Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro

OPINION: Trump’s Strategic Mistakes in His War Against Iran

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US President Donald J. Trump monitors U.S. military operations in Iran: Operation Epic Fury, February 28, 2026. [White House X Account – Anadolu Agency]

by Jasim Al-Azzawi

In January 2026, flushed with the swift, covert removal of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the Trump administration rolled the dice on a far more volatile and deeply rooted adversary. President Donald Trump operated under the seductive assumption that a high-tech, stealth excursion against the Islamic Republic of Iran would yield a parallel, cost-free triumph. Yet, months into the conflict sparked by the administration’s aggressive “Maximum Pressure 2.0” campaign and escalated via Operation Epic Fury, Washington finds itself trapped in a familiar, agonizing quagmire. Tactical brilliance has once again been mistaken for strategic victory. As Winston Churchill famously observed in the wake of early wartime triumphs, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” By prioritizing spectacular kinetic displays over coherent political end states, the administration has committed critical strategic errors that echo America’s past blunders in the region, ultimately leaving the United States more vulnerable, its deterrence degraded, and the Middle East fundamentally destabilized.

The administration’s first and most glaring mistake was the illusion of the “quick win”—a fundamental misreading of Iranian resilience, nationalism, and asymmetric depth.

The opening salvos of the 2026 campaign achieved extraordinary tactical milestones, including the systematic destruction of Iran’s conventional naval assets and the stunning decapitation of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Yet, as the Cato Institute observed shortly after the dust settled, “tactical successes cannot mask what has quickly become another strategic failure… the administration’s strategy is divorced from its ostensible aims.” Airpower and targeted assassinations did not trigger a domestic democratic uprising, nor did they erase decades of deeply entrenched institutional control. Instead, power quickly consolidated around an even harder-line, war-hardened faction of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), proving General Omar Bradley’s timeless maxim that “amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals talk about logistics” and long-term sustainability.

Furthermore, the administration drastically underestimated Iran’s capacity for regional, asymmetric retaliation. For years, Washington’s defense establishment operated under the comfortable assumption that Tehran would limit its responses to localized attacks on U.S. assets or proxy skirmishes.

Instead, the conflict immediately metastasized into a multi-theatre conflagration. On day one, Iranian missiles and sophisticated loitering munitions struck across all six Gulf Arab states, completely shattering the regional security umbrella and exposing the fiction of impenetrable air defenses. Rather than dismantling Iran’s missile architecture, the war revealed that a staggering 70 percent of Iran’s ballistic missile stockpile and mobile launchers remained entirely intact, deeply buried in hardened underground “missile cities” and fully operational weeks into the fighting.

READ: Iran threatens to halt US negotiations if Israeli attacks continue in Lebanon

This massive miscalculation triggered the second strategic error: a failure to anticipate and mitigate crippling global economic blowback. The administration’s aggressive naval blockade was met with a brutal, symmetric counter-strategy in the maritime chokepoints. Tehran seized effective de facto control of the Strait of Hormuz—the vital artery through which 25 percent of the world’s oil transits—implementing a coercive toll and mining system that drove global crude prices past $100 a barrel. The economic ripples disrupted fragile global supply chains and sparked inflationary spikes across Western economies. In a supreme irony, the administration was forced to quietly ease certain oil sanctions and grant waivers to keep global energy markets afloat, giving Tehran unexpected economic leverage in the middle of a war meant to break its financial resolve.

This economic vulnerability recalls the warning of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who noted that defense cannot be sustained if it destroys the economic foundation upon which national power rests.

The deeper tragedy of this conflict lies in how it has perversely incentivized the very behavior Washington sought to deter. The administration’s stated rationale for military intervention was the total, permanent elimination of Iran’s nuclear program. However, by demanding what amounted to “unconditional surrender” while systematically dismantling the remaining diplomatic guardrails, the administration left Tehran with zero peaceful off-ramps. Before the outbreak of hostilities, regional intermediaries noted that Iran was willing to offer nuclear concessions that went well beyond the original international agreements. By replacing diplomacy with existential military threats, Washington has practically guaranteed that any post-war Iranian regime will view a functional nuclear deterrent not as a negotiable luxury, but as an absolute requirement for national survival. As the legendary strategist Carl von Clausewitz famously wrote, “War is the continuation of politics by other means.” When war loses its political objective and becomes merely punitive, it transforms into an engine of endless escalation.

