The world continues to react sharply to the escalation around Iran and to the broader military line pursued by the Trump administration: from open strikes and support for Israel to recruiting allies in the region and beyond. In Latin America and Europe politicians and commentators debate the risks of the conflict spreading, whether US actions comply with international law, and whether they see an attempt to change the regime in Tehran. Some warn of inevitable escalation and unintended consequences, others justify a hard line as a deterrent strategy, and European leaders feel caught between allied duty and their own interests. Questions are also raised about Washington’s attempts to strengthen military alliances in the Western Hemisphere and how this is perceived in countries in the region. This material was prepared based on publications from www.youtube.com (Venezuela), www.youtube.com (Venezuela).
Venezuela between Iran and oil: how other people’s wars expose one’s own crisis
Two recent media pieces — a brief appearance by retired US Army Colonel Eric Rojo on NTN24 and a more extended podcast recorded in Puerto Rico about the war around Iran, oil, and dependence on the US — combine in the Venezuelan context into a single unsettling portrait. Formally the discussion concerns Iran, Washington, oil prices and even the ethics of technology, but for a Venezuelan audience it is primarily a conversation about Venezuela itself: about its vulnerability, geopolitical bets and chronic inability to “learn” from others’ examples.
The first piece is a conversation with Eric Rojo on the program “La Tarde” of Colombian channel NTN24, popular with the diaspora and the opposition inside the country. In the short excerpt available on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM6TsI1sShs), Rojo formulates Washington’s military logic toward Tehran through the idea of a “golpe maestro,” a “master stroke.” The second is a podcast aptly titled “Guerrá de Irán Vuelve a Desnudarnos y Aquí No Aprendemos, Los Medios tenemos que aprender,” where, through the Iran war, swings in oil markets and US behavior, the author analyzes the vulnerability of countries that live off oil. This video is also freely available (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-vAg4_KNTE).
Despite different formats and platforms, both pieces hold up the same mirror to Venezuelan viewers: what it means to be an oil economy caught in the orbit of a conflict with the US, and how much room for maneuver such a state actually has.
Rojo’s appearance on NTN24 immediately sets a hard military tone. The retired colonel, placed in a studio setting familiar to Venezuelan opposition viewers, speaks the language of an operator rather than a diplomat. The key phrase around which the discussion is built:
«Hay que acabar con el suministro de misiles, de drones y los lugares donde los puedan lanzar, ese es el golpe maestro».
In this logic the “golpe maestro” is not a one-off punitive operation but a systematic neutralization of the entire chain of the adversary’s military power: from supplies of missiles and components for drones to the infrastructure hosting them and launch sites. It is about the US ability to deliver “contundentes golpes,” a series of “crushing strikes” that do not just punish Iran for a specific episode but deprive it of the capacity to project power.
For a Venezuelan audience such a formula cannot be a mere abstraction. NTN24 is a media outlet consumed primarily by Venezuelans abroad and by those inside the country who identify as opposition. Any talk of a “regime” and a “master stroke” against it automatically evokes parallels for that viewer with their own reality: sanctions against Nicolás Maduro’s government, diplomatic and financial isolation, and statements that “all options are on the table” that were voiced from Washington in 2019–2020.
The second piece — the podcast about the war involving Iran and its oil consequences — is structured not as a chronicle of combat operations but as a series of thematic blocks: from “Impacto del Petróleo y Estrategias de Estados Unidos” to “Comparativa entre Irán y Venezuela,” then “Dependencia Energética y Futuro,” “Independencia Energética y Resiliencia,” “Deuda Moral y Realidad Global,” “Mentalidades en la Política y Negocios,” “Derechos y Productividad.” The author openly admits that “Guerrá de Irán Vuelve a Desnudarnos” — the war “strips us bare again,” revealing the weak points of societies and economies that depend on external flows of oil and capital.
Although formally the discussion revolves around Puerto Rico and its “new reality,” for Venezuelan listeners this frame sounds frighteningly familiar. In their experience, oil dependence has ceased to be an abstract concept: it is measured by the collapse of PDVSA infrastructure, gasoline shortages in a country that for decades supplied fuel, chronic power outages despite abundant hydro resources and oil, inflation that has eaten real wages, and the mass exodus of skilled personnel.
Against this backdrop Rojo’s proposal to “end the supply of missiles and drones” is perceived not only as a prescription for the Middle East but also as an admission that the US still has the capacity to deliver high-precision, combined military and economic strikes against the infrastructure supporting hostile regimes. In the Venezuelan mind this easily transfers from Iran to Caracas’s strategic partners: Tehran, Moscow, Beijing. If a “master stroke” against Iran is the destruction of military logistics, then against Venezuela — which has already endured sanctions, asset freezes and export restrictions — such a blow could mean the final cutoff of schemes for evading restrictions: strikes on oil trading, insurance companies, shippers working with the “dark fleet.”
