Iran’s collapsing currency exposes the profiteers behind the crisis
By Fereshteh Sadeghi | The Cradle | January 5, 2026
In the final days of 2025, as the rial plunged to unprecedented lows, Tehran’s bustling Jomhuri (Republic) Avenue transformed into a corridor of defiance.
‘Bazaaris’ (traditional merchant class with deep political and economic influence) and cellphone shopkeepers, cornered by a collapsing currency and punishing tariffs, shuttered their stores and poured into the streets.
Their outrage ignited a fire that quickly spread to the Grand Bazaar, long considered Iran’s economic barometer. Unlike the 2022 protests over social freedoms or the 2009 unrest sparked by electoral disputes, this wave of demonstrations is driven squarely by economic collapse and long-festering mismanagement.
What began as a merchants’ revolt against an unworkable trade environment soon revealed the deeper rot of decades-long economic mismanagement, institutional corruption, and a sanctions-choked system that punishes the people to sustain itself.
Sanctions, sabotage, and a vanishing economy
Iran, a nation of over 86 million, registered a meager 0.3 percent economic growth in summer 2025, while inflation soared past 42 percent by December. Labor force participation remains abysmally low, trailing nearly 20 points behind the global average. These dire metrics have steadily worsened under the weight of relentless US sanctions, first re-imposed by President Donald Trump in 2018 during his first term, and have intensified through two presidential terms.
The rial’s spectacular collapse – breaking the 1,445,000 mark against the US dollar – did not occur in a vacuum. It marked a 47.8 percent surge in just six months.
The higher the rate was going up, the angrier were businesses whose sales are directly dependent on the dollar-rial change rate. The first spark of protests was ignited by the shopkeepers at two cellphone shopping malls in downtown Tehran. They started a strike, saying they were unable to do business because they were struggling with a new cellphone registry tariff the government had imposed on devices priced at $600 and more.
The next day, shopkeepers did not just close their shops but took to the famous Republic Avenue, protesting against the situation. The dollar dealers at Ferdowsi Avenue joined the protests too, and in the Grand Bazaar, gold and silversmiths brought their shutters down in fear of chaos.
A shopkeeper at Lalezar Street tells The Cradle that, “we were forced to close our shops as some protesters attacked us verbally and threatened to ransack our shops by hurling stones at our windows.”
In addition to sanctioning traditional routes such as banks, firms and individuals, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), has been targeting digital currency addresses it accuses of being used by a financial network to transfer Iran’s oil and non-oil money.
According to Gholma-Reza Taj Gardoun, chairman of the parliamentary budget committee, “the Iranian government only received 13 out of $21 billion oil revenues in the last eight months”. He added that “the remaining $8 billion is the cause of the current turmoil, the shortage of dollar bills in the market and the rising exchange rate.”
A rigged system of profiteers
Taj Gardoun is not alone in exposing how oil and non-oil export revenues have failed to return to Iran. At the heart of the crisis lies a parasitic class of semi-governmental enterprises and politically-connected traders who profit from Iran’s fiscal dysfunction.
Former finance minister and current lawmaker Hussein Samsami estimates that “117 out of $335 billion non-oil export revenues have not returned to the country, since the US re-imposed sanctions in 2018.” Much of this capital, he says, was siphoned off by ‘khosulati’ entities – quasi-governmental firms benefiting from state ownership yet operating without transparency or oversight.
Equally troubling is the shadowy role of “trustees” – a secretive network tasked with circumventing sanctions to sell Iranian oil.
Former Central Bank of Iran (CBI) Governor Valiollah Seif acknowledged “they are trusted people, Iranians and non-Iranians, who transfer money (for Iran),” adding “money transfer is a very risky process and the payment of these so-called trustees and the money changers working with them is high.” Seif revealed “sometimes a trustee siphons off the funds.”
Apart from the trustees, the quasi-governmental entities are also blamed for refusing to give back the non-oil export money to the central bank and sell it at rates higher than the regular CBI-approved rate at the official market.
These companies are owned by various funds affiliated with the Iranian government. The petroleum and the social welfare ministries gained a majority of the shares in these funds through the privatization process in different governments.
The third group that has not returned the export money is individuals or firms with special business permits. A deputy CBI governor reports that “Individuals who own or rented 900 special licenses must return some $16 billion to the central bank, (but they didn’t).”
The result is a liquidity trap in which foreign exchange vanishes from official markets, feeding a vicious cycle of inflation and speculation.
State paralysis and political deflection
For months, the government of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian appeared paralyzed, watching as the currency spiralled and public rage mounted. While some suggest the state deliberately allowed the rial to slide to ease its budget deficits, others cite institutional chaos and a lack of cohesive economic policy.