READ: Trump agreed to release $24B in frozen Iranian assets without formal announcement: Report

Finally, the war has accelerated a structural shift toward an aggressively post-American global order, severely damaging U.S. credibility among allies and adversaries alike. Writing on the cascading geopolitical fallout of the conflict, foreign policy analyst Robert Kagan noted that the war has triggered an “accelerating global adjustment to a post-American world as a result of this massive miscalculation.” Far from isolating Iran, the conflict has bound Washington’s primary geopolitical rivals closer together. U.S. forces have faced an adversary heavily fortified by external collaboration, ranging from advanced Chinese semiconductor chips and real-time satellite imagery to shared tactical innovations in drone warfare.

The Trump administration entered this conflict under the hubristic assumption that it could unilaterally dictate the terms of a short, low-cost engagement. Instead, it has ignored the foundational rule of strategic statecraft: never launch a war without a clear, achievable definition of peace.

By chasing the mirage of an effortless regime collapse, the administration has degraded America’s conventional deterrence, exposed the global economy to severe energy shocks, and driven a resilient adversary deeper into the camp of our most formidable global competitors. If Washington does not pivot swiftly toward a realistic, diplomatically enforceable ceasefire, Operation Epic Fury will not be remembered as a historic triumph but as a textbook case of how tactical hubris breeds strategic disaster.

OPINION: The end of American forward presence in the Persian Gulf

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel's genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism "without qualification". Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/
Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel’s genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/

Continue ReadingOPINION: Trump’s Strategic Mistakes in His War Against Iran

‘Thug’ Marco Rubio Tells Senate How US Plans to Keep Stealing Venezuelan Oil

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Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

A protestor holds up a sign as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio testifies during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing about US policy toward Venezuela on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on January 28, 2026. (Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

“Rubio’s dangerously expansive vision to transform the United States into a colonizing power in the Americas must be challenged,” one watchdog leader said of the US secretary of state.

In addition to asserting that “there is no war against Venezuela,” despite US forces killing scores of people there while abducting its president earlier this month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday laid out for a Senate panel how the Trump administration intends to continue controlling the South American nation’s oil and related profits.

Legal experts have argued that US President Donald Trump’s blockade of Venezuela’s oil, abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores—who have both pleaded not guilty to federal narco-terrorism charges—and bombings of boats allegedly smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean all violate international law.

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“The ongoing military actions in the Caribbean and South America, including the abduction of Venezuela’s president, are wrong, illegal under US and international law, and unconstitutional,” Robert Weissman, co-president of the group Public Citizen, said before the Senate hearing. “Congressional Republicans have blocked war powers resolutions that would end the US aggression in Venezuela, an extremely dangerous abdication of congressional responsibility to check presidential unlawfulness.”

“Marco Rubio’s central role in the planning and execution of the scheme to violate the sovereignty of Venezuela and steal the country’s oil merits a deep investigation by Congress, and potentially the removal of Rubio as secretary of state,” Weissman continued. “Rubio’s dangerously expansive vision to transform the United States into a colonizing power in the Americas must be challenged.”

Testifying to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—on which he previously served—Rubio said that “Maduro is an indicted drug trafficker, not a legal head of state,” described his abduction as “an operation to aid law enforcement,” and declared that “the United States is prepared to help oversee Venezuela’s transition from a criminal state to a responsible partner.”

Rubio, the acting national security adviser, insisted that Trump wasn’t planning for any more military action in Venezuela—but also would not rule out such action, potentially without congressional authorization, in “self-defense” against an “imminent” threat.

