The Venezuelan government said Monday night that they had foiled a Trump administration-backed plot to stage a “false flag” attack on a U.S. warship currently stationed just off its shore, The Independentreported Tuesday.
Yvan Gil Pinto, the Venezuelan minister of foreign affairs, said in a statement late Monday night that members of a “CIA-funded criminal cell” had been arrested after officials learned of what Pinto labeled a “CIA-directed false flag operation” designed to “justify an aggression against our country.”
“It is the same imperial script as the Maine ship and the Gulf of Tonkin: fabricating a conflict to impose interests alien to our region,” Pinto wrote in an online post on Telegram, according to Google Translate. “Venezuela is acting firmly and responsibly: a CIA-funded criminal cell linked to this covert operation is being dismantled on our territory."
According to Pinto, the alleged false flag attack would have seen a CIA-backed terror cell stage an attack on the USS Gravely, a Navy destroyer currently stationed in Trinidad, an island nation just off the coast of Venezuela. Pinto, who called the alleged plot a “dirty war operation,” said that Venezuela would “not fall for provocations,” but would “defends [its] sovereignty without hesitation” if threatened.
The Trump administration has ramped up military pressure on Venezuela in recent weeks, having carried out what critics have labeled as “extrajudicial killings” on suspected drug-carrying sea vessels from Venezuela, and deploying an aircraft carrier strike group to the Caribbean last week.
High-ranking Trump officials have also hinted that regime change is the ultimate goal of the increased hostilities, with one senior White House official admitting that assassinating Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was being kept “as an option” by Trump.