’t end anytime soon.”
According to the report: “One spreadsheet outlining supplies for ‘Puerto Rico Troops’ notes tens of thousands of pounds of baked goods are scheduled for delivery from November 15 of this year to November 11, 2028. Foodstuff set to feed the troops include individually wrapped honey buns, vanilla cupcakes, sweet rolls, hamburger rolls, and flour tortillas.” The food is slated to be delivered to every branch of the military, including the Coast Guard, Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps.
“The procurement’s length of time and the level of effort seemed to point to these operations continuing at the current level for several years,” said Mark Cancian, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “That’s significant because it means that the Navy will maintain a large presence in the Caribbean that is far larger than what it has been in recent years. It further implies that the Navy will be involved in these counter-drug operations.”
The Pentagon currently has more than 15,000 troops stationed in the region, the most since 1989, when the US launched a land invasion of Panama to topple the drug-running dictator Manuel Noriega, whom it had previously supported.
The reports came shortly after the US State Departmentdesignated the so-called “Cartel de los Soles,” which the US accuses Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of leading, as a “terrorist organization.” This is despite the fact that it is not actually an organized cartel at all, but a media shorthand developed to refer to the alleged connections that high-level Venezuelan officials have to the drug trade.
“It is not a group,” Adam Isaacson, director for defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America organization, told the Associated Press Tuesday. “It’s not like a group that people would ever identify themselves as members. They don’t have regular meetings. They don’t have a hierarchy.”
Colombian journalist Juan Esteban Silva explains that the terrorist designation, despite its factual flimsiness, “gives the US authority to conduct covert operations, bring terrorism and drug charges, issue international arrest warrants, freeze assets, and block transactions. It also enables extraterritorial prosecution, travel restrictions, broader law enforcement and military cooperation, and asset seizures.”
Maduro’s government called the designation an “infamous, vile lie to justify an illegitimate and illegal intervention against Venezuela under the classic US format of regime change.”
It comes after Reutersreported Sunday that “covert operations” in Venezuela “would likely be the first part of the new action against Maduro” and that the US was “prepared to use every element of American power” to achieve its goals in the region.
While stopping drug trafficking was the initial justification for the administration’s push for regime change, White House messaging has shifted in recent days, with officials telling Fox Newsthat it “goes beyond the Maduro regime” and is also about “getting Russia, China, and Iran out of the Western hemisphere.”
On Monday, US Rep. María Salazar (R-Fla.) gave a more candid explanation for the potentially imminent military action and the need for regime change on Fox Business.
Maduro, she said, “is understanding that we’re about to go in.” She went on: “Venezuela, for the American oil companies, will be a field day, because it will be more than a trillion dollars in economic activity. American companies can go in and fix all the oil rigs and everything that has to do with the Venezuelan petroleum companies.”
Prior to returning to office, Trump said at a rally in 2023 that he regretted not invading Venezuela during his first term: “We would have taken [Venezuela] over; we would have gotten to all that oil; it would have been right next door.”
Though the White House appears increasingly committed to military action against Venezuela, it is overwhelmingly unpopular among Americans.
A CBS News/YouGov survey published on Sunday found that 70% of Americans—including 91% of Democrats and 42% of Republicans—are against the “US taking military action in Venezuela,” and a majority don’t believe a direct attack on Venezuela would even achieve the Trump administration’s stated goal of reducing the flow of drugs to the United States.
The same poll found that just 13% of Americans consider Venezuela to be a “major threat” to “US security,” while 48% consider it a “minor threat,” and 39% consider it to be “not a threat.”
Alfons López Tena, a former member of the Catalan parliament and an analyst on public and international affairs, expressed shock at the Trump administration’s brazenness despite the total lack of public consent for war.
“The US doesn’t feel at all like a country marching into war, 70% oppose military action in Venezuela,” he said. “The government’s cursory explanations show they are so heedless of public opinion that they don’t even feel the need to mount a proper propaganda campaign.”
Nathan J. Robinson, the editor-in-chief ofthe left-wing magazine Current Affairs, meanwhile, said he’s not surprised.
“It’s no mystery to a leftist when the US government’s foreign policy is out of step with popular opinion,” he said, “because we understand foreign policy is shaped by narrow elite interests.”
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US President Donald Trump, accompanied by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaks to members of the media aboard Air Force One on October 27, 2025. Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
“It should come as no surprise by now that the president who campaigned on keeping the US out of wars and then promptly bombed Iran has now found another conflict in which to embroil the country.”
New survey results show that Americans strongly oppose US military action against Venezuela as the Trump administration privately weighs options for land strikes against the South American country—as well as possible covert action targeting the government of President Nicolás Maduro.
The CBS News/YouGov survey, published on Sunday, found that 70% of Americans—including 91% of Democrats and 42% of Republicans—are against the “US taking military action in Venezuela,” and a majority don’t believe a direct attack on Venezuela would even achieve the Trump administration’s stated goal of reducing the flow of drugs to the United States.
The poll also found that a slim majority, 53%, support “using military force to attack boats suspected of bringing drugs into” the US, even as human rights groups and United Nations experts say such attacks—which have killed more than 80 people since early September—are grave violations of US and international law.
The survey data came amid reports that the Trump administration is set to launch “a potentially deadly new phase” of its campaign against Maduro’s government, which has responded to the US president’s threats and military buildup in the Caribbean with a large mobilization of troops and weaponry.
Citing two unnamed US officials, Reutersreported on Sunday that “covert operations would likely be the first part of the new action against Maduro.” The outlet quoted one anonymous official as saying Trump is “prepared to use every element of American power” to achieve his stated goals in the region.
On Monday, as the New York Timesreported, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff is set to visit “Puerto Rico and one of the several Navy warships dispatched to the Caribbean Sea to combat drug trafficking as the Trump administration weighs the possibility of a broader military campaign against Venezuela.”
Gen. Dan Caine, the top US military officer, has “been a major architect of what the Pentagon calls Operation Southern Spear, the largest buildup of American naval forces in the Caribbean since the Cuban Missile Crisis and the blockade of Cuba in 1962,” the Times added.
Also on Monday, the Trump administration formally designated Maduro and top officials in his government members of a foreign terrorist organization, a move that the White House believes expands US military options in Venezuela.
While polling data has consistently shown that the US public opposes military intervention in Venezuela by significant margins, Republicans in Congress have thus far blocked action to prevent the Trump administration from attacking the country and bombing vessels in international waters without lawmakers’ approval.
Al Jazeera columnist Belén Fernández wrote Sunday that “it should come as no surprise by now that the president who campaigned on keeping the US out of wars and then promptly bombed Iran has now found another conflict in which to embroil the country.”
“And as is par for the course in US imperial belligerence, the rationale for aggression against Venezuela doesn’t hold water,” Fernández added. “For example, the Trump administration has strived to pin the blame for the fentanyl crisis in the US on Maduro. But there’s a slight problem—which is that Venezuela doesn’t even produce the synthetic opioid in question.”
Late last week, a group of House Democrats led by Seth Moulton of Massachusetts announced a new legislative effort aimed at preventing the Trump administration from attacking Venezuela without congressional authorization.
The bill, titled the No Unauthorized Force in Venezuela Act, would bar the White House from spending federal funds on military action against Venezuela absent specific congressional approval.
“We owe our service members clarity, legality, and leadership—not threats, not chaos, and not another unnecessary conflict,” said Moulton. “This legislation draws the line the president refuses to draw. It protects our troops, reasserts Congress’ constitutional role, and ensures we do not sleepwalk into another ill-advised war.”
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