Trump has repeatedly made clear through public statements that his Venezuela policy is focused on its petroleum reserves, seemingly to enrich the fossil fuel leaders who helped him return to power. American forces have seized several tankers in the Caribbean Sea linked to the country—which critics have condemned as “piracy”—and the first US sale of Venezuelan oil went to the company of a trader who donated millions to the president’s 2024 campaign, which Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) last week called “yet another example of his unchecked corruption.”

https://cdn.jwplayer.com/players/kdKoYUm0-xS4RtpB7.html

Describing US control of Venezuela’s nationalized petroleum industry, Rubio told the committee:

Objective number one was stability… And one of the tools that’s available to us is the fact that we have sanctions on oil. There is oil that is sanctioned that cannot move from Venezuela because of our quarantine. And so what we did is we entered into an arrangement with them, and the arrangement is this: On the oil that is sanctioned and quarantined, we will allow you to move it to market. We will allow you to move it to market at market prices—not at the discount China was getting. In return, the funds from that will be deposited into an account that we will have oversight over, and you will spend that money for the benefit of the Venezuelan people…

This is not going to be the permanent mechanism, but this is a short-term mechanism in which the needs of the Venezuelan people can be met through a process that we’ve created, where they will submit every month a budget of this is what we need funded. We will provide for them at the front end what that money cannot be used for. And they have been very cooperative in this regard. In fact, they have pledged to use a substantial amount of those funds to purchase medicine and equipment directly from the United States.

In an exchange with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Rubio said that an “audit process” has not yet been set up but will be, adding that “we’ve only made one payment” and it “retrospectively will be audited, but it was important we made that payment because they had to meet payroll. They had to keep sanitation workers, police officers, government workers on staff.”

Shaheen noted that the oil reportedly sold for $500 million, but only $300 million went to Venezuela’s government, now led by Maduro’s former deputy, Delcy Rodríguez, and asked Rubio about the remaining $200 million. The secretary said that the rest of the money was in a temporary account in Qatar that will ultimately become a US Treasury blocked account.

Summarizing the Trump administration’s plans, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said: “I think the scope of the project that you are undertaking in Venezuela is without precedent. You are taking their oil at gunpoint; you are holding and selling that oil; putting, for now, the receipts in an offshore Middle Eastern account; you’re deciding how and for what purposes that money is gonna be used in a country of 30 million people. I think a lot of us believe that that is destined for failure.”

Highlighting that “a month later, we have no information on a timetable for a democratic transition, Maduro’s people are still in charge, most of the political prisoners are in jail—and by the way, those that have been let out have a gag order on them from the government—the opposition leader is still in exile,” Murphy added, “this looks, already, like it is a failure.”

At one point during the nearly three-hour hearing, Leonardo Flores, a Venezuelan-American with the anti-war group CodePink, shouted, “Marco Rubio, you and Trump are thugs!”

US Capitol Police removed Flores from the hearing. As he was being led away, the protester said that “sanctions are a form of collective punishment of Venezuelan citizens. That’s a war crime. Hands off Venezuela! Hands off Cuba!”

Asked by Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) on Wednesday, “Will you make a public commitment today to rule out US regime change in Cuba,” Rubio—the son of Cuban immigrants—replied: “Regime change? Oh no, I think we would like to see the regime there change. That doesn’t mean that we’re gonna to make a change, but we would love to see a change. There’s no doubt about the fact that it would be of great benefit to the United States if Cuba was no longer governed by an autocratic regime.”

Since the abduction operation, there have been “free Maduro” protests in both Venezuela and Cuba, which lost 32 citizens in the Trump administration’s attack on Caracas. Speaking to thousands of people gathered outside the US Embassy in Havana earlier this month, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said that “the current US administration has opened the door to an era of barbarism, plunder, and neo-fascism.”

“No one here surrenders,” he continued, taking aim at not only Trump but also Rubio. “The current emperor of the White House and his infamous secretary of state haven’t stopped threatening me.”

Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn't bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
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Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.

Continue Reading‘Thug’ Marco Rubio Tells Senate How US Plans to Keep Stealing Venezuelan Oil

Thousands of Greenlanders march against Trump’s takeover threat

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/17/thousands-of-greenlanders-march-in-protest-of-donald-trumps-threats-of-us-control

Protesters outside the US consulate in Nuuk, Greenland. Photograph: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP

Island’s PM joins demonstration chanting ‘Greenland is not for sale’ while rallies held across Danish realm

Thousands of Greenlanders carefully marched across snow and ice to take a stand against Donald Trump on Saturday. They held signs of protest, waved their national flag and chanted “Greenland is not for sale” in the face of increasing threats of an American takeover.

Just as they finished their trek from the small downtown of Greenland’s capital city, Nuuk, to the US consulate, the news broke that Trump had announced he would charge a 10% tariff on eight European countries from February over their opposition to US control of Greenland.