They refer to a confession made by former Iranian president Hassan Rouhani in 2020, “The foreign currency belongs to the government, the price is decided by the government and we can bring it down, if we decide it.”
In reaction to the voices of dissatisfaction, Pezeshkian tasked his interior minister with meeting the representatives of the protesters and listening to their grievances.
He sat with merchants and replaced CBI governor Mohammad-Reza Farzin with former finance minister Abdolnasser Hemmati. Nevertheless, the latter, who was impeached 10 months ago over his mismanagement of the foreign exchange market, said “he has no responsibility regarding the currency market and his task is to control imbalanced banks and reduce inflation.”
Austerity in a powder keg
In the streets, the demonstrations have morphed into sporadic riots, mostly in western provinces, marked by attacks on police stations and arson against state buildings. Casualties have been reported, including among security forces, as the protests shift from organized dissent to expressions of raw frustration.
Demonstrations in Tehran that were not large in essence have subsided, but morphed into sporadic riots. Smaller cities or towns in western Iran are now the scene of riots, with the number of rioters limited to dozens, not even hundreds.
Arson attacks against government buildings or rioters storming police stations to capture their armory have been reported. About a dozen, including police forces, have been killed countrywide, and arrests have been made.
Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on 3 January, admitted that the ‘bazaaris’ have legitimate complaints regarding economic instability. Still, he made it clear that the Islamic Republic “will not yield to the enemy” and will deal seriously with violent protesters; “rioters must be put in their place.”
The Iranian leader’s comments were a response to Trump after he threw his weight behind the protesters, threatening the Islamic Republic with military intervention “if protesters are killed.” The Reformist Front joined in rejecting foreign threats, warning that any interference in the protests would escalate violence and distort the people’s demands.
In a last-ditch bid to regain economic control, an Iranian official from the Budget and Planning Organization says “the Trustees will be asked to return billions of dollars in their overseas accounts to the country.” A lawmaker cautions, “the parliament will question the oil minister over the issue of the Trustees.”
Iran’s minister of economy said that positive results have been achieved from negotiations with several countries, including the release of part of Iran’s financial resources and the opening of funding channels for importing essential goods, along with gradual efforts to unify the exchange rate into a single rate.
Simultaneously, Pezeshkian is pushing ahead with plans to phase out subsidies for essential imports – a move he dubs an “economic surgery” that will be offset by targeted vouchers for lower-income citizens. But austerity in the midst of currency collapse, inflation, and a credibility crisis is a combustible formula.
Iranian officials are closely tracking the situation in Venezuela, where the abduction of President Nicolas Maduro and rising US aggression offer chilling parallels. For now, Tehran’s street protests remain contained. But if the economic pain persists and reforms deepen inequality, the next wave may not be as easily quelled.
Israeli Intrigue in Venezuela?
By W.M. Peterson | Truth Blitzkrieg |January 5, 2026
“The question is: who’s really in charge? I know President Trump appears to be. I’m not convinced that’s the case because remember… you had this giant Israeli flag suddenly appear in the middle of the Republican convention. And certainly in my lifetime… I don’t know of a single instance where either the Democratic or Republican parties held a convention and hoisted a giant foreign flag… I’ve never heard of that before.” — Col. Douglas Macgregor on the Judging Freedom podcast with Judge Andrew Napolitano (Jan. 3, 2026)
Just four days after Benjamin Netanyahu appeared as a guest on Newsmax’s The Record with Greta van Sustern and informed the insufferable newscaster that Iran is “exporting terrorism… to Venezuela. They’re in cahoots with the Maduro regime… this has got to change,” it was announced that U.S. military forces had carried out a large scale operation against Venezuela, capturing President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, who will both “face the full wrath of American justice” after being indicted on drugs and weapons charges in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The capture of Maduro occurred exactly 36 years to the day after US Delta Forces captured Panamanian President/CIA informant Manuel Noriega, and it’s unlikely that Netanyahu’s recent visit to the U.S.– the fifth in 2025 by the international fugitive — and the American operation are unrelated. While talk of ‘stolen oil’ and ‘narco-terrorism’ currently dominates the mainstream discourse, the fact that Israel has been seeking regime change in Venezuela since the days of Hugo Chavez has gone virtually unreported.
Prior to Maduro’s predecessor Chavez winning Venezuela’s 1998 presidential election, relations between the naturally wealthy South American country and Israel had been relatively good. Venezuela voted in favor of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947 — which allocated 55% of historic Palestine to the as-yet-unfounded Jewish state — and two years later voted in favor of Israeli membership to the UN. By the mid 1960s, Venezuela boasted a robust Jewish population equipped with an impressive communal structure of schools, synagogues and cultural centers organized by middle-to-upper-class members of the community. In 1967, Jewish ethnic solidarity inspired a large number of Venezuelan Jews to travel to Israel to fight alongside their co-religionists in the Six-Day War. Following the conflict, a large influx of Sephardic Jews from Morocco arrived and settled in Caracas contributing to the largest Jewish population in Venezuela’s history, numbering 30,000 at its peak, evenly split between Sephardim and Askenazim.
