TEHRAN - Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson has denounced an escalation of U.S. military moves in the vicinity of Venezuelan coasts as flagrant violation of the basic objectives and principles enshrined in the UN Charter, particularly the principle of not resorting or threatening to resort to force in intergovernmental relations.

Esmail Baqaei condemned the United States’ illegal and provocative moves, namely repeated attacks on fishing boats and blatantly threatening to resort to force and military intervention against Venezuela. He further highlighted the UN Security Council’s responsibility to head off any aggression against international peace and security.

The United States has killed at least 27 people across six strikes on vessels since September, which it claims belong to 'narcoterrorists.' The Pentagon has not yet provided any proof of these claims. 

Meanwhile, the military commander overseeing the Pentagon’s escalating attacks against boats in the Caribbean Sea said on Thursday that he was stepping down.

The officer, Adm. Alvin Holsey, is leaving his job as head of the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees all operations in Central and South America, even as the Pentagon has rapidly built up some 10,000 forces in the region in what it claims is a major counterdrug and counterterrorism mission.

The resignation indicates tensions inside the US government over policies on Venezuela.

The Trump administration claims the operations target “narco-terrorists” linked to Venezuela, portraying them as part of a wider war against transnational crime. Critics, however, have questioned the legality and morality of the strikes, which have been condemned as "extrajudicial" killings.

Legal experts and human rights groups argue that Washington’s campaign violates international law by bypassing due process and targeting individuals without judicial oversight.

Venezuela has strongly denounced the operations. Its ambassador to the United Nations, Samuel Moncada, called on the Security Council to investigate a “series of assassinations.”

Speaking at the UN on Thursday, Moncada decried a recent US attack on a small boat as “a new set of extrajudicial executions,” saying six people were killed, including two Trinidadian fishermen. “There is a killer prowling the Caribbean,” he said, holding up a local newspaper that chronicled the victims’ lives.

The attacks have left fishing communities across the Caribbean gripped by fear. Fishermen from Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago, whose territories are separated by only a few miles, say they now risk being mistaken for smugglers.

“People from different countries are suffering the effects of these massacres,” Moncada warned, adding that Washington is “fabricating a war.”

While Trinidad’s prime minister has not commented on the latest attack, she previously endorsed US military actions in the region. But local families have voiced growing anguish.

In Trinidad’s Las Cuevas village, relatives of 26-year-old fisherman Chad Joseph say he disappeared while returning home by boat from Venezuela and is now feared dead in one of the US strikes. “I don’t want to believe that this is my child,” his mother said in an interview.

Joseph’s family and others in the region say they’ve been left to piece together what happened through social media rumors and news reports, as no government has released the names of those killed.

Washington’s military presence in the Caribbean has expanded sharply. Since late August, the US has deployed warships, fighter jets, a nuclear submarine, and thousands of troops to the region—moves that critics interpret as an intimidation tactic aimed at Venezuela’s government.