“I thought this day couldn’t get any worse, but it just did,” Malik Dollerup-Scheibel said after the Associated Press told him about Trump’s announcement. “It just shows he has no remorse for any kind of human being now.”

Trump has long said he thinks the US should own the strategically located and mineral-rich island, which is a self-governing territory of Greenland. Trump intensified his calls a day after the military operation to oust the former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro earlier this month.

…

Article continues at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/17/thousands-of-greenlanders-march-in-protest-of-donald-trumps-threats-of-us-control

Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
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Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn't bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
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Continue ReadingThousands of Greenlanders march against Trump’s takeover threat

Majority of UN Security Council rejects the US attack on Venezuela

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Original article by Pablo Meriguet republished from peoples dispatch under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

UNSC emergency session on US attack on Venezuela. Photo: X

In this piece, we review the arguments made by members of the United Nations Security Council regarding the US attack on Venezuela on January 3.

The UN Security Council held an emergency meeting on January 3 in response to the US attack on Venezuela, which resulted in the deaths of dozens of people and the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

The high-level diplomatic meeting was marked by two clearly distinguishable positions: those who supported Washington’s actions and those who rejected them, claiming they violated international law and the South American country’s national sovereignty.

Rosemary DiCarlo, representative of the Secretary-General, said that the actions could generate greater instability in the nation: “We meet at a grave time following the January 3 United States military action in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.” In addition, DiCarlo, following the statements of Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, emphasized that the attack constituted a military aggression that violates the UN Charter.

Future of the UN Charter at stake

Renowned scholar Jeffrey D. Sachs, president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, also addressed the session and highlighted that beyond the immediate violation of Venezuela’s sovereignty, the US actions constitute an existential threat to the entire UN system. “The issue before the Council today is not the character of the government of Venezuela. The issue is whether any Member State—by force, coercion, or economic strangulation—has the right to determine Venezuela’s political future or to exercise control over its affairs. This question goes directly to Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter, which prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”

Sachs implored the UNSC to take action and call on the US to end its military threats and attacks against Venezuela, end its naval blockade, and withdraw its military forces from the Caribbean which have been amassing since August.

Sachs affirmed that, “Peace and the survival of humanity depend on whether the United Nations Charter remains a living instrument of international law or is allowed to wither into irrelevance.”

Neocolonialism, illegality and imperialism: condemnation of the attack

Samuel Moncada, Venezuela’s representative to the Security Council, strongly condemned the US military actions against his country. He stated that what happened on January 3 constituted an “illegitimate armed attack” that lacked legal justification and violated the UN Charter, the Geneva Convention, and the principles of sovereignty. The situation also calls into question the “credibility of international law,” as it seems that “the law is optional” when it is one country and not another that “kidnaps a head of state”.

China

Along the same lines, Fu Cong, representative of China, said: “[China] strongly condemns the unilateral, illegal, and bullying acts against Venezuela.” “[The United States] wantonly tramples upon Venezuela’s sovereignty, security, and legitimate rights and interests,” he said. He also called on the United States to return to dialogue to reach a peaceful solution.

Cuba

Cuba, for its part, categorically rejected the “imperialist and fascist aggressions” of the United States and warned of “criminal and hegemonic plans” that Washington is carrying out. In addition, the Cuban representative stated that the United States commits acts of economic suffocation and maritime terrorism against the governments it seeks to overthrow, which is in flagrant contradiction with the UN Charter and international law. He asserted that the objective behind the “kidnapping” of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, is to gain “control over Venezuela’s land and natural resources.”

Russia

Likewise, the representative of the Russian Federation, Vassily Nebenzia, condemned the “armed aggression” against Venezuela for violating international law and demanded the immediate release of the “legitimately-elected president”, Nicolás Maduro. He also called for an end to fear and hypocrisy in the face of US actions that seek to justify “such an egregious act of aggression [out of fear of the] American global gendarme.” Finally, he stated that the actions of the United States constitute new examples of “neocolonialism and imperialism”.

Colombia

For her part, Leonor Zalabata said that her country, Colombia, strongly condemns the actions of January 3, and affirmed that the use of force, according to the UN Charter, can only be used in exceptional situations, such as self-defense, but never to take political control of another state, as Trump said he would do with Venezuela. The attacks, she added, could lead to a large-scale migration that would require significant budget allocations to care for the migrants. Colombia shares thousands of kilometers of border with Venezuela, and Trump has directly threatened Colombian President Gustavo Petro with carrying out a similar attack on Colombian territory.