By the mid-2000s, however, relations between Venezuela and the Synagogue began to fray.
The first notable rift occurred in late 2004 following the assassination of Venezuelan state prosecutor Danilo Anderson, who was killed by a car bomb at age 38. 1
At the time of his death Anderson had been investigating more than 400 people suspected of involvement in the Llaguno Overpass shootout and the failed 2002 coup d’état, during which Chavez was ousted from office for two days before being restored to power by popular support and a number of loyal military men. (Accusations of Jewish involvement in the coup were made at the time by pro-government newspaper Diario VEA, and later by Venezuela’s ambassador to Russia, Alexis Navarro.)
Suspicions of a possible Mossad dimension to the assassination plot were already high when Venezuelan authorities received a tip suggesting that weapons and explosives connected to the murder may have been transferred from the Club Magnum shooting range to the Colegio Hebraica Jewish school in Caracas, prompting Chavez to authorize his investigative police force DISIP to conduct an armed raid on the school on the morning of November 29, 2004. Chavez’s investigators intercepted busloads of kids and evacuated 1,500 students from the building while searching for any materials related to Anderson’s assassination. Ultimately nothing of value was found and the incident was loudly condemned by local and international Jewish organizations like the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who referred to it in typically melodramatic fashion as a “pogrom.”
Throughout the next two years Chavez’s rhetoric concerning Jewish power and influence became considerably more pointed, especially following Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 2006. It was during this time that Chavez recalled his country’s ambassador to Israel and threatened to sever diplomatic ties with the Jewish state in protest of its military operation, describing it as a “new Holocaust” and “similar or, perhaps worse… than what the Nazis did.” Chavez further inflamed the sensibilities of Jews at home and abroad by traveling to Tehran and affirming that Venezuela would “stand by Iran at any time and under any condition.” 2
In January 2009, Chavez finally made good on his threat when Venezuela severed all diplomatic ties with the Jewish state due to its conduct in the 2009 Gaza War which left 1,400 Palestinians dead and over 5,000 wounded. Once again referring to the violence as a “Holocaust” and a “flagrant violation of International Law,” Chavez expelled Israel’s ambassador to Venezuela and called for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to be tried for war crimes in the International Criminal Court. Shortly thereafter, foreign minister Nicolas Maduro met in Caracas with representatives from the Palestinian National Authority and Venezuela officially recognized the existence of a Palestinian State on April 27, 2009.
By this time Chavez was facing tremendous pressure from the international Jewish cabal and it was clear he had a target on his back. During a nationally broadcast speech in June 2010, Chavez condemned Israel as a “terrorist and murderous state,” and affirmed that “Israel is financing the Venezuelan opposition. There are even groups of Israeli terrorists, of the Mossad, who are after me trying to kill me.” Hugo Chavez died on March 5, 2013 at the age of 58 after a two year battle with cancer. He was succeeded as President of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela by Nicolas Maduro who blamed his predecessor’s death on “a US plot.” 3
“Narco-Terrorism”
For months the Trump administration has been trying to claim that Maduro is responsible for trafficking boatloads of drugs into the United States; using the unfounded claim to justify deadly strikes on more than 30 small vessels in the Caribbean and what Trump referred to as “the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs.” Initially ‘The Donald’ tried claiming the boats were carrying fentanyl and that each extra-judicial U.S. strike would save 25,000 American lives. However, this outlandish conspiracy theory was hampered by the fact that no evidence exists showing that any significant level of fentanyl is produced in South America, as confirmed by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
With the fentanyl narrative sinking faster than Maduro’s purported drug boats, the Trump administration pivoted seamlessly to talk of purloined oil and cocaine trafficking. While it’s true Venezuela plays a role in the international cocaine trade, the US doesn’t appear to be a significant destination as no direct trade route via sea is known to exist between the countries. In reality, far more cocaine and fentanyl enters America through Mexico and yet, curiously, socialist president Claudia Sheinbaum’s “narco-government” has thus far failed to register a blip anywhere near as noteworthy as Venezuela’s on Uncle Sam’s regime change radar.
