The Trump administration sure is being nice to Venezuelan dictator Delcy Rodríguez lately.
Hey, remember Venezuela?
The U.S. executed a near-perfect operation to capture and arrest Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, only to leave the morally indistinguishable Delcy Rodríguez in power.
As the Miami Herald lays out this morning, there’s considerable evidence that Rodríguez is the real power behind Venezuela’s vast criminal networks:
Responding to a questionnaire sent to him by the Miami Herald through his lawyer, retired Venezuelan Gen. Cliver Alcalá Cordones, who is serving a 21-year, eight-month sentence in the U.S., asserts that Delcy Rodríguez and her brother, Jorge Rodríguez, have long been the real architects of Venezuela’s criminalized power structure.
“That photo clearly shows us who holds the real power in Venezuela,” Alcalá wrote, referring to the image of Jorge Rodríguez being re-elected head of the National Assembly and swearing in his sister as acting president after Nicolás Maduro’s recent capture by U.S. forces. “They are the true architects of the Venezuelan dictatorial regime.”
Alcalá’s claims, which are disputed by the Venezuelan government, echo and amplify what U.S. intelligence assessments, investigative reporting, and years of U.S. sanctions enforcement have increasingly suggested: that before Maduro was captured in a U.S. pre-dawn raid in Caracas to face drug trafficking charges in New York, Venezuela’s center of gravity had shifted away from the strongman and toward a disciplined, family-run network operating largely out of sight. . . .
As I noted shortly after the operation, Rodríguez is responsible for a list of crimes longer than a CVS receipt, sanctioned by the U.S. and many European governments for her crimes. President Trump recently called her “a terrific person.”
A bit less than two weeks ago:
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has told Reuters that additional U.S. sanctions on Venezuela could be lifted as soon as next week to facilitate oil sales, and that he will also meet next week with the heads of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank on their re-engagement with Venezuela.
Bessent said in an interview late on Friday that almost $5 billion worth of Venezuela’s currently frozen IMF Special Drawing Rights monetary assets could be deployed to help rebuild the country’s economy.
In other news, Rodríguez announced that the Venezuelan government had received $300 million from a $500 million U.S. sale of Venezuelan crude oil.
Thursday, Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Caracas, where he “told Rodríguez that the Trump administration wants to strengthen its working relationship with the government and discussed potential opportunities for economic collaboration.”
(Hey, why is the CIA director traveling to a notorious hostile foreign leader and offering “potential opportunities for economic collaboration”?)
We’re allegedly at war with the narco-traffickers, but we’re being really, really nice to Delcy Rodríguez, who is a narco-trafficker.
Oh, and U.S. oil companies don’t want to invest in Venezuela, because it doesn’t make financial sense. Not even Chevron, which is already operating there, wants to spend the money:
Trump is pressing U.S. oil companies to pour $100 billion into Venezuela’s dilapidated oil sector — and to do so as soon as possible — following Maduro’s dramatic ouster this month. But a rapid escalation in oil investments in Venezuela isn’t in the cards, even for Chevron, the only U.S. oil company operating in the oil-rich Latin American country, people close to the company said.
Before making a big investment there, oil executives want to see stability in the country and higher oil prices that translate to profits, some of the people said. Chevron’s caution shows how far Trump’s aspirations for a speedy Venezuelan oil revival are from what the U.S. oil industry considers to be a realistic timeline.
Elsewhere on NR today, Michael J. Ard writes, “Rodríguez is trying to square the circle. Despite her cooperative tone with Trump, Rodríguez and company continue to stoke the anti-U.S. fires at home. They continue to drag their feet on releasing more political prisoners. The State Department has issued a ‘do not travel‘ warning for Americans intending to visit Venezuela.”
What are we doing here?
It feels like the Trump administration was willing to bet a whole lot of its metaphorical chips on Delcy Rodríguez being more cooperative and aligned with U.S. interests than Maduro was. That always seemed like a long-shot at best, and the early returns are not promising.