Trump’s Attempt to Make a Deal with Venezuela….Talking to Maduro?

President Trump has told his advisers he’s planning to speak directly with Nicolás Maduro, even as the U.S. designated the Venezuela president Monday as the head of a terrorist organization, administration officials tell Axios.

Why it matters: Trump’s decision is an important milestone in his gunboat diplomacy aimed at Venezuela — and could be a sign that U.S. missile strikes or direct military action on land are not imminent, those sources say.

• “Nobody is planning to go in and shoot him or snatch him — at this point. I wouldn’t say never, but that’s not the plan right now,” according to one official familiar with the discussions.
• “In the meantime, we’re going to blow up boats shipping drugs. We’re going to stop the drug trafficking.”
• At least 83 people have been killed in 21 separate missile strikes on boats that allegedly were carrying drugs during the U.S. military action in the Caribbean known as “Operation Southern Spear.”

Driving the news: Word of Trump’s interest in talking coincides with the State Department’s decision Monday to label an alleged drug cartel in Venezuela as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization,” which provides the U.S. more of a pretext to take military action in and around the South American nation.

• Also Monday, Gen. Dan Caine — the military brains behind Southern Spear — visited Puerto Rico, where as many as 10,000 troops, sailors and pilots are stationed.

The big picture: Officially, Southern Spear is a drug-interdiction force. Unofficially, it’s about regime change in Caracas, which Axios first reported before Trump returned to office in January….

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Zoom out: Oil-rich Venezuela has long been an opponent of the U.S. and has helped prop up Cuba’s dictatorship, which furnishes security that helped install Maduro in 2013 and keep him in power. Venezuela also is an ally of Iran, China and Russia.

• Part of the challenge of persuading Maduro to leave, U.S. officials say, is that his Cuban handlers might execute him if he yields to American pressure and quits.
• In Trump’s first term, in 2020, Maduro was indicted by the Justice Department as a leader of the group called Cartel de los Soles, or “Cartel of the Suns.” Maduro has denied the charges and said the group is a fiction…..

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The timeline: Before launching Southern Spear, Trump played good-cop/bad-cop with Maduro by appointing adviser Ric Grenell to act as a friendly envoy to Venezuela.

• Maduro offered up his country’s riches to the U.S., The New York Times reported in October, which Trump said was a sign that Maduro realized “you don’t want to f**k around with the United States.”
• But Maduro wanted to remain in power. And that was a nonstarter for Trump, officials say.
• Last week, after more entreaties from Venezuela, Trump said he “may be having some discussions with Maduro, and we’ll see how that turns out.”

What’s next: Since then, the president has made up his mind to speak directly with Maduro, the sources said, and there’s more talk about talking and less talk about bombing.

• “I see a diplomatic solution as being very likely,” one Trump adviser said.
• “Donald Trump hasn’t said this in as many words, but he wants his legacy to be that he did everything he could to stem the flow of illegal drugs into this country.”….

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