Another overt contradiction in Trump’s ‘war on drugs’ narrative is the federal pardon he granted ex-president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernandez, who had just recently begun serving a 45-year sentence after being convicted in a New York federal court for drug trafficking and firearms offenses and for receiving millions of dollars in bribes from drug cartels, including a $1 million bribe from Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. Despite having trafficked an estimated 400 tons of cocaine into the United States over a period of 18 years, Hernandez walked out of prison a free man on December 1, 2025, just days before the Honduran general election in which Trump endorsed Nasry Asfura, the candidate from Hernandez’s Honduran National Party, who himself was indicted by authorities in 2020 on charges of money laundering, embezzling public funds, fraud, and abuse of authority.
Trump’s support for Juan Orlando Hernandez and Nasry Asfura shouldn’t raise any eyebrows coming as it does from the man who pardoned Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard’s handler and is currently engaged in running interference for an international child sex trafficking ring. Indeed, Trump’s entire life has been spent swimming in the same swamp he promised to drain and now he’s being used as a tool for regime change in Venezuela and soon Iran. Disgraced attorney Alan Dershowitz, who staunchly defended Pollard in his 1991 book Chutzpah, recently told the media that “If President Trump wants to be known as the peace president, he has to be in support of regime change.”
I’m familiar with the arguments put forth by starry-eyed MAGA optimists suggesting there’s some America First motivation informing Trump’s decision-making. However, it seems more likely there’s a deeper play involving Israel that’s the driving force behind the conflict. This was hinted at when Fox News published an article claiming Maduro’s Venezuela has become “Hezbollah’s most important base of operations in the Western Hemisphere, strengthened by Iran’s growing footprint and the Maduro regime’s protection” and again when ultra-Zionist Ambassador Mike Huckabee informed the world that the US overthrow of Maduro was good news for Israel because of his country’s partnership with Iran and Hezbollah. Perhaps this explains why Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez believes the operation was imbued with a ‘Zionist tint’? When viewed in its entirety it’s hard to disagree. Capturing Venezuela’s vast oil reserves might even portend an immediate escalation in the Middle East by diminishing Iran’s primary geopolitical leverage, e.g., blocking the Strait of Hormuz, and I expect to see an escalation on that front in the coming weeks and months.
Whatever the case may be, you can rest assured knowing that the Trump administration is not waging a war on “narco-terrorism,” a completely meaningless propaganda term designed chiefly to promote regime change in Latin America. The illegal narcotics destroying the bodies and minds of Americans young and old are undoubtedly entering the country under CIA and Mossad auspices, just as they were in the 1980s during Iran-Contra when Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton — a “terrific guy” according to Trump — permitted the use of his Mena airstrip for the transport of an extraordinary amount of cocaine into the United States. A highly-placed conspirator within the Iran-Contra nexus was Jewish neoconservative Elliott Abrams (Trump’s US Special Representative for Venezuela from 2019 – 2021), who recently advocated for regime change in Venezuela for the purpose of — among other things — reducing drug trafficking! Abrams, who crafted the 1998 PNAC letter demanding the removal of Saddam Hussein, was convicted in 1991 on two misdemeanor counts for his role in the Iran-Contra affair after entering into a plea agreement to avoid felony charges of perjury.
Evidentially, international gun/drug running isn’t much of a concern for Trump, so long as the perpetrators play for the right team. But hey, MAGA, be of good cheer, your white knight’s attack on Venezuela isn’t without its supporters…
NOTES:
- The Jewish Telegraph Agency reported on December 7, 2004 that Anderson “was assassinated in his car by a remote bomb planted in his cell phone… Comparisons of the style of Anderson’s assassination to Israeli targeted killings carried out by Israeli commandos abounded. In the best-known example, Israelis assassinated Hamas bomb-maker Yehiya Ayyash in 1996 using a booby-trapped cell phone.” ↩︎
- According to the World Conference Against Anti-Semitism, Chavez’s pro-government media published “an average of 45 [anti-Semitic] pieces per month” in 2008 and “more than five per day” during the January 2009 Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. In early 2013 dozens of documents were leaked to the press showing that SEBIN, Venezuela’s premier intelligence agency, had been collecting “private information on prominent Venezuelan Jews, local Jewish organizations and Israeli diplomats in Latin America.” ↩︎
- The current leader of Venezuela’s opposition party, the Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Machado, has said that she is ready to take power. In a recent interview with the newspaper Israel Hayom, Machado was quoted as saying: “Venezuela will be Israel’s closest ally in Latin America. We rely on Israel’s support in dismantling Maduro’s crime regime and in the transition to democracy. Together we’ll lead a global struggle against crime and terror.” ↩︎
Department of War Claims No US Troops in Venezuela
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | January 5, 2026
US military officials said the US does not currently have any personnel on the ground in Venezuela. The statement was made the day after President Donald Trump said the US was running the country.
