U.S. forces intercepted and seized a sanctioned oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, marking a serious escalation of tensions between the two countries.

“We’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela — large tanker, very large, largest one ever seized, actually,” President Donald Trump said at the White House. “And other things are happening.”

A senior Trump administration official referred to the craft as “a stateless vessel” that was last docked in Venezuela. Bloomberg News was first to report the seizure.

A few hours later, Attorney General Pam Bondi posted a video on X showing heavily armed forces descending to the ship’s deck from a Black Hawk helicopter, in a standard commando-style tactic called “fast roping.”

“For multiple years, the oil tanker has been sanctioned by t

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