Against the backdrop of new warning signals and harsh assessments from international observers, Trump’s foreign policy is once again in the spotlight: threats and military steps toward Iran are being framed as accelerating a spiral of confrontation and undermining stability. At the same time, the broader political climate is also shifting—around the world there is increasing talk that the United States is acting too aggressively or unpredictably, and that its role as a guarantor of order has become questionable. This line echoes how the American stance is reflected in neighboring regions: references are made to its impact on the situation in Venezuela and to how the balance of power, expectations, and calculations are changing for states on both sides of the ocean. In this context, the discussion goes far beyond a single topic, turning into a broader debate about power, responsibility, and the limits of U.S. influence. This piece was prepared using data from cnnespanol.cnn.com (Venezuela) and elpais.com (Venezuela).
The Venezuelan Perspective: Oil, the Strait of Hormuz, and a Crisis of the American Ideal
In the Venezuelan press, the new escalation between the United States and Iran is read above all not as a distant conflict in the Middle East, but as an event capable of shaking up the oil market again—and through it, the global economy and Venezuela itself. In an analytical piece by CNN en Español, attention is focused on the price of Brent, threats to the Strait of Hormuz, and how even a brief disruption in supply instantly shows up in fuel, on stock exchanges, and for consumers. One-fifth of the world’s oil supplies pass through Hormuz, and that is why any military tension in this area is seen as a risk to the entire global energy system.
For Venezuela, this storyline is especially sensitive. For decades, the country has lived within the logic of oil dependence, and any movement in Brent prices here is not an abstraction: it becomes a factor affecting currency inflows, budget stability, and political expectations surrounding energy. When the article emphasizes that oil rose after new attacks and that markets are waiting for supplies to resume through Hormuz, it sounds like a reminder that even a localized escalation can immediately redistribute global revenues—and once again show how oil remains a geopolitical weapon.
The text contains no direct quotes from Venezuelan officials or economists, but the way the subject is presented reflects typical regional sensibility: the focus is on how the United States tries to keep fuel prices inside the country steady, and on how military actions shape market behavior. For Venezuela, this echoes its own experience with sanctions, restrictions on exports, infrastructure problems, and the chronic vulnerability of the oil sector. In this logic, Iran can be perceived as a country that—like Venezuela—exists under intense external pressure and uses the energy factor as an element of resistance.
A particularly important point is the historical parallel: in Venezuela, people remember periods when rising global oil prices brought short-term relief to public finances, but did not solve the economy’s structural problems. That is why news that Brent has risen only moderately, and that the market is expecting normalization of flows through Hormuz, is not taken as a triumph of “expensive oil,” but as another example of instability—where a brief spike can quickly turn into a drop if the conflict is contained or logistics improve.
Against this backdrop, it becomes especially clear that Venezuela’s lens links the U.S.-Iran war to its own economic vulnerability: here, what matters is not only the facts about the attacks and the price per barrel, but also the broader meaning—who controls energy routes, who benefits from chaos, and why global oil dependence remains a source of pressure and blackmail for countries like Venezuela.
In a similar way, Venezuelans read another analytical piece—this time about the United States—where the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence coincides with a political and cultural crisis. In an article by El País, the anniversary is described not as a celebration of the American project, but as a moment when slogans about freedom, equality, and democracy collide with authoritarian practices, revision of history, and internal division.
For the Venezuelan audience, it is particularly important that the United States is portrayed not as an unconditional model, but as a country experiencing its own legitimacy crisis. This has direct political significance: local readers usually see American politics through the prism of sanctions, interference, and double standards. As a result, criticism of Donald Trump and attempts to rewrite history easily overlay a long-standing Latin American skepticism toward Washington. If the United States itself cannot align its principles with reality, then the argument about America’s “moral authority” becomes far less convincing in the region.
The piece on the anniversary emphasizes that the United States is celebrating it amid protests by the No Kings movement and fears about Trump’s authoritarian tendencies. Historians mentioned in the text note that the American project has been controversial from the start: freedom coexisted with slavery and the displacement of Indigenous peoples. Frank Cogliano says that the problems of the past cannot be understood without considering how today’s political fears shape them. Steve Levitsky calls Trump the “worst nightmare” of the Founding Fathers—a leader who could bypass the system’s constraints. Eddy S. Glaude Jr., meanwhile, speaks of the “divided soul” of the United States: a country of freedom and a “white republic” at the same time.
For the Venezuelan reader, several meanings converge at once. First, this is an anti-imperialist context: the United States is shown as a state that criticizes others, yet lives with a crisis of rights and institutions itself. Second, parallels emerge with Venezuela’s internal conflicts—issues of historical memory, racial inequality, and the struggle over the national narrative, which also remain the subject of dispute. Third, the question of political morality arises: if the United States debates freedom, slavery, and violence against Indigenous peoples, on what basis does Washington continue to act as a judge of other regimes?
That is why the Venezuelan response to these publications differs from a simple news recap. This is not a neutral report, but a critical interpretation that links U.S. history to today’s authoritarian drift, an internal cultural war, and a decline in international prestige. As a result, in Venezuelan readings, both the war around Iran and the crisis of the American ideal come together into a single picture: a world in which oil remains a source of strength and vulnerability, and the United States is a country whose ability to teach others democracy is increasingly called into question.
