Venezuela’s Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delcy_Rodr%C3%Adguez), now the interim president after being sworn in by the nation’s Supreme Court has demanded Maduro’s release, saying he was the “only president”.
According to President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Acting President Rodríguez, had expressed her willingness to do “whatever the US asks”. This at odds with Rodríguez’s publicly refusing that Venezuela would become “a colony of an empire”.
President Trump stated that Venezuela’s opposition leader María Corina Machado had neither the support nor the respect within Venezuela to become its leader. Machado had earlier called for Edmundo González to assume power. She had rallied support for González in the 2024 presidential election and vote tallies released by her party suggest he won by a landslide.
British Gazette comment: This situation has all the hallmarks of a shake-down!
The US military-political establishment does not have the will or the support (from within the USA) to put “boots on the ground” for anything more than the raid on Maduro’s bunker they just carried out.
The contradictory messages emanating from Washington and Caracas suggest a modus vivendi whereby the existing regime in Caracas will handover (presumably by legislation reversing the previous nationalisation) the oil assets to US companies and allow the USA to control and own the oil industry. The US $ might well become the de-factor currency of Venezuela – the oil will certainly be traded using the US $.
Having repossessed it’s oil assets and possibly taken over denationalised assets that were owned by non US entities, the USA (in the form of the Trump administration) will allow the existing regime to continue in power.
This is of course not a million miles away from the situation with the Japanese Co-Prosperity Sphere and Vichy France during WW2!
I expect the situation in Venezuela to “settle down”. Acting President Rodríguez and the existing regime will continue to govern and the USA (and Venezuela) will benefit from a revamped oil industry. Meanwhile Señor Nicolás Maduro and Señora Cilia Flores de Maduro will be forced to endure incarceration in maximum security prisons in the USA. One saving grace is that they will likely be given special protection to ensure that they come to no harm from the violent inmates they will be surrounded by.
In 2029 when there is likely to be a Democratic President in the USA; the Maduros will likely be released but are unlikely to return to Venezuela. Rather than a unconditional pardon, a conditional commutation of sentence will be granted on the basis that the Maduros will be deported from the USA and will have to reside outside of Venezuela. They are likely to end up in Spain.