The Untold Jewish Role in Venezuela’s Crisis

The United States is edging toward an unprecedented military showdown with Venezuela. The crisis escalated earlier this month after a U.S. drone strike killed 11 alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua — the first such strike in Latin America since the 1989 invasion of Panama. This was followed by another strike on September 15, 2025, that killed three alleged drug traffickers.

Days later, Venezuelan F-16s flew over U.S. naval vessels, triggering Pentagon warnings and threats from President Donald Trump that approaching aircraft would be shot down. Washington has since deployed its largest Caribbean naval presence in decades, including 4,500 sailors and Marines, Tomahawk-equipped destroyers, submarines, an amphibious assault ship, and 10 F-35s stationed in Puerto Rico.

This confrontation follows Venezuela’s disputed July 2024 election, widely condemned as fraudulent, in which opposition candidate Edmundo González claimed victory, but the electoral council declared Nicolás Maduro the winner. Jewish political scientist Steven Levitsky described the official results as “one of the most egregious electoral frauds in modern Latin American history.” Protests left at least 22 dead and resulted in more than 2,000 arrests.

Once Donald Trump returned to office, his administration ramped up sanctions and terrorism designations, labeling Tren de Aragua and the Cartel de los Soles as narco-terrorist organizations and invoking the Alien Enemies Act against Venezuelan nationals connected to these groups.

The roots of hostility stretch back to Hugo Chávez’s rise in 1999, his survival of a U.S.-backed coup in 2002, and decades of mounting sanctions, indictments, and efforts at regime change. Analysts see Trump’s current escalation as a revival of the Monroe Doctrine, Washington’s long-standing claim to hemispheric hegemony.

Yet what makes today’s crisis uniquely combustible is Venezuela’s deepening ties to Russia, which signed a sweeping 10-year strategic agreement with Maduro in May 2025, and to China, which openly opposed the U.S. naval buildup. Venezuela, sitting atop the world’s largest proven oil reserves — 300 billion barrels, 17 percent of the global total — has become not only a prize of energy geopolitics but also a node in the emerging Moscow–Beijing–Caracas axis.

However, beneath the surface of this escalating military confrontation lies an overlooked dimension: the Jewish angle in U.S.-Venezuelan relations. Israel’s strategic concerns have played a significant role in shaping American policy toward Caracas. As Venezuela has emerged as the most consistently anti-Zionist country in South America, Jewish factions within the U.S. foreign policy establishment have increasingly viewed Caracas as a threat extending well beyond traditional hemispheric security concerns.

Venezuela’s Anti-Zionist Evolution Under Chávez

The deterioration of Venezuelan-Israeli relations accelerated during the Second Intifada, when Chávez’s government sponsored rallies supporting the Palestinian cause. The first direct targeting of Venezuela’s Jewish community occurred in May 2004 when the Sephardic Tiferet Israel Synagogue in Caracas was attacked following a government-backed pro-Palestinian rally.

The situation escalated dramatically during the 2006 Lebanon War, when Chávez accused Israel of carrying out a genocide. In August 2006, Venezuela recalled its ambassador from Israel and later declared: “Israel has gone mad. They are massacring children, and no one knows how many are buried.”

Venezuela’s complete break with Israel came on January 14, 2009, during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. Chávez described Israel’s military offensive as a “cruel persecution of the Palestinian people, directed by Israeli authorities.” The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry announced the severance of diplomatic ties, stating the move was made “given the inhumane persecution of the Palestinian people carried out by the authorities of Israel.”

Following this diplomatic break, Venezuela officially recognized Palestine on April 27, 2009, becoming the first country in the Americas to establish formal diplomatic relations with the Palestinian Authority.

Likud in Caracas: The Israeli Hand Behind Venezuela’s Opposition

The Venezuelan opposition has taken a dramatically different approach to relations with Israel. This is epitomized by María Corina Machado, head of the liberal party Vente Venezuela, who in July 2020 signed a formal cooperation agreement with Israel’s ruling Likud Party.

The agreement pledged collaboration on “political, ideological, and social matters, as well as advancing cooperation on issues related to strategy, geopolitics and security.” It explicitly stated its goal to “bring the people of Israel closer to the people of Venezuela while advancing, together, the Western values of freedom, liberty, and market economy.”

Machado described this as sending “a clear message to Nicolás Maduro” and indicated that if she came to power, she would restore diplomatic relations with Israel.

Israel’s Recognition of Juan Guaidó

Israel was among the first countries to recognize Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s interim president during the 2019 presidential crisis. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Israel’s recognition on January 27, 2019, stating that Israel “joins the United States today, as well as Canada, most South American countries and European nations.”

According to Axios, the Trump administration had specifically asked Israel to publicly support the regime change campaign against Maduro.

Guaidó thanked Netanyahu for the recognition with rhetoric explicitly linking Venezuela’s struggle to Holocaust liberation: “74 years ago, the Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated, and today, just as our country is also fighting for its freedom, we thank the Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu for the recognition and the support.”