The podcast portion of the discussion adds another important layer — internal responsibility and cultural critique. The title contains a rebuke not only to politicians but to the information field itself: “Aquí No Aprendemos, Los Medios tenemos que aprender.” Essentially the author accuses the media of having covered wars, sanctions, and oil price collapses for years without performing an educational function: they have failed to help society understand that cycles of commodity markets combined with fragile institutions and corruption always end the same way.
For the Venezuelan context this reads as a direct accusation against the domestic media landscape. Official channels use conflicts like the Iranian one to strengthen an anti-imperialist narrative, avoiding serious discussion about managing oil revenues, diversifying the economy, and the quality of institutions. Some opposition and émigré media, for their part, tend to view foreign geopolitics mainly through the prism of hope in an “external factor” — sanctions, international criminal investigations, and for a radical segment of the audience even direct military intervention — as a “master move” capable of solving the problem with a single strike.
In this context the podcast’s reflections on “Deuda Moral y Realidad Global” gain particular poignancy. Both Venezuela and Iran like to speak about the West’s moral debts to the Global South, about the injustice of sanctions and historical oppression. But the podcast reminds listeners that there is another, internal “moral debt” — to one’s own population, which lives without stable institutions, a predictable economy, and basic services. In Venezuela that debt manifests as a degraded health and education system, the erosion of labor rights in practice despite their nominal existence in law, and the hollowing out of “productivity” into a struggle for administrative access to rents.
The podcast block “Mentalidades en la Política y Negocios / Derechos y Productividad” essentially describes the typical rentier system to which Venezuela once belonged: politicians are measured by their ability to redistribute oil revenues rather than build independent courts and predictable rules of the game; business is oriented toward subsidies, government contracts and arbitrage rather than innovation and exports. In such a context any external war around a strategic resource — whether Iranian oil or gas in another region — is not just news but a direct blow to the fragile structure that underpins the entire economy.
That is why the comparative block “Comparativa entre Irán y Venezuela,” announced in the podcast, is so easily filled with meaning for the Venezuelan listener. The common elements are obvious: both states are under sanctions, both rely almost exclusively on oil exports, both use anti-American rhetoric for internal legitimation. But the differences are no less important: Iran, despite its isolation, has developed certain industry, science, an internal market and regional networks of influence; Venezuela, over years of high oil prices and “revolutionary” policies, methodically eroded its productive and institutional potential, becoming even more vulnerable to external shocks.
On the level of perception all this rests on a particular “culture of expecting an external factor” that developed in Venezuela since 2014. Part of the opposition and sympathetic media have fixated on the idea that decisive change will come from outside — in the form of intensified sanctions, international tribunals, a “coalition of democracies” or even a direct military operation. The concept of a “golpe maestro,” uttered by Rojo with regard to Iran, fits perfectly into this scheme: as if somewhere there exists a correct, decisive combination of external actions capable of overturning the internal balance of power with a single sweep.
However, the podcast analysis, which focuses on dependence and internal decisions, introduces a necessary dissonance. Where some see the war around Iran as a prologue to a possible strike on Caracas, the podcast author sees first and foremost a lesson about how dangerous it is to build the future on a single resource and hostility toward those who control the global financial and technological infrastructure. This does not negate questions about the role of the US and its strategies, but it shifts some responsibility back onto the societies and elites of the dependent countries themselves.
Interestingly, at the end the podcast broadens the subject to a discussion of technologies, “Antropic y el Gobierno de EE.UU. / Debate sobre el Uso de Tecnología / Control Empresarial vs. Gobierno / Implicaciones Legales y Éticas.” For Venezuela this layer is also significant. The country has long been in a gray zone of digital policy: on the one hand, the authorities use censorship, surveillance and criminal prosecution of activists and journalists; on the other hand, the communications and IT infrastructure depends heavily on foreign companies and standards. The question of who controls technological platforms — corporations or states, democratic institutions or security structures — is not theoretical for Venezuelans. It is directly linked to whether the world will see evidence of human rights violations, whether the diaspora can keep in touch with relatives, and whether independent media will be able to deliver their material to audiences.
Thus two seemingly disparate pieces — Rojo’s military commentary on NTN24 and the analytical podcast about the war around Iran and oil dependence — coalesce in Venezuelan perception into a single picture. In it the US remains a key military and economic actor capable of “master strokes” against opponents’ logistics and finances; Iran serves as an example of a state trying to live under such confrontation; and Venezuela appears as a country that shares many of Iran’s vulnerabilities but rarely learns from its experience.
The question is no longer whether Washington will repeat a “golpe maestro” against Caracas similar to the one proposed for Tehran. Far more important is the question both pieces push Venezuelan viewers toward: how many more wars, sanctions and price shocks must be endured before it is recognized that the true “master combination” is not betting on an external protector or punisher, but in rebuilding internal institutions, abandoning rentier thinking and creating an economy that is not “stripped” every time a new conflict flares up in the Persian Gulf.
