Today's digest is a selection of pieces from Venezuelan outlets that view the United States under Donald Trump as the central actor in the coordinated US and Israeli strikes on Iran and in the political fallout around reports of the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Reports and analysis emphasize Trump's rhetoric toward Iran's leadership and his appeals to the Iranian people, joint explanations of the strikes at the UN, as well as notes on the events' impact on markets and cryptocurrencies. Between breaking news, critical columns and deeper magazine features runs a thread of discussion about regional consequences and geopolitical stakes — from neighboring countries' reactions to possible escalation scenarios. The material was prepared on the basis of publications from lademajagua.cu (Cuba) and www.upsa.es (Venezuela).
Bolivarian mirror: how Caracas reads the Cuban agenda and Middle Eastern crises
A short note on the Cuban site La Demajagua under the Actualidad section and a Venezuelan commentary on the crisis around Iran, the US, Israel and Trump at first glance belong to different worlds. Yet together they form a coherent picture of how the Bolivarian camp — above all Caracas — understands itself, its allies and its adversaries. Through Cuba, Iran and the figure of Trump, Venezuela voices its own experience of sanctions, economic experiments and political siege.
The Cuban note from La Demajagua is dedicated to a meeting of the Council of State, which "on Monday analyzed the implementation schedule for the government's measures to correct distortions and relaunch the economy in 2024." The formula "corregir distorsiones y reimpulsar la economía" sounds to Venezuelan ears like a phrase from its own political lexicon: from currency reforms and price-control programs to plans of "recuperación y crecimiento económico" in Caracas. In both cases the crisis is not named a crisis — it is turned into a set of "distortions" to be corrected by a system that is, in essence, right but under attack.
Another key phrase — "Las proyecciones de Gobierno y la rendición de cuenta" — is also easily read in Venezuela. In Cuba, as in Caracas, the matter is not simply technocratic planning and accountability but a political ritual of legitimation. Under sanctions and chronic shortages, the authorities demonstrate not so much an ability to radically change the model as an ability to control and "retune" it without abandoning the ideological course. This sounds familiar to a country where hyperinflation, declining oil production and forced dollarization have been described as a chain of "distorsiones cambiarias," "distortions in price structure" and subsidies, rather than as the failure of the main economic approach.
The figure of the chairman of the Cuban Council of State, Esteban Lazo, who is the subject of part of the note on La Demajagua, is for the Venezuelan reader almost automatically compared to the heads of the National Assembly in the era of PSUV dominance — from Cilia Flores to Jorge Rodríguez. He is a typical party cadre, embodying both loyalty and institutional continuity. The Council of State itself is perceived as something akin to an "expanded politburo": a place where party and state lines are coordinated, as was done under Chávez and continues under Maduro. The fact that the meeting is described as an "ordinary session" only underscores the normalization of a closed managerial style: key decisions are taken within the party–state circle rather than in forums involving the opposition.
The absence of alternative voices in the Cuban note — economists, independent experts, opponents — makes it a typical example of ideologized chronicle rather than neutral news. Euphemisms like "corregir distorsiones" and "reimpulsar la economía" obscure real problems — inflation, shortages, emigration, production decline. For the Venezuelan observer this is not an accident but part of a broader narrative: both Cuba and Venezuela position themselves as besieged sovereign states that, under sanctions, continue to "tune" their economies without acknowledging the need for systemic change. In this sense the La Demajagua text becomes not simply a local news item but a brick in the Bolivarian myth of "resisting economies."
The same myth and perspective are visible in the Venezuelan commentary on the US and Israeli strikes on Iran and on Donald Trump's role, cited from the university page UPSA, even if the original text is not directly published there. There the Middle Eastern conflict appears not as an isolated episode but as a form of a global "regime change" campaign, under which Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and other "disobedient" states fall in official discourse. Washington is thought of as a constant center of pressure — from sanctions and financial blockade to direct use of force, Israel as its outpost in the Middle East, and Iran and Venezuela as elements of the same "front of resistance."
Venezuelan analysts close to power describe the strikes on Iran as "aggression" and an "illegal act of war," stressing the violation of sovereignty and international law. The oil aspect is necessarily highlighted: any escalation in the Persian Gulf affects the world price of oil, and thus theoretically opens a window of opportunity for Caracas. But opportunities are constrained by sanctions: even expensive oil helps little if the country is limited in sales and forced to operate through a narrow circle of intermediaries in Russia, China or Iran itself. Against this backdrop the close energy tie Caracas–Tehran — from gasoline deliveries to refinery repairs — is presented as a natural alliance of two isolated exporters.
The political layer is thicker than the economic one. For the Venezuelan officialdom support for Iran is a way to demonstrate belonging to an alternative center of power that includes, besides Tehran, Moscow, Beijing and formats like OPEC, the Non-Aligned Movement and BRICS. Sharp criticism of Trump in the Venezuelan commentary works in two directions at once: first, it links his Middle Eastern policy to the sanctions and interventionist line against Venezuela; second, it projects the image of Trump onto local opposition leaders, who in Caracas are regularly accused of "asking for sanctions" and "applauding strikes" against "sovereign countries."
Opponents inside Venezuela read this rhetoric differently. For part of the academic and media community the constant appeal to Iran, Israel, the US and Trump is a convenient smokescreen that allows internal issues to be pushed into the background: wrecked infrastructure, pauper wages, mass migration. They also remind of the cost of the anti-Western course — the loss of traditional markets, the drop in investment and the complication of access to technology. But in the Bolivarian camp this cost becomes a symbol of valor: as Tehran prides itself on "living under sanctions," so Caracas builds an identity of a "besieged but unyielding revolution."
In Venezuela's media space this creates a stable divide. State and pro-government channels and sites use the lexicon of "aggression," "empire," "resistance," rely on Iranian, Russian and other alternative sources, elevating Middle Eastern news to proof of a "global anti-imperialist upsurge." Critical and independent platforms orient more toward Western agencies, analyze the behavior of Trump and other American leaders through the lens of US elections and global strategy, and tend to contrast events in Iran and Cuba with Venezuelan realities rather than equate them.
Still, both the Cuban note and the Venezuelan commentary about Trump and Iran are structurally similar. In both cases:
- a closed circle of power plays a central role — be it the Council of State headed by Esteban Lazo discussing a "schedule for implementing measures" in Cuba, or the Bolivarian leadership interpreting global crises for its audience;
- the language refuses to call radical challenges by their names: in Cuba severe stagnation is replaced by "correcting distortions," in Caracas years of economic and social collapse are attributed to external "aggression" and "financial war";
- the ritual of accountability — "rendición de cuenta" in Havana, annual addresses and ministry reports in Caracas — matters more as a symbol of loyalty to the line than as a tool of genuine control over results.
As a result, a short news item from La Demajagua and a reconstructed commentary via the UPSA university link turn out to be parts of the same Bolivarian-ideological canvas. Cuba shows how the model preserves the appearance of technocratic management and self-correction without touching the political foundation. Venezuela, looking at Iran and Trump, sees and explains to the world its own history of sanctions and confrontation. Together these stories form for supporters the image of a broad arc of struggle — from Caracas through Havana and Tehran to other capitals of the "dissenting" — where every economic adjustment and every missile strike fit into the same narrative of resistance and survival.
