Trump goes full Captain Sparrow in brazen seizure of Venezuelan oil tanker

The US military has seized an oil tanker in the Caribbean. Troops stormed the deck by helicopter in what US officials later justified as being an attack on “an illicit oil shipping network”. The US has been militarising the Caribbean for months. The seizure is a major escalation by Trump. Venezuela has called it ‘piracy’.

Certainly, it’s no small irony that in Trump’s war for Venezuelan oil — which the US has tried to claim is about drugs — the first thing he seized was an oil tanker. And here’s the key point: less than a year ago Trump was condemning others for attacking shipping. Even though those attacks were aimed at stopping a genocide.

Shortly after, Trump told reporters:

We’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela, a large tanker, very large, largest one ever seized, actually.

Asked what would happen with the oil, he said:

Well, we keep it, I guess.

Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem posted on X:

America rules the waves.

Today @USCG in collaboration with @ICEgov,@FBI, @DeptofWar and @TheJusticeDept led a targeted operation to seize a crude oil tanker sanctioned by the U.S. government for transporting oil from Venezuela and Iran in support of foreign terrorist…

— Secretary Kristi Noem (@Sec_Noem) December 11, 2025

And Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed:

for multiple years, the oil tanker has been sanctioned by the United States due to its involvement in an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organisations.

CBS News identified the tanker as the Skipper:

The Skipper was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2022 for alleged ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah. At the time, it sailed under the name Adisa. The 20-year-old tanker previously sailed under the name The Toyo in 2005, according to public maritime data.

The Venezuelan government condemned the move as an act of piracy.

Trump’s Dirty war in the Caribbean

US forces have killed 86 people in the region since 2 September. Officially, the campaign of airstrikes is aimed at ‘narco-terrorists’ in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. Critics reject the Trump claim about narcotics. Lawyers say there is no legal basis for the strikes. And regional actors say Trump is simply after Venezuelan oil.

And here is the thing. Earlier in 2025 Trump was lambasting Yemen’s Houthis for attacking shipping in the Red Sea:

It has been over a year since a U.S.-flagged commercial ship safely sailed through the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, or the Gulf of Aden. No terrorist force will stop American commercial and naval vessels from freely sailing the Waterways of the World.

Our economic and national security have been under attack by the Houthis for too long. Today, President Trump’s action and leadership are moving to end this.

Houthis have been hitting vessels in the vital shipping lane to oppose the Gaza genocide. Their operations were successful enough that the US bombed Yemen intensively. In August 2024, the Houthis even attacked an oil tanker. The Pentagon even condemned them for it.

US exceptionalism

Evidently the US Monroe Doctrine is back with a vengeance.  In US eyes, the western hemisphere is its personal fiefdom. Ultimately, the US thinks it has a God-given right to intervene as it likes — in the Caribbean and beyond. This is American exceptionalism writ large. And as broader US empire fades, Trump has turned his gaze back to the Caribbean, the eastern Pacific and the southern reaches of the continent.

Never mind that the US itself spent the early part of 2025 calling out the Houthis for attacking shipping. It has just done more or less the same thing itself. However, this US action was not in the name of solidarity with a besieged people. As a matter of fact, it is part of the buildup towards the latest American resource war.

Featured image via the Canary