(Fox News)- President Donald Trump delivered a stern ultimatum to Nicolás Maduro to leave Venezuela immediately before announcing the country’s airspace should be closed, according to a report.
Per the Miami Herald, Washington’s warning was delivered in a phone call with Caracas and offered guaranteed evacuation for Maduro, his wife Cilia Flores, and their son, but only if the dictator agreed to resign on the spot.
The conversation stalled, U.S. officials said, and within hours Washington escalated dramatically.
The ensuing impasse, a source told the outlet, was over Maduro asking for “global amnesty for any crimes he and his group had committed, and that was rejected.”
“Second, they asked to retain control of the armed forces — similar to what happened in Nicaragua in ’91 with Violeta Chamorro. In return, they would allow free elections.”
The final issue was timing, according to the outlet, as Washington demanded that Maduro resign immediately – but Caracas refused.
Trump went on to announce Saturday that Venezuelan airspace would be considered “closed in its entirety.”
The Herald also reported that the Maduro government tried to schedule another call to Washington but received no response.
According to a defense expert familiar with the country’s military and state-linked cartel ties, Maduro and key players in his regime could now face their most serious threat yet.
“I think the operations will start imminently,” former Venezuelan diplomat Vanessa Neumann told Fox News Digital.
“The clearing of the airspace is an indication and a very clear public warning that missiles might be coming to take out command and control infrastructure or retaliatory infrastructure,” Neumann said. “This will not be like breaking a jar into a thousand pieces, this is where you can lift the concentration of power, and it’s easier to manage.”
“The targets have been identified through covert operations over the last several years by people on the ground,” she continued. “So they’re well-mapped. This is a capture-or-kill scenario, but there’s a limit to how many people you can remove quickly.”
On Sunday, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One not to “read anything into” his declaring Venezuela’s airspace closed when asked if a strike was imminent.
“Maduro also doesn’t have that many options, and his military is very weak,” she warned. “You can’t go after 30 people simultaneously, who are spread all around, but certainly high on the list would be Maduro himself.”
Venezuela’s armed forces, once among Latin America’s strongest, have been weakened by years of corruption, sanctions, defections, and lack of maintenance. Much of its equipment, Neumann says, has never even been serviced.
“Their material is extremely old, decayed, and has not been serviced,” Neumann explained.
“They’ve got junk from the Russians. The stuff they originally had from the Americans is decades old and has not been serviced.
“So, they have neither the personnel, foreign support, nor the material,” she said.
Ahead of shuttering the airspace, the U.S. also officially designated the cartel allegedly linked with Venezuela’s government, the Cartel de los Soles, as a foreign terrorist organization.
“This cartel turned Venezuela’s main oil company into a narcotics trafficking money laundering operation, using the company’s access to international finance, until it was sanctioned,” Neumann, who has worked with governments on countering transnational organized crime linked to the group, explained.
“They were using Venezuelan military jets to bring in cocaine from Colombia, process it in Venezuela, and then move it into Central America and then into Europe.