On Tuesday, the Pentagon claimed that no troops were on the ground in Venezuela, raising questions about Trump’s assertion that the US was controlling Caracas. “We are going to run [Venezuela] until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition. We don’t want to be involved with having somebody else get in and we have the same situation that we had,” the President said on Saturday. “We are there now, and we are going to stay until the proper transition takes place.”
The US has engaged in a massive military buildup in the Caribbean, including 15,000 soldiers, an aircraft carrier strike group, an attack submarine, and warplanes. Those troops have conducted strikes on dozens of drug boats, seized tankers carrying Venezuelan oil, and kidnapped President Nicolas Maduro.
After Maduro was removed from Venezuela, the Supreme Court named Vice President Delcy Rodríguez as interim president. Trump initially said that the US was prepared to work with Rodríguez, but he later threatened to remove her from power if she did not comply with Washington’s demands.
Trump claimed that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and War Secretary Pete Hegseth would be “running” Venezuela. The President added that he was willing to deploy American troops to Venezuela to enforce his dictates.
Rodríguez says she is willing to work with the US, but maintains that Venezuela is a sovereign nation.
Beijing Urges US Not to Use ‘China Threat’ Narrative to Control Greenland
Sputnik – 05.01.2026
BEIJING – The United States must stop using the so-called “China threat” narrative to justify its personal interests, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said on Monday, commenting on US President Donald Trump’s claims to Greenland.
On Sunday, Trump told The Atlantic that the United States “absolutely” needed Greenland, claiming the island was “surrounded by Russian and Chinese ships.” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen urged Trump to stop threatening Greenland, an autonomous part of Denmark, with annexation.
“We urge the US to stop using the so-called ‘China threat’ as a pretext for itself to seek selfish gains,” Lin told the briefing.
Earlier in the day, Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said that the island is open to dialogue with the United States as long as communication occurs through the proper channels.
Trump has repeatedly said that Greenland should become part of the United States, citing its strategic importance for national security and the defense of the “free world,” including from China and Russia. Former Greenlandic Prime Minister Mute Egede said the island was not for sale.
The island was a Danish colony until 1953. It has remained a part of the Kingdom of Denmark after gaining autonomy in 2009, with the ability to self-govern and determine its own domestic policy.
Why Didn’t Venezuela Shoot Maduro’s Kidnappers Out of the Sky? Expert Outlines Three Possibilities
Sputnik – 05.01.2026
Glowing MSM reports on the operation to capture Maduro attribute success to the US military’s super-duper high-tech weapons, advanced tactics and painstaking planning. But there are other, potentially far more plausible explanations, says Egor Lidovskoy, director of St. Petersburg’s Hugo Chavez Latin American Cultural Center.
Option #1
“The first option is incompetence on the part of government agencies” and those responsible for Maduro’s protection, specifically in the Defense Ministry Lidovskoy told Sputnik.
Option #2
Maduro’s betrayal is another possibility, perhaps if some officials agreed to collude with the US to give up the president in exchange for promises to profits from oil extraction if and when the Americans arrive in Venezuela.
“We don’t have any evidence that this or that member of Maduro’s government or team betrayed him. We don’t have such facts. Therefore, I think it’s wrong to make unfounded accusations in advance,” Lidovskoy said. Instead, for now, “we must closely monitor what is happening, and based on this, draw conclusions about whether such a conspiracy exists or not,” he suggested.
Option #3
The most provocative possibility is that the kidnapping “was a Trojan Horse operation,” which would remove questions about betrayal and incompetence and explain “many inconsistencies,” Lidovskoy says.
“The gist of this theory is that a US delegation accompanied by armed guards arrived at Maduro’s residence to discuss the parameters of a peace deal at a dinner, to conduct peace talks, to find common ground.”
This would explain the lack of incoming fire by Venezuelan air defenses on US helicopters.
“Once inside, the delegation’s armed guard (revealed to be special forces) shot all of Maduro’s guards – who were unprepared for this – and captured the president. And only when the signal came in that something had gone wrong and the president had been captured did the bombing of Venezuelan bases and key air defense points begin, providing a smokescreen for the US withdrawal,” Lidovskoy proposed.
US Coup Plot Lacks Key Ingredient
The 2026 plot against Maduro echoes the September 11, 1973 overthrow of Chilean president Salvador Allende in the sense that it’s “a continuation… of US imperialism using unilateral, deadly force against governments that challenge its hegemony in the hemisphere,” but lacks a critical component: betrayal by the military, Venezuelanalysis editor Ricardo Vaz told Sputnik.
“Allende and the Popular Unity were socialists, they prioritized sovereignty over natural resources (copper), and that was a direct challenge to US interests and influence. The same applies to Venezuela and the Bolivarian Revolution,” Vaz explained.
