U.S. military forces boarded a sanctioned tanker in the Indian Ocean after tracking the ship from the Caribbean Sea as part of an oil quarantine meant to squeeze Venezuela, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Monday.
Venezuela had faced U.S. sanctions on its oil and relied on a shadow fleet of falsely flagged tankers to smuggle crude into global supply chains. Following the U.S. raid to apprehend then-President NicolĂĄs Maduro in early January, several tankers fled the Venezuelan coast, including the ship that was boarded in the Indian Ocean overnight.
Hegseth vowed to eventually capture all those ships, telling a group of shipyard workers in Maine on Monday that âthe only guidance I gave to my military commanders is none of those are getting away.â
âI donât care if we got to go around the globe to get them; weâre going to get them,â he added.
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