Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke to reporters Wednesday following a closed door briefing with senators on the U.S. the capture of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
Heather Dieh/Getty Images North America
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Heather Dieh/Getty Images North America
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told reporters on Capitol Hill that they briefed senators on a process of “stabilization”, “recovery ” and “transition.”
Rubio said step one will involve “quarantine” for Venezuela, a process that will include selling sanctioned oil and distributing the profits.
“We don’t want it descending into chaos,” Rubio said. “Part of that stabilization and the reason why we understand and believe that we have the strongest leverage possible is our quarantine.”
Rubio went on to explain that the continued seizure of oil tankers is part of the plan, in addition to the process of selling sanctioned oil.
“We are going to take between 30 and 50 million barrels of oil,” he said. “We’re going to sell it in the marketplace, at market rates, not at the discounts Venezuela was getting. That money will then be handled in such a way that we will control how it is dispersed in a way that benefits the Venezuelan people, not corruption, not the regime.”
Rubio said step two will focus on “recovery” where access to the Venezuelan market will be restored in a way that is “fair” while “at the same time, begin to create the process of reconciliation nationally within Venezuela, so that the opposition forces can be amnestied and released and from prisons or brought back to the country, and begin to rebuild civil society.”
Step three will be “transition,” but Rubio did not offer details of how that would work. He said some phases would overlap.