But unlike the Chilean case, where General Pinochet committed the crime of betraying Allende and the constitutional order, and murdering the president, the only “sin” in Venezuela’s case was its “desire to remove the shackles of US neocolonialism, using resources in a sovereign fashion to improve the lives of the majority, driving regional integration away from the US sphere of influence, and ultimately constructing socialism.”
“External pressure might lead to cracks and treason, but that is the primary issue: US imperialism,” Vaz stressed.
Leaders Believe in Bolivarian Revolution, Can’t Be Bought
Unlike past US-backed coups across the region, plotters in Venezuela have not found a base of support in the military to draw from to successfully overthrow the government and install a US puppet regime, renowned international law specialist and UN expert Alfred de Zayas told Sputnik.
“When the US tried to overthrow Hugo Chavez in 2002 and the coup d’etat failed after 48 hours (Chavez had been taken prisoner – but his popularity with the Army was such that the Army succeeded in liberating him), the Venezuelan people remained loyal to Chavez,” Zayas recalled. “I am convinced that the Venezuelan authorities would have remained loyal to Maduro if they had had the opportunity. That is why Maduro was immediately flown out of the country,” he added.
Speaking to Venezuelan government officials repeatedly, including in his capacity as a UN independent expert, and in the years since, Zayas said what stuck out to him about these conversations was their ideological commitment and loyalty “to the tenets of the Bolivarian Revolution,” and the US’s clear inability to easily “buy” them.
“I personally know of several high officials who were approached by CIA operatives with very attractive offers, and they refused to sell out,” Zayas said. What’s more, in his conversations with ordinary Venezuelans, the expert came away with the impression that “the masses hate the United States – the Yankees – and will not accept a US puppet,” seeing US sanctions pressure, not the Venezuelan government, as the source of their troubles.
US ‘creating enemies’ by humiliating rivals – analyst
RT | January 5, 2026
The US administration is making enemies around the world by taking harsh steps such as seizing the leaders of sovereign nations, American journalist and political analyst Bradley Blankenship has told RT.
The comments come a day after Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was kidnapped along with his wife, Cilia Flores, during a US raid on Caracas. Washington accuses the Venezuelan leader of narco-trafficking and weapons offences, allegations he has denied.
“When you humiliate a sovereign head of state live on television, you create the conditions for the population to resist you,” Blankenship told RT on Monday. “That is what we are seeing in Caracas. When you drag a sovereign leader through New York in an open white van, you only create enemies. That is what the United States is doing.”
He said such actions risk galvanizing resistance inside Venezuela and beyond. “This is how you lose,” Blankenship said. “You do not break people’s will. You harden it.”
Blankenship, the founder of the Northern Kentucky Truth and Accountability Project, argued that Washington’s seizure of Maduro has elevated him into a powerful political symbol rather than weakening his movement.
“Maduro’s role is more symbolic than instrumental,” Blankenship said, describing him as a continuation of the Chavista political project rather than a revolutionary figure on the scale of Simon Bolivar, Fidel Castro or Che Guevara. “But he is definitely a symbol for Venezuelans as someone who resisted American imperialism,” he added.
According to Blankenship, Washington’s approach is already having wider repercussions. By carrying out the operation against Venezuela, the US has threatened multiple countries, such as Colombia, Mexico, Greenland, Cuba and Canada, as well as others across several continents.
“This is how you create enemies,” he said. “Not only abroad, but at home as well.”
Blankenship also pointed to signs of internal dissent within the US security apparatus, noting that details of the Venezuela operation were leaked to major American newspapers before it took place. “The fact that it leaked shows internal dissent,” he said, adding that similar divisions have emerged during previous US military actions.
Trump Is Correct That María Corina Machado Has No Popular Support In Venezuela
The Mainstream Media Freaks Out Over The One Thing Trump Got Right
The Dissident | January 5, 2026
While the mainstream media has largely cheered on Trump’s kidnapping of Venezuela’s president, Nicolas Maduro, and regime change bombing in Venezuela, it has attacked him for his comments calming that the U.S. puppet opposition politician María Corina Machado has no popular support in the country.
For context, Trump said he will not install María Corina Machado as president of Venezuela because she “doesn’t have the support”.
This comment from Trump has caused the most backlash out of anything he has done or said in the mainstream media, with CNN’s Jim Sciutto, interviewing María Corina Machado’s advisor, who claimed she has “got the support from almost every Venezuelan,” and the Washington Post’s editorial board writing that Trump’s claim was “foolish”.
But in reality, poll after poll shows that Maria Corina Machado is despised by people in Venezuela.
