US forces have seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, in a major escalation of Donald Trump’s four-month pressure campaign against the South American country’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro, whose government called the seizure “an act of international piracy”.

Trump confirmed the operation on Wednesday, saying: “We’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela – a large tanker, very large, the largest one ever seized actually.”

“It was seized for a very good reason,” the US president added, declining to say who owned the vessel.

Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, posted footage of the seizure on X. The grainy, unclassified 45-second video shows US forces landing on the tanker from a helicopter.

In an accompanying statement, Bondi said the FBI, Homeland Security Investigat

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