New reporting in the Wall Street Journal and the Miami Herald says the Trump administration “has identified targets in Venezuela that include military facilities used to smuggle drugs,” and that Washington “has made the decision to attack military installations inside Venezuela” — strikes that, the Herald wrote Friday, “could come at any moment.”

Venezuelan officials and many critics condemn these moves as naked coercion cloaked in a drug-war narrative.

In its Thursday report, the WSJ itself notes there is no public evidence Venezuela produces fentanyl — the opioid at the center of U.S. rhetoric — and stresses Caracas has historically been a transit route for Colombian cocaine, not a fentanyl factory.

Opponents argue the “narco” framing risks masking a campaign aimed at regime change and access to Venezuela’s oil, gold, and other resources.

Miami Herald sources say the planned strikes are intended to “decapitate the cartel’s hierarchy” and could be carried out within days or even hours. The leaks to the Herald may themselves have been deliberate, aimed at signaling pressure to Venezuelan officials.

U.S. officials have doubled bounties on senior Venezuelan figures and deployed a carrier strike group, led by the USS Gerald R. Ford, to the Caribbean.

Critics warn that branding Venezuela a “narco-state” has been advanced without transparent evidence and is being wielded as a pretext to justify extraterritorial force.

The campaign has already shifted from maritime interceptions to lethal strikes at sea. These operations have killed at least 60 people, which Washington claims were smugglers, but they have drawn human-rights objections.

Analysts say that extending such strikes onto sovereign military infrastructure risks provoking a regional conflagration, rallying domestic support for Nicolás Maduro, and inviting deeper involvement from external patrons.

Caracas has bolstered air defenses and framed U.S. steps — from public bounties to authorization of covert actions — as unlawful aggression that substitutes bombs for diplomacy.