Venezuela’s Strategic Alliance with Iran

Venezuela has forged strong ties with the Islamic Republic of Iran since 1999, creating what both countries describe as an “axis of unity” against U.S. imperialism. Chávez’s first visit to Iran in 2001 launched what would become a strategic partnership based on shared resistance to the Judeo-American imperium’s overreach in their respective spheres of influence.

The relationship deepened after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election as Iran’s president in 2005. Through multiple exchanges, Chávez and Ahmadinejad established hundreds of bilateral deals. Their alliance grew so close that in 2006 Chávez vowed to “stay by Iran at any time and under any condition.”

During an address at Tehran University in 2010, Chávez warned: “If the U.S. empire succeeds in consolidating its dominance, then humankind has no future. Therefore, we have to save humankind and put an end to the U.S. empire.”

Under Maduro, Venezuela-Iran relations have continued to consolidate, with Tehran providing gasoline shipments during fuel shortages, military cooperation including drone technology, sanctions evasion assistance, and a multi-billion-dollar trade and investment deal.

The Hezbollah Connection

The Iran-Venezuela partnership has extended to include Hezbollah, a long-time ally of Iran that has created security concerns for Empire Judaica. U.S. officials assert that Iran and Hezbollah maintain operational networks within Venezuela that facilitate narcotics trafficking and money laundering schemes. These networks reportedly work with Venezuelan military elites in the Cártel de los Soles to move cocaine, with Hezbollah allegedly serving as a “main finance and money launderer for narco-terrorism groups like Tren de Aragua.”

Security experts claim Hezbollah operates in Venezuela through clan-based structures embedded within the Maduro government’s illicit economy. The Venezuelan airline Conviasa conducts regular flights between Caracas, Damascus, and Tehran, which Hezbollah reportedly uses to ‘ferry operatives, recruits, and cargo in and out of the region.’

These allegations of Hezbollah infiltration further fueled Maduro’s framing of his domestic opposition as part of a larger Zionist conspiracy.

Maduro’s “International Zionism” Accusations

Following Venezuela’s disputed 2024 election, Maduro repeatedly blamed “international Zionism” for Venezuela’s internal problems. In August 2024, after widespread protests over alleged electoral fraud, Maduro claimed that his opposition was supported and bankrolled by international Zionist networks.

“All the communication power of Zionism, who controls all social networks, the satellites, and all the power behind this coup d’état,” Maduro declared in a televised speech. He also described Argentina’s president Javier Milei, who currently leads Latin America’s most philosemitic government, as a “Zionist” and “social sadist.”

Maduro’s remarks drew sharp criticism from Deborah Lipstadt, then U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, who accused him of reviving classic antisemitic tropes about Jews controlling global affairs.

“Maduro’s absurd claim that Jews are behind election protests in Venezuela is antisemitic and unacceptable,” Lipstadt tweeted. “The Venezuelan people have gone to the streets to peacefully call for their votes to be counted. We reject all forms of antisemitism, and the use of these types of age-old tropes fans the flames of Jew hatred in Latin America and throughout the world.” 

The Enduring Neoconservative Order

The American approach to Venezuela cannot be understood without recognizing the influence of neoconservative ideology on U.S. foreign policy over the last 30 years. Neoconservatism posits that the United States is an exceptional polity that must export its model of democracy far and wide. But this only scratches the surface. Its ultimate goal is to make the world safe for Zionist supremacy — an ideological current marked by significant Jewish overrepresentation.

Stephen McGlinchey, Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of the West of England, observed: “the core postulate of the neoconservative Bush foreign policy package, revolutionary democratisation, is intricately tied to Israel’s security.” Under this Jewish supremacist framework, any country adopting a principled anti-Zionist stance is viewed as a threat to Judeo-American interests.

Like many Jewish movements, neoconservatism relies on servile gentiles to implement its agenda. Currently, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a longtime interventionist with an eye toward remaking Latin America in the United States’ dysfunctional image, is spearheading the campaign to topple the Maduro government. A regime change booster, Rubio has maintained close ties to Venezuelan opposition figures such as María Corina Machado, pushing for harsher sanctions and greater diplomatic isolation.

Venezuela’s affinity with Iran — the bête noire of world Jewry — further motivates Rubio and his Jewish patrons to pursue punitive measures against Caracas. Any country that deviates from this consensus becomes a fresh target for regime change. 

The breakdown in U.S.-Venezuela relations represents a complex intersection of hemispheric hegemony, energy geopolitics, and Jewish concerns. While oil reserves and great power competition provide the obvious explanations for American hostility, the Israeli factor adds a crucial dimension that has been consistently underestimated in policy analysis.

By emerging as South America’s most reliably anti-Zionist country, aligning with Iran, and tolerating Hezbollah’s presence, Venezuela has drawn the ire of Jewish policymakers in Washington who interpret challenges to Israel as pretexts for expanding U.S. power in defense of Zionist objectives.

Taken together, these dynamics reveal how Venezuela’s defiance is not viewed in Washington merely as a hemispheric issue, but as part of a larger ideological battle tied to Israel’s security and the global reach of Zionist influence. With Jewish interests shaping foreign policy at the highest levels, the pursuit of genuine U.S. interests becomes impossible.