A poll from the pollster Hinterlaces put out on October 8th of last year showed that, “91% of those consulted have an unfavorable opinion about the opposition leader María Corina Machado” in Venezuela and noted that this placed Machado as “the most unpopular, with a rejection rate significantly higher than the rest of the country’s political leaders.”
Another October poll from the polling firm Dataviva showed that, “86% of those consulted expressed disagreement with the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to María Corina Machado, pointing out that there are no merits or concrete actions that support that recognition”.
Yet another poll from September of last year showed that, “64.6% of Venezuelans maintain a negative opinion on the role played by the opposition led by María Corina Machado after a recent survey conducted by the Datanálisis poll. In contrast, only 18.6% expressed a positive assessment of its management.”
In reality, María Corina Machado’s role as a U.S.-funded puppet has been to publicly cheer on U.S. imperialism in Venezuela, which is opposed by the overwhelming majority of Venezuelans, no matter if they like Maduro or not, to give the false impression that Venezuelans will greet American intervention as liberation.
During Trump’s first term in office, 86% of Venezuelans Opposed Military Intervention and 81 percent opposed the US starvation sanctions on the country, while María Corina Machado – as journalist Michelle Ellner has documented – “worked hand in hand with Washington to justify regime change, using her platform to demand foreign military intervention to ‘liberate’ Venezuela through force” and “pushed for the U.S. sanctions that strangled the economy, knowing exactly who would pay the price: the poor, the sick, the working class.”
During Trump’s current war on Venezuela, polls show that “93% categorically reject any request or proposal for multifactorial aggression against Venezuela, considering it contrary to the peace, dialogue and independence of the country” while María Corina Machado – as documented by Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has repeatedly cheered on U.S. intervention, including by saying:
-5 December 2025, Machado on CBS Face the Nation: “I say this from Oslo right now, I have dedicated this award to [President Trump] because I think that he finally has put Venezuela in where it should be, in terms of a priority for the United States national security.”
– 30 October 2025, Bloomberg interview: “Military escalation may be the only way… the United States may need to intervene directly”
-October 2025, Fox News interview on U.S. military strikes on civilian vessels: “justified.”
-5 October 2025, interview in The Sunday Times on the U.S. military buildup and extra-judicial assassination strikes against civilian boats: Trump’s strikes are “visionary”. “I totally support his strategy.”
-9 February 2019, interview with EL PAÍS : Maduro will only leave “in the face of a real threat from a more powerful state.”
– February 2014, testimony before U.S. Congress: “The only path left is the use of force.”
The mainstream media’s freakout over Trump’s accurate comments about Maria Corina Machado is more to do with the fact that it exposes the truth that Venezuelans both who support and oppose Maduro, don’t want U.S. intervention in their country, and the false idea that Venezuelans are cheering on U.S. intervention only comes from deeply unpopular U.S. funded assets like Maria Corina Machado who are propped up in the mainstream to give this false impression.
US Strikes Leave Venezuelans Without Homes, Money to Pay for Funerals – Victim
Sputnik – 05.01.2026
CARACAS – A Venezuelan family living in a Caracas suburb has told Sputnik that they have been left homeless and without means of subsistence after US airstrikes.
“We have nowhere to live. We need to bury my aunt, but we also have no money for that — we are a poor family,” the 62-year-old man said.
The US attack partially destroyed the family’s home in the coastal state of La Guaira, north of Caracas, killing the 80-year-old woman.
Another Venezuelan, from the city of Catia La Mar near Caracas, told Sputnik that his elderly neighbor had been killed by a rocket fragment. The attack also destroyed the apartment building that was home to 17 families. He said Venezuelans were struggling to get over the shock caused by US strikes.
On January 3, the United States launched a massive attack on Venezuela, capturing President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and taking them to New York. US President Donald Trump announced that Maduro and Flores would face trial for allegedly being involved in “narco-terrorism” and posing a threat, including to the United States.
Caracas requested an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council in response to the US operation. The Venezuelan Supreme Court appointed Vice President Delcy Rodriguez as the acting head of state.
The Russian Foreign Ministry expressed solidarity with the Venezuelan people, called for the release of Maduro and his wife, as well as for the prevention of further escalation. China called for the immediate release of the Maduros, emphasizing that US actions violated international law.
Oil tankers depart Venezuela in ‘dark mode’ amid US blockade: Report
The Cradle | January 5, 2026
About a dozen tankers loaded with Venezuelan oil and fuel departed the country in recent days, despite a blockade imposed by US President Donald Trump as part of the pressure campaign to depose Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, TankerTrackers.com reported on 5 January.
The US military launched an operation on Friday to abduct Maduro and his wife, bringing them to the US to face trumped-up drug trafficking charges in a New York court.
