Who facilitated the Venezuela coup?

David Montoute
January 5, 2026

The abduction of Nicolás Maduro, and his wife Cilia Flores on January 3rd was carried out with incredible speed—reportedly taking 2.5 hours—with nearly no resistance from the Venezuelan army, except for some damage to a fixed-wing aircraft and several US helicopters. Unofficial statements claim over 80 people dead, including all of Maduro Cuban escorts and bodyguards, who were killed in cold blood, according to Venezuela's Defence Minister.

The ease with which Washington captured and removed its principal enemy in the Western Hemisphere has fueled speculation and hypotheses about what really happened behind the scenes of the operation. Most pointedly, several analysts see a betrayal of Maduro by his own inner circle and the heads of the Venezuelan military. 

In conversation with Andrew Napolitano, former UN arms inspector Scott Ritter laid out just such a case, observing that American troops

“...don’t go in with two troops of Delta Force into a hostile capital city and launch an assault of this nature unless everything was cleared in advance. That’s the quickest way to lose 35 Delta troops. No. They went in, it was cleared, hot to go in, it was a permissive environment, they got their made-for-TV moment, and then they left.” 

Other analysts have pointed out that a portable anti-aircraft system, like a MANPAD, could have shot down any of the Apaches used in the operation, whilst the types of rotary-wing aviation that spirited the President away are so easy to detect by radar that Venezuela's radars and its long-, medium-, and short-range air defenses must all have been turned off. Otherwise, wrote Patricia Marins “[i]t is practically impossible for dozens of highly trained presidential security personnel, holding defensive positions in facilities they know intimately, with an extremely experienced guard force that was already anticipating a possible attack, to be completely wiped out without the attackers suffering a single casualty.” 

A confidential source from inside Venezuela spoke to the You Tube channel 'The Mexican Family' and leaked what they claim to have been the actual scenario: As the aerial attack unfolded, the source claimed, members of the presidential guard took Maduro and his wife aboard a helicopter towards a safe bunker. The helicopter then deviated from its proper course towards a frigate off the coast of Caracas where the couple was delivered to US forces.

So, how plausible is this account? Was an agreement reached with the Venezuelan army, allowing only Maduro and his wife to be extracted whilst granting Trump access to oil though an 'acceptable' transition government, whilst keeping the Venezuelan state intact?

What is striking is that only one day after the operation, Venezuela's interim leader Delcy Rodriguez suddenly toned down her criticism of the foreign kidnappers and, on Telegram, declared the country ready to ‘work with the US’:

“We consider it a priority to move towards a balanced and respectful relationship between the US and Venezuela...We extend an invitation to the US government to work together on an agenda for cooperation that is aimed towards shared development.” 

In fact, in the months before this operation, we find various media outlets openly discussing an almost perfect template for the current change of power. On October 16 of last year, the Miami Herald published a report claiming that high-ranking government officials in Caracas offered the United States a political transition plan without Nicolás Maduro. The proposals were allegedly presented by Delcy Rodríguez and her brother Jorge, who is president of the National Assembly, and were said to have gone through intermediaries in Qatar. The ultimate aim was to reduce tensions with Washington.

The report, later confirmed by the Associated Press, stated that the Venezuelan government had proposed a scenario in which Maduro would resign in three years and power would pass to Delcy Rodríguez. But the vicepresident shot back at the paper, calling the Miami Herald's report "false" and "fake" and part of a "psychological warfare" campaign. 

The Rodríguez siblings allegedly presented two proposals to the Trump administration. The first, in April, included Maduro's resignation and his continued residence in Venezuela. The second one in September, proposed that the vice president lead a provisional government alongside retired General Miguel Rodríguez Torres, while Maduro went into exile in Turkey or Qatar.

The Herald quoted a former Trump administration official who confirmed the existence of the talks, noting that "the idea was a 'Madurismo without Maduro' formula to facilitate a peaceful transition in the country."

According to the paper, however, the White House rejected both proposals, as both would maintain the Chavista power structures intact under a new guise.  

Trump's official position was that his administration would not negotiate with sanctioned officials. Yet neither Delcy Rodríguez nor her brother has ever been officially indicted or named in the US president's spurious drug-trafficking charges. This fact alone may indicate that Washington does in fact view the siblings as a more 'acceptable face' of Chavismo. Trump's brazen claim on Saturday that he will now 'run' Venezuela in conjunction with a local team does seem to point in that direction. 

