The Caribbean is bristling with warships – a nuclear submarine lurks beneath the waves and F-35 fighter jets roar overhead.
Thirteen US warships, five support vessels, and Marine contingents are stationed just off Venezuela’s coast. The world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R Ford, just joined them.
Officially, it is a counter-narcotics operation. Unofficially, it looks like something else.
Speaking exclusively to the Daily Mail, Elliott Abrams – the hard-nosed foreign policy chief from Donald Trump‘s first administration – lifted the lid on what insiders call ‘the real plan’ to remove Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro from power.
The US government has quietly assembled a $150million package of available bounties to encourage Maduro’s top lieutenants to turn on their leader in a dramatic ‘palace coup,’ Abrams said.
It is a high-stakes play that combines cash, coercion and quiet military might.
‘It’s a big psy-op, a psychological operation, and the bounties are a part of it,’ Abrams said.
The US government has offered up to $50 million for anyone who can help put Maduro in handcuffs, accusing him of ‘narco-terrorism’ and plots involving cocaine trafficking, machine guns and destructive devices.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro (left) greets his Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello Rondón (right), one of the power brokers who could potentially turn on his boss
These US Marines training in Puerto Rico are part of the massive military build up in the Caribbean
That is the same reward once offered for al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Smaller bounties target Maduro’s cronies – $25 million for his interior minister and $15 million for his defense chief. Together, they add up to roughly $150 million in rewards.
It is a classic use of maximum pressure: a blend of warships and whispers.
‘All this pressure is going to make the regime crack,’ Abrams told the Daily Mail.
‘I hope the CIA is reaching out to people, particularly in the military, to say, ‘Maduro has no future, but you can have a future if you’ll just act against him.’
Abrams suggests appealing to their wallets.
‘You can say to people in the military, for example, ‘There will be no witch hunt. You just retire, take the money, and run. You’ve already made your millions of dollars, you’ve already got your properties in Madrid or Miami – and you will be allowed to enjoy them, but only if you help us now’,’ he said.
Some members of Maduro’s inner circle are frequently named as potential defectors.
They include his spymaster Diosdado Cabello Rondón, long-serving defense chief Vladimir Padrino López, and attorney-general Tarek William Saab – powerful figures with enough clout to worry their boss.
Some experts say they are already too compromised by a slew of criminal charges and sanctions from overseas powers – meaning those men may calculate that they’re better off sticking together.
Instead, Abrams said, a cadre of mid-ranking military and intelligence officials could be encouraged to rise up and boot out Maduro, his wife Cilia Adela Flores de Maduro, Cabello Rondón, Padrino López and the rest of the inner circle.
The USS Gerald R Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, reached the Caribbean this week to counter drug-trafficking organizations in Latin America
‘A bounty may only go to one or two people, but an amnesty can go to a thousand,’ Abrams explained.
It is a chilling offer: Help bring down Maduro, or risk going down with him.
Inside the capital city, Caracas, fear runs deep.
Abrams told the Daily Mail that the Venezuelan capital is ‘completely permeated by Cuban intelligence agents,’ part of a long-standing alliance between the socialist economies.
They are everywhere, he said, working to root out anyone who might work with Uncle Sam.
Even if Maduro falls, Abrams warns, the transition ‘would not be quick or clean.’
Trump is doubtless wary of wars due to America’s record of long and messy entanglements in Afghanistan and Iraq.
‘No one believes this will be over and done in a day,’ said Abrams.
‘It’s more like what happened when communism collapsed in Eastern Europe. It’s going to take a long time to root out the system that’s been built over 20 years.’
Abrams – now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations – helped craft the original ‘maximum pressure’ playbook during Trump’s first term.
Now, he told the Daily Mail, the pressure is even greater.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called Maduro a ‘horrible dictator’ and said he wants a democratic opposition to replace his ‘narco-regime.’
When Trump ally Pam Bondi doubled the bounty on Maduro to $50 million in August, she called him ‘one of the world’s largest drug traffickers’ and ‘a threat to US national security.’
Trump recently said Maduro’s ‘days are numbered.’
The commander-in-chief said he doubted America would go to full-scale war, but he also hinted the US might take ‘many kinds of actions’ to deal with what he called a regime that had ‘been treating us very badly.’
Maduro, for his part, has accused the US of ‘fabricating a new war.’
Not everyone in Washington thinks the plan will work.
Jose Ignacio Hernández, a Venezuelan law professor and senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies national security think tank, scoffed at the sums on offer.