Four of the departed tankers recently left Venezuelan waters through a route north of Margarita Island, TankerTrackers.com revealed, after identifying the vessels in satellite images.
At least four of the tankers had been cleared by Caracas authorities in recent days to leave Venezuelan waters, a source with knowledge of the departures’ paperwork told Reuters. The tankers traveled in “dark mode” after switching off their transponders.
According to Reuters, Venezuela’s state-run oil company PDVSA had accumulated a very large inventory of floating storage amid the US blockade imposed by Trump last month, which had brought the country’s oil exports to a standstill.
The ability of the tankers, all of which are under US sanctions, to depart the country loaded with oil will provide relief for PDVSA, which was running out of storage capacity.
Oil provides Venezuela’s primary source of revenue, making the continued export of the country’s crude crucial for maintaining stability following the US regime-change operation.
Oil minister and vice president Delcy Rodriguez now leads the country in Maduro’s absence.
It was not immediately clear if the US allowed the tankers to depart Venezuela or if they managed to break the US blockade.
Trump claimed on Saturday that the “oil embargo” on Venezuela was still in force, but said Caracas’s largest customers, including China, would keep receiving oil as long as it was paid for using dollars, not yuan.
However, Maduro’s ouster will likely [???] lead Venezuelan oil to be rerouted toward the US and away from China moving forward.
“A smooth transition in Caracas will likely result in a rapid rerouting of Venezuelan oil exports, re-establishing the US as the major buyer of the country’s volumes,” Reuters wrote on Sunday.
Pro-Israel billionaire and Trump supporter Paul Singer is expected to be the largest beneficiary of the rerouting.
In November, a judge in the US District Court in Delaware awarded the assets of PDVSA’s US subsidiary, CITGO, to Amber Energy, which is funded by Singer’s Elliott Management.
Elliot Management paid just $5.9 billion for CITGO’s assets, which include oil refineries in Texas, Louisiana, and Illinois. Estimates of the actual value of CITGO’s assets are as high as $18 billion.
CITGO’s refineries in the US were custom-built to refine Venezuela’s heavy crude, meaning that due to Trump’s regime-change operation, Singer will now be able to purchase Venezuelan oil, refine it, and sell it as fuel in the US.
Jaime Brito, an oil analyst at OPIS, said access to Venezuelan oil imports “will be a game changer for US Gulf Coast … refiners in terms of profitability.”
Venezuela Invites Trump to Build Peace and Cooperation Instead of War
teleSUR | January 4, 2026
The Venezuelan interim president Delcy Rodriguez called the US government to move toward a “a balanced and respectful international relationship” and between Venezuela and the countries of the Region, based on sovereign equality and non-interference.
Rodriguez highlighted that sovereign equality and non-interference are the principles that guide the Venezuelan diplomacy with the rest of the world.
The interim president “Venezuela reaffirms its vocation for peace and peaceful coexistence. Our country aspires to live without external threats, in an environment of respect and international cooperation. We believe that global peace is built by first ensuring the peace of each nation.”
Rodriguez extends the invitation to the US government to work together on a cooperative agenda, “oriented towards shared development, within the framework of international legality and strengthen lasting community coexistence.”
“President Donald Trump: Our people and our region deserve peace and dialogue, not war. That has always been the predicament of President Nicolás Maduro and it is the one of all Venezuela at this moment,” says Rodriguez.
The Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice ordered that Vice President Delcy Rodríguez assume the presidency of Venezuela to ensure administrative continuity and the defense of the nation, after a foreign military aggression that resulted in the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro.
The Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice of Venezuela, based on articles 234 and 239 of the Constitution, made a systematic interpretation to determine the applicable legal regime that guarantees the administrative continuity of the State and the defence of the nation against the forced absence of the president, considered as a material and temporary impossibility to exercise his functions.
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Panama: A Grieving People Recalls 30 Years of the US Invasion
teleSUR | December 20, 2019
For the first time over the last 30 years, Panamanian authorities agreed to declare “National Day of Mourning” on December 20, which is the date on which the United States invaded Panama in 1989.
“The government acknowledges declaring December 20 as a day of national mourning to honor Panamanians and all the innocents who lost their lives and defended our territory’s integrity,” President Laurentino Cortizo tweeted on Wednesday.
On Dec. 20, 1989, President George H.W. Bush ordered “Operation Just Cause” and deployed some 26,000 soldiers to overthrow General Manuel Antonio Noriega.
Until then, he had been one of the most faithful collaborators of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
Noriega fueled the Bush administration’s hostility when he requested the closure of “The School of the Americas,” where the U.S. had trained thousands of Latin American military since 1946. Upon losing Washington’s support, however, the U.S. Department of Justice accused him of drug trafficking. … continue
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