Washington, D.C. , 14 February (H.S.): President Donald Trump on Friday heralded the United States' rapport with Venezuela as a 10, announcing plans for a presidential visit to the oil-rich nation while lavishing praise on interim President Delcy Rodriguez for facilitating lucrative energy collaborations in the wake of Nicolas Maduro's January capture by U.S. forces.
Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump affirmed, I'm going to make a visit to Venezuela, underscoring the burgeoning entente despite prior administration reticence toward Rodriguez's legitimacy; he explicitly recognized her stewardship, declaring, Yeah, we have done that. We are dealing with them, and really right now they have done a great job, amid concerted efforts to unlock Venezuelan crude reserves for American firms.
This overture follows U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright's landmark Thursday sojourn to Caracas— the first by a Trump appointee post-Maduro—wherein Wright dubbed Rodriguez the interim president and vowed non-interference in her prospective electoral trajectory, emphasizing Venezuelan sovereignty in leadership transitions.
The diplomatic pivot traces to Operation Absolute Resolve, a audacious U.S. military incursion launched in the predawn hours of January 3, 2026, when Delta Force commandos, backed by CIA intelligence and airstrikes suppressing Venezuelan air defenses, stormed Maduro's Caracas compound around 2:00 a.m. local time (05:21 VET), apprehending the incumbent socialist leader and spouse Cilia Flores; they were swiftly helicoptered to the USS Iwo Jima and extradited to New York for prosecution on charges encompassing human rights abuses and narco-trafficking.
Trump memorialized the feat via Truth Social with an image of the shackled Maduro—blindfolded, headphone-clad, and clad in a gray Nike sweatsuit clutching a water bottle—prompting Rodriguez, Maduro's longtime vice president and oil czar sanctioned under Trump's first term, to assume interim reins amid vows of pragmatic U.S. partnership.
Negotiations swiftly ensued, yielding preliminary accords by January 6 for oil export mechanisms—including auctions for U.S. buyers and licensing for American energy behemoths—responsive to Trump's ultimatum for total access to Venezuela's vast hydrocarbon bounty, severing adversarial pacts with China, Iran, Russia, and Cuba, while prioritizing Yankee reconstruction investments
Rodriguez, however, navigated a rhetorical tightrope: in a January 26 broadcast, she bristled at Washington's orders and reaffirmed Maduro's legitimacy in an NBC interview earlier that week, even as Trump, in Atlantic discourse, posited regime reconfiguration as superior to Venezuela's nadir.
Trump's encomiums belie lingering frictions, including Rodriguez's defiance—Venezuela will never return to being the colony of another empire—and White House opacity on formal recognition shifts, juxtaposed against imperatives for political prisoner releases and opposition empowerment six weeks post-operation.
As bilateral oil overtures burgeon—a lot of money is being paid, per Trump—the prospective pilgrimage portends the first sitting U.S. presidential foray to Venezuela in nearly three decades, potentially catalyzing enduring realignments in hemispheric energetics and geopolitics.
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Hindusthan Samachar / Jun Sarkar
