Trump has a list of demands for Venezuela’s new leader
The Trump administration is demanding that Venezuela’s interim leader take several pro-U.S. actions that her predecessor refused if she wants to avoid a similar fate.
U.S. officials have told Delcy Rodriguez that they want to see at least three moves from her: cracking down on drug flows; kicking out Iranian, Cuban and other operatives of countries or networks hostile to Washington; and stopping the sale of oil to U.S. adversaries, according to a U.S. official familiar with the situation and a person familiar with the administration’s internal discussions.
U.S. officials also expect Rodriguez — the former vice president now running Venezuela — to eventually facilitate free elections and step aside, the two people said. But the deadlines for the demands are fluid, and U.S. officials stress there are no elections imminent.
Two days after the U.S. struck Venezuela and captured its dictator, Nicolás Maduro, much remains unclear about what Washington plans for the aftermath. The White House argues that Maduro’s ouster was a law enforcement move
against a drug lord, not a regime change operation or a war — a frame it has leaned on to explain its limited steps so far. But President Donald Trump’s penchant for dramatic action and targeted strikes may face its ultimate test in Venezuela, an economically broken nation of 30 million where missteps could lead to violence and other instability.
Rodriguez appears to be the linchpin in any U.S. strategy that may emerge. While she is a longtime ally of Maduro with serious socialist bona fides, the Trump team is nonetheless confident she will do its bidding. If not, she faces significant military action, Trump has warned.
“Venezuela, thus far, has been very nice. But it helps to have a force like we have,” Trump told reporters Sunday on Air Force One. “If they don’t behave, we will do a second strike.”
The White House declined to comment and the State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Venezuela’s U.N. mission in Geneva did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A senior U.S. official said the focus of the administration right now is on ensuring “that the country remains stable in advancing towards U.S. interests,” but declined to speak to the demands put to Rodriguez.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio hinted at the U.S. message to Caracas on Sunday, telling ABC News the U.S. “will set the condition so that we no longer have in our hemisphere a Venezuela that’s the crossroads for many of our adversaries around the world, including Iran and Hezbollah, is no longer sending us drug gangs, is no longer sending us drug boats, is no longer a narcotrafficking paradise.”
The directives given to Rodriguez suggest that such conversations are more specific, concrete and intense than Rubio has publicly disclosed.
The Trump team thinks Rodriguez is on a “short leash” and is “confident they can whip her in whatever direction they want before they dispose of her and move on,” a person close to the administration said.
The person, like others interviewed, was granted anonymity to discuss highly sensitive internal deliberations.
In a matter of days, Rodriguez has shifted from her initial condemnation of Maduro’s capture to saying late Sunday that she would work with the U.S. “on an agenda of cooperation.”
Rubio indicated during TV interviews over the weekend that Trump’s claim that the U.S. will “run” Venezuela is more about influencing Rodriguez. He also has mentioned
in interviews the importance of holding elections, while trying to lower expectations that will happen anytime soon.
Other Trump aides, such as Richard Grenell, who led previous back-channel diplomacy with Caracas, have favored Rodriguez staying indefinitely, according to the U.S. official.
Grenell, who Trump tapped to run the Kennedy Center, has not been a part of the administration’s recent Venezuela policymaking, and is not on the team working with the remaining government in Caracas, said the senior U.S. official. Grenell did not respond to a request for comment.
However, the senior U.S. official also said the president believes it’s “far too premature for us to even be discussing elections in Venezuela.”
“Of course elections are something we want to see, but it’s not something that’s being discussed with Delcy right now,” the senior U.S. official added.
Aside from military options, the U.S. has other carrots and sticks to win Rodriguez’s cooperation — including sanctions relief and access to her financial assets, which are largely in Doha, Qatar, according to a person familiar with Trump’s Venezuela policy and another person familiar with the matter.
The U.S. has an “enormous amount of leverage on Rodriguez and the others,” said Elliott Abrams, who served as special representative for Venezuela in the first Trump administration. “We have proved that we can seize people in downtown Caracas.”
Abrams, who said Rodriguez also has assets in Turkey, predicted that even the specter of discussions about her finances would be powerful in dealing with her personally.
“The statement that we’re talking to the Qataris and the Turks about her money obviously would be quite a threat,” Abrams said.
The U.S. official and three of the other people said they were not aware of any administration plans to lift sanctions on Venezuela or send any significant humanitarian aid to the country just yet.
Prior to the military operation that captured Maduro this weekend, some people in various U.S. agencies
mulled sanctions relief and other day-after moves. But, according to the person familiar with the Trump team’s discussions, “there was no interagency process to develop an after-action plan.”
The U.S. government is currently lacking some of the strength it had in such crisis planning because of the administration’s cuts to the State Department and other parts of the government, although it is trying to rebuild some aspects of it.
The person familiar with the Trump team’s discussions said the U.S. also is requesting that Venezuela release Americans held prisoner in the country. But this person and others said they were not aware of any U.S. demand that the government in Caracas free all of the Venezuelan political prisoners it has locked up. The lack of such a demand worries Abrams and others in Republican foreign policy circles who fear the U.S. won’t follow through on efforts to bring about new leadership.
For now, the Trump team envisions doing much of its post-Maduro work from afar, even though Trump told reporters on Sunday that he is considering reopening the U.S. Embassy in Caracas.
One specific challenge facing the U.S. administration is that the Maduro cronies left behind have their own internal rivalries and power bases — some of them armed. Alongside Rodriguez, they include Diosdado Cabello, the interior minister, and Vladimir Padrino Lopez, the defense minister.
“It’s an unstable pit of vipers,” said the person familiar with Trump’s Venezuela policy.
It’s an especially delicate balancing act for Rodriguez, as some Venezuelans question whether she could have played a role in giving up Maduro, said Ryan Berg, a Latin America analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
She has to both express “outrage” about Maduro’s capture, while also demonstrating an openness to U.S. demands, Berg said.
“She also needs to move herself away from what happened,” Berg said. “While at the same time, she needs to be open to pushing pro-U.S. policies that are going to be very difficult for her regime to swallow, given that they have a 27-year history of seeing the United States as the greatest enemy.”
Delcy Rodriguez appears to be the linchpin in any US strategy that may emerge.
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