Americans deserve the truth: there is an island off Venezuela’s coast where Iranian money and Hezbollah influence have quietly taken root, and too many in the Washington establishment acted as if it didn’t matter. That island—Margarita—has been repeatedly identified by investigators and security analysts as a hub for money laundering, drug transit and terrorist penetration that reaches into our neighborhoods through the poison of cartel drugs.
This isn’t academic fear-mongering; independent reporting and regional intelligence show Hezbollah-linked networks operating on Margarita, using local oligarchs and diaspora ties to launder cash and build smuggling routes that enrich terrorists and fund proxy wars. Venezuela’s regime under Nicolás Maduro has given safe harbor to corrupt clans and foreign proxies who traffic in human misery, and that makes the island more than a scenic postcard—it makes it a direct national-security threat.
That is exactly why President Trump has gone after the cartels with unprecedented seriousness, ordering strikes against suspected narco-vessels and publicly vowing to hunt trafficking networks wherever they hide. The administration’s interdictions in the Caribbean, which the White House says targeted vessels tied to narco-terror groups, have been lethal and decisive—actions Democrats in office would have called reckless until they saw the body bags pile up at home.
Washington has also made a military statement: B-52 bombers have been flown in international airspace off Venezuela’s coast and U.S. special operations and intelligence activities have been stepped up, including, the president says, authorized covert CIA operations inside Venezuela. For patriots who have watched cartel poison destroy towns and families, these are the kinds of blunt instruments needed to break the back of transnational criminal-terror hybrids that the left refuses to name.
Don’t let the critics gaslight you: the drug routes flowing out of Venezuela aren’t just gangs doing business—they have become entangled with ideological enemies of the West and with brutal criminal organizations like Tren de Aragua that U.S. officials have linked to terrorism and mass narcotics shipments. Our cities suffer from fentanyl and cartel violence because rogue regimes and terror proxies found ungoverned space to operate; calling it anything less is cowardice.
Now is the time for clarity, not hand-wringing. Congress should give the president the tools to finish the job but must also demand transparency so that the American people know what’s being targeted and why—oversight, not appeasement. Those who demand moral equivalence with Maduro, Iran, or Hezbollah would rather run cover for tyrants than protect American children from poisoned drugs and terror-funded crime.
Patriots know the stakes: when foreign radicals and criminal cartels set up shop on a sun-drenched island and ship their poison north, our response must be swift and unambiguous. We should stand with a president willing to act, insist on accountability from our leaders, and never bow to the nihilistic appeasement that got us into this mess. America will not be the safe haven for the enemies of liberty, and we will act to keep it that way.
