On Tuesday, President Trump announced his intention to classify the Venezuelan government, led by President Nicolás Maduro, as a foreign terrorist organization. He also plans to enforce a blockade on all sanctioned oil tankers traveling to and from Venezuela, intensifying his administration’s opposition to the nation.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump declared his directive for a “total and complete blockade” of these oil tankers, marking another step in his efforts to pressure the South American country.

The president cited several reasons for this designation, including “theft of our assets, and many other reasons, including terrorism, drug smuggling, and human trafficking,” according to his statement.

“Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest armada ever assembled in the history of South America,” Trump stated. “It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before—until such time as they return to the United States all of the oil, land, and other assets that they previously stole from us.”

Trump further accused the “illegitimate Maduro regime” of utilizing oil from stolen fields to fund activities such as “drug terrorism, human trafficking, murder, and kidnapping.”

The announcement comes a week after the U.S. seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, which the administration said was being used to transport “sanctioned oil” from Venezuela and Iran. Trump has said the U.S. intends to keep the oil that was on board.

The administration also recently imposed sanctions on Maduro family members and Venezuelan businesses.

The Trump administration has been steadily building up a military presence in the region, raising concerns about whether the president intends to engage in a military conflict with Venezuela.

The Pentagon has positioned the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, and its carrier air wing in the Caribbean. Two B-1 Lancer bombers in October departed from Dyess Air Force Base in Texas and flew near the coast of Venezuela, according to flight tracking data.

The administration has also for months been carrying out military strikes on alleged drug-carrying boats in the Caribbean, with those operations and the dozens of deaths they’ve caused coming under congressional scrutiny. Trump has for weeks threatened to carry out land strikes within Venezuela, though he has yet to follow through.

While Trump administration officials have argued the campaign against Venezuela is about stopping the flow of drugs, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair in an interview published Tuesday that the president’s plan is to “keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle. And people way smarter than me say that he will.”