Trump Wanted to Replicate His Venezuela “Success” in Iran. What Has It Even Looked Like? |
Special Investigations
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Trump Wanted to Replicate His Venezuela “Success” in Iran. What Has It Even Looked Like?
Trump carried out regime change without a change in regime in Venezuela. Time will tell what that means for the country.
Gabriel Hetland is the author of the book “Democracy on the Ground: Local Politics in Latin America’s Left Turn.”
“What we did in Venezuela, I think, is the perfect, the perfect scenario,” U.S. President Donald Trump told the New York Times in a March 1 interview about his plans for war on Iran. Things have not gone as Trump hoped, to put it mildly. Trump’s search for the Iranian Delcy Rodríguez — a regime insider willing to comply with U.S. demands, as Rodríguez has since she ascended from Venezuela’s vice president to acting president following the January 3 U.S. attack on Venezuela and kidnapping of its president, Nicolás Maduro — hit a snag when the U.S. and Israel killed most of the would-be successors to Ayatollah Khamenei in the opening days of the war. During a March 3 meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Trump told reporters, “Most of the people we had in mind are dead.” (Trump omitted the crucial fact that the U.S. is to blame.)
As the war passes the four-week mark, it is abundantly clear Iran will not be the next Venezuela. Operation Absolute Resolve, the code name for the U.S. attack on Venezuela, was a spectacular success in tactical terms. The U.S. achieved its military aim of removing Maduro in just a few hours and suffered zero U.S. service member fatalities and only a handful of injuries, although the operation cost the lives of around 70 Venezuelans and 32 Cuban security forces. While this toll should not be minimized, it pales in comparison to the U.S.–Israeli war on Iran, which as of mid-March has led to at least 3,000 deaths in Iran, Lebanon, and beyond. In contrast to Trump’s “brilliant operation” in Caracas, the war on Iran has exploded. Well over a dozen countries are now involved, and the war threatens to bring the global economy to a halt due to the ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a pivotal passage for oil, liquid natural gas, fertilizer, and other crucial commodities.
As the world’s eyes remain fixed on Iran, it is important to ask: What has the Venezuela model actually achieved in Venezuela? The short answer is a new form of colonialism in which Venezuela has lost its national sovereignty. Trump’s pledge to “run” Venezuela, made in the hours after the January 3 attack, has not come to pass. The attack instead led to regime change without a change of regime, in which the U.S. removed Maduro but left his regime almost entirely intact. Trump has boasted of this fact, telling the New York Times, “Everybody’s kept their job except two people,” i.e., Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, both of whom have spent the past three months awaiting trial in a Brooklyn jail. The officials who now run Venezuela come directly from Maduro’s administration: Rodríguez; her brother Jorge, who heads the National Assembly; and the minister of interior, Diosdado Cabello. In a possible sign of future changes to come, Rodríguez on March 18 replaced Venezuela’s longstanding minister of defense, Vladimir Padrino López, all but surely in coordination with the U.S.
The U.S. Desperately Wants Back in the Business of Empire With Venezuela
The flip side of this overall continuity is the Trump administration’s stunning and continuing sidelining of far-right opposition leader María Corina Machado, who won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize and infamously gifted it to Trump in an unsuccessful attempt to curry his favor. Trump has supported Rodríguez because she offers that which he most wants: stability. A handover to Machado threatened to plunge Venezuela into chaos and civil war. Strictly speaking, this is not because Machado “lacks the respect within” Venezuela, as Trump claimed during his January 3 press conference. Polls indicate Machado remains the most popular politician within Venezuela. The problem, for Trump, is Machado’s longstanding opposition to any form of “collaboration” with the Maduro administration and Chavismo (the political movement associated with the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez) more broadly. This radical stance makes Machado a major threat to Venezuela’s military and state apparatus. Machado may be reevaluating her hardline position as she plans to return to Venezuela. In a March 12 press conference, Machado spoke of a “grand national agreement,” presumably a power-sharing accord, a possibility she had long rejected. Trump, for his part, has reportedly told Machado, who fled the country in 2025, not to return to Venezuela. This is purportedly out of concern for her safety but is more likely due to Trump’s (not unreasonable) fear that Machado’s presence in Venezuela would undermine the continuity Trump has sought to preserve.
For now, Venezuela remains in the hands of former Maduro officials, who have presided over a transformation of Venezuela’s domestic and foreign policy that is both........