Former U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela Warns Odds of Attack on the Country Have Risen from 10% to 80%: 'Facts On the Ground Have Changed'

Former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela James Story said that the likelihood of U.S. military action against the country has risen sharply, warning that conditions have shifted dramatically as the United States expands its military presence in the Caribbean.

"Facts on the ground have changed tremendously," Story told the site, adding that he now sees an 80% chance that events "would evolve into some kind of military action," compared with 10% two months earlier.

Story, who served as Washington's top diplomat for Venezuela between 2018 and 2023, said he believes something is now "imminent, without a doubt," The Guardian reports. His comments come as reports that the USS Gerald R. Ford, the largest aircraft carrier in the U.S. fleet, has reached the region and as the president continues ordering airstrikes on what the administration claims are narco-trafficking vessels.

Initially, Story viewed the deployment of warships, Marines, drones, and surveillance aircraft as a show of force intended to pressure Nicolás Maduro. But he said the scale and tempo of recent movements indicate a shift. The buildup represents the largest U.S. military concentration in Latin America in decades.

Analysts cited by The Guardian, however, remain divided on whether the U.S. is preparing for direct strikes or applying maximum pressure to force political concessions. Some believe the deployment may be designed to trigger negotiations, a military uprising, or a negotiated exit rather than a ground invasion. Others warn that miscalculation could push the U.S. into conflict.

Story told The Guardian that one potential approach could be a targeted strike on a senior Maduro ally, similar to the 2020 operation that killed Iranian official Qassem Soleimani. He also suggested that U.S. forces could rapidly dismantle Venezuela's air and naval capabilities if ordered:

"In just a couple of hours we could take out their air force, their navy, their surface-to-air missile systems and we could decapitate the government very quickly with what we [have] in theatre"

His latest remarks align with comments he made last week to BBC Mundo, where he argued the military package assembled over the past two months is "too large and powerful to be only for counternarcotics." Story said at the time that the posture could enable action "inside or outside Venezuela," including strikes on smuggling airstrips or networks the U.S. links to criminal organizations.

While some Venezuelan opposition figures view potential U.S. action as an opportunity to remove Maduro, others warn of destabilization risks, invoking comparisons to Libya after 2011 or Colombia's decades-long insurgencies. "Toppling Maduro would not be a simple task," analyst Benjamin Gedan told The Guardian, adding that rebuilding Venezuela "would be enormously complex."