People watch and take pictures of the USS Gravely, a US Navy warship, departing the Port of Spain in Trinidad and Tobago on Thursday
Venezuela’s Minister of Defense Vladimir Padrino Lopez (center right) is among the Maduro loyalists being eyed as a potential defector
He told the BBC $50 million is ‘nothing’ to senior Venezuelan officials, who can make much more money from corruption in their oil-rich dictatorship.
Ignacio Hernández doubts generals will risk everything for a bounty.
‘They will think, ‘In some way or another, I am involved in criminal activities too,” he said.
The logic is brutal: ‘Stick together or hang separately.’
Michael Albertus, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, agrees.
He told the BBC that even a bounty of $500 million wouldn’t make Maduro’s inner circle turn him in.
‘Authoritarian leaders are always suspicious of even their inner circle,’ he said.
‘They create mechanisms for monitoring them and ensuring loyalty.’
Those mechanisms are deadly.
Venezuela’s internal security network – backed by Cuban intelligence – tracks dissent and purges traitors.
Planning a coup is almost impossible, and always dangerous.
Maduro also has Russia, China and Iran in his corner – providing diplomatic, military and economic lifelines that help him survive US sanctions.
The regime, for all its fragility, has proven remarkably resilient – a 2018 drone attack failed, and a 2020 mercenary invasion collapsed in days. Several military uprisings fizzled before they began.
Each failure only tightened Maduro’s grip.
Meanwhile, his opposition is splintered, divided and broke.
Trump has been striking ‘narco-terrorist’ boats operated by Venezuelan drug smugglers in the Caribbean
US President Donald Trump (right) and US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (left) have launched a ‘maximum pressure’ campaign against Venezuela
The 2024 election was widely dismissed as a sham, and opposition groups have provided vote tallies showing that Maduro lost. Washington doesn’t recognize Maduro as president.
Still, Abrams insists the growing armada psy-op strategy and is working.
Every sanction, every strike, every whisper, he says, piles pressure on Caracas.
‘You don’t build up this kind of armada without using it,’ he said.
Across the Caribbean, US military engineers are busy.
At the old Roosevelt Roads Naval Station in Puerto Rico, new runways are being repaved.
Civilian airports in St Croix and the Virgin Islands are quietly being upgraded for ‘logistics.’
Officially, the US deployment is all for counter-narcotics. US strikes have in recent weeks destroyed 16 alleged drug-trafficking boats and claimed 64 lives.
Unofficially, experts say the American armada off Venezuela’s coast is ‘too big for drugs, too small for invasion.’
Washington says the buildup is part of a ‘homeland security mission.’
But the ships, planes, and troops – now within striking distance of Caracas – suggest preparation for limited or sustained regional operations.
The ambiguity is the message: keep Maduro guessing, and keep the world watching.
Yet critics warn the strategy flirts with illegality.
A defection from Venezuela’s Attorney General Tarek William Saab (pictured) could spell the end of the Maduro regime
Some US lawmakers question whether the buildup and operations in the Caribbean have ‘proper authorization.’
Others fear it could ‘test international law’ if the mission turns from counter-narcotics to regime change.
For now, the armada waits, the money dangles and the pressure builds.
And somewhere out in the Caribbean, under the watch of radar and cloud, the warships keep circling.
THE MEN WHO COULD BRING MADURO DOWN
Inside Nicolás Maduro’s crumbling inner circle, a handful of powerful men hold the keys to his survival – or his downfall.
Venezuela’s Minister of Interior Relations, Justice, and Peace, Diosdado Cabello Rondón is part of Maduro’s inner circle
Diosdado Cabello Rondón is the muscle behind the throne. The head of Venezuela’s feared internal intelligence network, he is a pillar of the regime – and a man under siege. The US State Department has slapped a $25 million bounty on him over drug trafficking and narco-terrorism charges, while Argentina wants him for crimes against humanity. Washington has also accused him of running an extortion racket. The pressure is immense. But for Cabello to flip, insiders say he would need one thing above all: a rock-solid immunity deal.
Tarek William Saab
Vladimir Padrino López, the iron-fisted Defense Minister, commands the loyalty of Venezuela’s top generals. He’s one of the few men who could actually push Maduro aside. But with a $15 million US bounty and a string of narco-terror allegations, his fate is tied to the regime’s. Without guarantees for his money and safety, few believe he will risk it.
Tarek William Saab, the regime’s Attorney General and revolutionary poet, has overseen brutal post-election crackdowns. Sanctioned by the US, Canada and the EU, he faces mounting isolation. If Maduro wobbles, Saab may well be the first to scramble for the exit and pick up the phone to Washington.
