Marco Rubio Says Oil Quarantine Gives US Sway In Post-Maduro Venezuela

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US would use an oil quarantine to get what it wants from Venezuela’s new leaders following the ouster of President Nicolas Maduro.

Rubio told CBS News that the country must sever ties to Iran and Hezbollah, stop drug trafficking and ensure that Venezuela’s oil industry doesn’t benefit adversaries of the US. 

“We are going to make an assessment of what they do, not what they say publicly in the interim, not what we know, what they’ve done in the past in many cases, but what they do moving forward,” Rubio said in an interview Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation. “So we’re going to find out,”  

“I do know this — that if they don’t make the right decision, that the United States will retain multiple levels of leverage to ensure that our interests are protected and that includes the oil quarantine that’s in place among others,” he said.