Now, even Colombia's former vice-president has added his voice to the chorus, telling the Daily Mail he is “absolutely certain” that Delcy Rodriguez handed Maduro over to the US.

Dark Clouds Ahead 

A newly submissive government in Caracas will surely bode ill for Venezuela's social programmes, as well as it strategic and economic relationships abroad. China has extended a total of around $60 billion in “oil-for-loans” financing to Venezuela since 2007, with an estimated $17-19 billion in principal outstanding as of early 2026. Bilateral cooperation on energy and other sectors has continued in the years since, the most recent in July 2025. Under the Caracas government's new US tutelage, the indebted nation can be expected to prioritise US creditors over Chinese ones, with Chinese banks seeing significant losses. It's obviously no small part in why China has led with the most strident denunciations of Trump's illegal raid on Saturday.

Despite sitting on the world's largest proven oil reserves, Venezuela's production has fallen precipitously over the last two decades. Al Jazeera explains the US' economic strangulation strategy, which went into high gear as Maduro began his second term:

The sanctions were aimed at forcing a change in Venezuela’s government. Their core mechanism was to sever the state’s oil income by closing a critical loophole – oil-for-debt swaps – that triggered the final, steep collapse of the country’s economy and oil industry.

The US also imposed a full embargo on all transactions with the PDVSA, Venezuela’s state oil company, threatening secondary sanctions on any foreign entity doing business with it. The sanctions halted oil exports to Venezuela’s key remaining markets like India and the European Union, and prevented the import of diluent chemicals needed to process Venezuela’s heavy crude.

So when the Venezuelan government was starved of its source of hard currency, it resorted to having the central bank print more money, triggering a wave of hyperinflation that obliterated salaries and savings. The ensuing humanitarian crisis was a primary driver behind the mass exodus of nearly 8 million Venezuelans that began in 2019.

Theoretically, the lifting of sanctions could ameliorate the country's suffering. But the US plan to restore oil production will require massive and immediate investment from US oil companies, two of which—ExxonMobil and ConocoPhilips—are still seeking billions in compensation from the expropriation of their assets in the 2000s. It is in this context that Trump ludicrously claims that Venezuela's oil somehow really belong to the US and its companies. It is clear that the Venezuelan people will be the lowest of priorities in this proposed transformation. 

Moreover, access to Venezuela's oil will undoubtedly help the US to stabilise markets in the event of a renewed Israel-Iran war, the portents of which are everywhere, from official statements to armed rioters on the streets of Teheran. Iran's key deterrant to sustained US or Israeli aggression is its ability to close the Strait of Hormuz. This would halt the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf, and large new reserves from a place like Venezuela would have to be brought online to offset the economic chaos generated by such a move. 

Moreover, a foreseeable weakening or rupture or in diplomatic, economic and military ties between Iran and Venezuela will certainly embolden Israel's blood-crazed elites for a new phase of their regional expansion project. 

That is why this liminal moment in Venezuela is crucial. Whether or not a genuine anti-imperialist stance can be maintained going forward will have enormous consequences for the wider world, and what remains of its stability. 

As the host of The Mexican Family concluded, “if Maduro was handed over from within, then Chavismo no longer exists as a solid structure. That is, there are traitors inside of it, and Venezuela, therefore, was not conquered but rather negotiated...”.

For Spanish journalist Cristina Martín Jiménez, the truth can be seen in the Venezuelan leadership's revealing calm. It is “[t]he calm of someone who already knows they won't fall into the abyss. The calm of someone who has received guarantees.”  As she noted on X:

When a president is arrested and there's no internal chaos or visible fracture within the leadership, when there's no military hysteria or bloodshed in the streets, we're witnessing a controlled operation. Real revolutions are noisy. Negotiated transitions are silent.

There are no heroics or epics here. There's cold negotiation. And the negotiation isn't with the people; it's with the elite who guarantee order. Anyone who believes that the United States—or the structure that sets the agenda—is seeking justice, democracy, or historical redress hasn't understood how power works. What they're seeking is stability, access to resources, and the end of an uncomfortable cycle. Everything else is just window dressing.

That's why I insist: the key element is the functional betrayal of Maduro's inner circle. Not ideological, not moral: functional. The betrayal that occurs when it becomes clear that the regime has already fallen and that it's better to reposition oneself than to resist. That's where specific names come in, not because of conspiracy, but because of the logic of power: Delcy Rodríguez, Diosdado Cabello, Vladimir Padrino López. Not as saviors or demons, but as the architects of the transition.