Natalie Kitroff

And what is the goal?

Okay, let's walk through exactly what we've seen.

How exactly did this new, and as you said, unprecedented phase of this pressure campaign start?

But it obviously wasn't a red herring.

It wasn't a one-off.

The administration then started going after more tankers.

They're actively chasing it in the ocean.

Got it.

So two seized tankers, one that's fled.

How is the Venezuelan government responding to all this at this point?

Anatoly, when we talked last, you made it very clear that forcing Maduro out was a big goal for very powerful people inside the Trump administration, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state in particular.

And it sounds like that goal has become even more explicit in the weeks since.

But what is Trump saying about the official justification for what the administration is doing here?

Can we just pause there and explain for a moment these pre-existing sanctions that you're saying have existed on Venezuela?

Take me through those.

And you said that the Trump administration is now going out and actually enforcing these sanctions in a way that it wasn't willing to do before and in a way that the Biden administration hasn't done before.

Why?

What is he actually talking about there?

Explain that.

Okay, so we're not exactly sure what Trump was referring to, but it seems to be a reference to this period of nationalization where American oil companies were kicked out of Venezuela and the government took control.