Mexico

Mexico also strongly criticized the military attack and stated that such actions “should not be allowed” because they jeopardize multilateralism and international law. It called on members to abandon double standards and “act decisively” in respect for the national sovereignty of the peoples of each country, who are the only ones authorized to decide “their destiny”.

Brazil

Brazil also joined in the criticism. Representative Sérgio França stated that “South America is a zone of peace,” and therefore his country rejects military intervention in Venezuela, which “crossed an unacceptable line”, and violates the UN Charter and international law.

Read more: “We’re going to run the country”: Trump hints at possible US occupation of Venezuela

The violation of international law: moderate criticism of the United States

Several members of the Security Council also criticized Washington’s actions, albeit indirectly or less forcefully. 

United Kingdom

Among them was the United Kingdom, whose representative, James Kariuki, stated that his country reaffirms its commitment to international law and the principles of the United Nations. However, he also criticized the actions of the Maduro government for allegedly increasing poverty, repressing the opposition, and the illegitimacy of his government.

Panama

Along the same lines, Panama’s representative, Eloy Alfaro de Alba, condemned the US attack. He stated that US military actions could have very serious consequences for peace in the Latin American region. He also stressed that his country, which suffered a US invasion between 1989 and 1990, reaffirms its respect for the sovereignty of nations. However, he also took the time to criticize what he called Maduro’s illegitimate and authoritarian government, which he said had eroded the democratic system after the 2024 elections.

Chile

Chile was another country that criticized the US military actions “unilaterally in Venezuela,” according to the South American country’s representative, Paula Narváez. “Chile does not recognize the Maduro regime, but serious human rights violations… cannot be resolved militarily and can only be addressed through peaceful, gradual, and incisive processes.”

“There is no war”: in defense of the US attack

For his part, US representative Michael Waltz defended his government’s actions and stated that “there is no war against Venezuela or its people”. On the contrary, Waltz argued that the attack was “a surgical law enforcement operation to apprehend two indicted fugitives, [the] narco-terrorist Nicolás Maduro and Celia Flores.”

Argentina

Another country that openly supported the attack was Argentina. Its representative, Francisco Tropepi, welcomed Trump’s “decisive action” and stated that it was justified by Maduro’s alleged involvement in drug trafficking. However, he called for the situation to be normalized and for institutional order to be restored as soon as possible.

Latvia

Along the same lines, Latvia’s representative, Sanita Pavļuta-Deslandes, indirectly justified the radical measure taken by the United States when she told the Security Council that Maduro’s government had violated human rights and encouraged drug trafficking and corruption.

The international community and international law are under threat

However, despite some direct and indirect support, the United States’ actions have not been well received by the majority of the United Nations Security Council. Several of its members understand that if such actions are not strongly condemned, they could pave the way for similar military actions in other parts of the world.

Asian and African countries fear a new wave of colonialism in their lands, and Europeans, many of whom do not support Maduro, see expansionist arguments looming over Greenland, which have not been heard in Europe for centuries.

Read more: Africa voices outrage against US invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of President Maduro

Thus, the international community and international law (both structured after the defeat of the Axis in 1945) face an immense challenge following the attack on Venezuela. Whether they will emerge stronger or weakened will become clear in the coming months.

Original article by Pablo Meriguet republished from peoples dispatch under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

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Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn't bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.

Continue ReadingMajority of UN Security Council rejects the US attack on Venezuela

After Claiming Maduro Was Its Kingpin, DOJ Now Admits in Court That ‘Cartel De Los Soles’ Isn’t a Real Group

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Original article by Stephen Prager republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Overthrown Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is seen in handcuffs after landing at a Manhattan helipad, escorted by heavily armed Federal agents as they make their way into an armored car en route to a Federal courthouse in Manhattan on January 5, 2026, in New York City. (Photo by XNY/Star Max/GC Images)

“They’ve been pretending that this made-up thing was real for a year. But now that they’d have actually to demonstrate its existence in court, they’re going to cram it down the memory hole.”

One of the central claims the Trump administration has used to justify the overthrow of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and describe his government as “illegitimate” is the allegation that he is the leader of a multinational narco-terrorist organization known as “Cartel de los Soles.”

