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A tense phone call last week be­tween the White House and Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro of­fered the em­bat­tled leader one fi­nal deal: re­sign im­me­di­ate­ly, leave Venezuela with his wife and son, and re­ceive safe pas­sage—or face the full force of an ex­pand­ing US cam­paign tar­get­ing what Wash­ing­ton has la­belled a “nar­co-ter­ror­ist regime.”

Ac­cord­ing to US me­dia re­ports, the call—re­port­ed­ly bro­kered by Brazil, Qatar, and Turkey—col­lapsed al­most in­stant­ly. Maduro de­mand­ed glob­al amnesty, con­trol of the armed forces, and time to ne­go­ti­ate an ex­it, con­di­tions Wash­ing­ton re­ject­ed out­right.

Days lat­er, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump stunned the re­gion by de­clar­ing Venezue­lan air­space “closed in its en­tire­ty,” warn­ing air­lines, drug traf­fick­ers, and hu­man smug­glers that the or­der re­quired “im­me­di­ate at­ten­tion.” In Venezuela, the state­ment was wide­ly in­ter­pret­ed as a sig­nal that land op­er­a­tions could be­gin im­mi­nent­ly.