But now that the Department of Justice (DOJ) must prove the allegation in court following the US military’s kidnapping of Maduro last week, prosecutors are backing off the claim and, in effect, admitting what critics had long protested: that Cartel de los Soles is not, in fact, an organization at all.

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In the months leading up to the illegal US invasion that plucked Maduro from power, the Treasury Department and State Department both designated Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terrorist organization.

That allegation originated from a 2020 grand jury indictment of Maduro, drafted by the DOJ during Trump’s first term. The document described the Cartel de los Soles as a “Venezuelan drug-trafficking organization comprised of high-ranking Venezuelan officials.”

As the New York Times explained back in November:

There’s a big catch with the impression created by the Trump administration’s narrative: Cartel de los Soles is not a literal organization, according to a range of specialists in Latin American criminal and narcotics issues, from think-tank analysts to former Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officials.

It is instead a figure of speech in Venezuela, dating back to the 1990s, for Venezuelan military officials corrupted by drug money, they say. The term, which means “Cartel of the Suns,” is a mocking invocation of the suns Venezuelan generals wear to denote their rank, like American ones wear stars.

It is for that reason that the DEA’s annual National Drug Threat Assessment, which describes major trafficking organizations in detail, has never mentioned Cartel de los Soles. Nor has the annual “World Drug Report“ by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Nevertheless, the claim that Maduro was at the helm of an international terrorist cartel was a core justification the Trump administration has used over the past year to legitimize pushing him out of power.

“Maduro is NOT the President of Venezuela and his regime is NOT the legitimate government,” said Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a post on social media in July. “Maduro is the head of the Cartel de Los Soles, a narco-terror organization that has taken possession of a country. And he is under indictment for pushing drugs into the United States.”

Such a portrayal was useful when attempting to drum up support for US aggression against Venezuela. But now, Maduro stands on trial in the Southern District of New York, where a jury will decide his guilt or innocence based on the evidence presented after he pleaded not guilty on Monday.

Elizabeth Dickinson, the deputy director for Latin America at the International Crisis Group, told the New York Times that the designation of Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terror organization was “far from reality,” but that “designations don’t have to be proved in court, and that’s the difference. Clearly, they knew they could not prove it in court.”

Following Maduro’s abduction by US forces on Saturday, the DOJ released a new indictment. While it still accused Maduro of participating in a drug trafficking conspiracy, it totally abandoned the claim that any organization called “Cartel de los Soles” actually existed.

To the extent that any such group does exist, the indictment says it’s not as a criminal organization, but as “a culture of corruption in which powerful Venezuelan elites enrich themselves through drug trafficking,” and a “patronage system run by those at the top.”

But even a day after the new indictment fatally undercut his claims, Rubio continued to insist on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Cartel de los Soles was a “transnational criminal organization” and that “the leader of that cartel,” Maduro, “is now in US custody and facing US justice in the Southern District of New York.”

“They’ve been pretending that this made-up thing was real for a year. But now that they’d have to actually demonstrate its existence in court, they’re going to cram it down the memory hole,” marvelled Derek Davison, a Washington-based researcher and writer on international affairs and American politics.

Ben Norton, editor of the Geopolitical Economy Report, wrote on social media that the administration’s abrupt abandonment of one of its central justifications for war demonstrates that “the entire US war is based on lies.”

While the initial phase of Trump’s ramp-up of military aggression against Venezuela was premised, with scant evidence, on the need to prevent alleged drug boats from reaching the US, President Donald Trump has now said explicitly that the administration’s goal is to take control of Venezuela’s massive oil reserves and hand them to US-based companies.

“It never had anything to do with drugs. Venezuela’s role in the global cocaine trade is small and insignificant, and it has absolutely nothing to do with fentanyl (which is actually responsible for many drug-related deaths in the US, unlike cocaine),” Norton said. “The Trump administration’s repeated invocation of the fake ‘Cartel de los Soles’ was its version of the weapons of mass destruction lie used by George W. Bush to try to justify his illegal invasion of Iraq.”

Original article by Stephen Prager republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn't bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.

Continue ReadingAfter Claiming Maduro Was Its Kingpin, DOJ Now Admits in Court That ‘Cartel De Los Soles’ Isn’t a Real Group