Sanctions

US sanctions imposed on UN expert Francesca Albanese by the Trump administration have been temporarily ⁠blocked by a judge.

A federal judge has temporarily ⁠blocked United States sanctions against Francesca Albanese, a United Nations expert on the occupied Palestinian territory.

UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese was sanctioned in July 2025 after she publicly criticised Washington’s policy on Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza.

Albanese’s husband and daughter filed a lawsuit in February against the Trump administration over the sanctions. It argued that the sanctions were an effort to punish Albanese for bringing attention to Israel’s rights abuses against Palestinians.

In his court order on Wednesday, US ⁠District Judge Richard Leon granted a preliminary injunction against the sanctions.

He found that the Trump administration sought to regulate ‌her speech because of the “idea or message expressed”.

“Albanese has done nothing more than speak,” judge Leon wrote in his memorandum opinion. “It is undisputed that her recommendations have no binding effect on the ICC’s actions – they are nothing more than her opinion.”

Albanese, who said the US sanctions were “calculated to weaken my mission” when they were first imposed, celebrated the ruling on social media.

“Thanks to my daughter and my husband for stepping up to defend me, and everyone who has helped so far,” Albanese said in a statement on X.

“Together we are One.”

Since 2022, Albanese, a legal scholar, has served as the special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza, where she monitors human rights abuses against Palestinians. The UN Human Rights Council selected her for the position.

The Trump administration sanctioned her last July, calling her “unfit” for her role and accusing her of “biased and malicious activities” against the US and its ally, Israel. Albanese had also recommended that the International Criminal Court (ICC) pursue war crimes prosecutions against Israeli and US nationals.

The sanctions barred the Italian lawyer and human rights expert from entering the US, using US banks and payment systems, and prevented anyone else in the US from doing business with her.

Albanese’s husband and her daughter, a US citizen, claimed in the lawsuit that the US ⁠sanctions were “effectively debanking her and making it nearly impossible to meet the needs of her daily life”.

Caracas, May 6, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The US Treasury Department has issued a sanctions waiver allowing the provision of services related to the restructuring of Venezuelan debt.

General License 58 (GL58), issued on Tuesday, authorizes the provision of “legal, financial advisory, and consulting services” to the Venezuelan government and state oil company PDVSA in relation to “potential restructuring of debt” owed by the Venezuelan state, PDVSA, and PDVSA affiliates.

The license does not allow creditors to transfer or settle debt, nor directly engage with Venezuelan authorities. It additionally forbids any payment to consultants using cryptocurrencies or gold.

The Trump administration’s latest move is a necessary step to locate creditors and assess the size of Venezuela’s foreign debt, estimated to be as high as US $170 billion, split between defaulted bonds, unpaid loans, and international arbitration awards.

Venezuelan bonds, which have steadily increased in value in recent months, rallied again on Tuesday as investor confidence in a restructuring deal grows. Bonds that fell below 10 cents on the dollar are currently trading between 40 and 60 cents on the dollar. Creditor groups have also held meetings with the Trump administration as they seek to engage Caracas.

Though the Nicolás Maduro government prioritized debt service after the Venezuelan economy fell into deep recession after 2014, US economic sanctions beginning in 2017 accelerated the economic tailspin and shut Venezuela out of financial markets, making debt payments impossible. The defaulted state and PDVSA bonds, estimated at around $66 billion, have been accruing interest ever since.

The Venezuelan government, led by Acting President Delcy Rodríguez, has not publicly disclosed plans regarding the country’s external debt. In March, the Trump administration recognized Rodríguez as Venezuela’s “sole leader,” clearing another hurdle for creditors. 

Rodríguez, who previously served as vice president, took over the presidency following the US kidnapping of Maduro on January 3. In the four months since, the acting administration has fast-tracked a diplomatic rapprochement with Washington. Trump officials have made multiple visits to Caracas and have been hosted at the presidential palace.

In parallel, Venezuelan authorities have advanced multiple pro-business legislative reforms in a bid to attract foreign investment in sectors such as energy and mining. Projects to change the Caribbean nation’s labor, tax, and housing laws are currently underway. 

In parallel, Rodríguez has installed a commission to assess the “strategic” value of Venezuelan state assets and their possible privatization. The Cisneros Group, one of the country’s largest private sector conglomerates, has announced plans to raise funds ahead of potential sell-offs of state assets.

Caracas also reestablished ties with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in April. Economy Vice President Calixto Ortega was recently appointed as the country’s representative before the IMF. Venezuelan leaders have stated that their priority is to access around $5 billion in IMF-issued Special Drawing Rights to address urgent needs in public services and infrastructure.

Rodríguez has stated that there are “no plans” to contract an IMF loan, though a debt-restructuring agreement would place a significant burden on Venezuelan finances. The government’s budget for 2026 was estimated at around $20 billion.

For her part, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva stated that the Washington-based institution is willing to support a loan program for Venezuela but that clarity on economic data and external debt is a necessary prior step.

Edited by Lucas Koerner in Caracas.

Venezuela’s recent Hydrocarbon Law reform has sparked fierce debates about its short- and long-term implications. In this essay, Blas Regnault, an energy policy analyst and researcher, offers an in-depth analysis of the new legislative framework, from the significant changes to the state’s governance over its natural resources to his perspective on a sovereign recovery of the oil industry.

The recent hydrocarbon reform: an overview

It is important to distinguish between two closely connected but analytically separate developments: first, US oversight of Venezuelan oil revenues after Maduro’s kidnapping; and secondly, the new Hydrocarbon Law itself. The first is an externally imposed mechanism that conditions oil sales, revenue collection, transport, and the distribution of oil proceeds to US interests. The second is a domestic legal reform whose constitutionality and political legitimacy have been widely questioned.

It remains unclear whether the new law is fully operative in practice, or whether it is only being applied selectively while its fiscal substance is displaced by the US revenue-control mechanism. ^{But the outcome is largely the same: a loss of fiscal automaticity and a form of fiscal sovereignty under tutelage in relation to Venezuelan oil income.}

In other words, the crisis of governance in the Venezuelan oil sector, together with its chronic lack of transparency since 2017, now culminates in a profound loss of sovereign control over all three dimensions of the business: its rentier dimension, belonging to the nation; its fiscal dimension, belonging to the state; and its shareholder dimension, linked to the role of the state oil company PDVSA as principal participant in extraction and commercialisation.

Therefore, the new law is not simply a technical reform. It is not merely about updating contracts, modernising procedures, or making the sector more attractive to investors. The deeper issue is that the reform changes the way the nation is compensated for the use of the subsoil and therefore alters the very governance of the sector. What is at stake is the relationship between sovereignty, ownership of the subsoil, and public income.

It is true that, on paper, the law formally preserves state ownership over the resource. But the business models it opens weaken the practical substance of that ownership. And that is the crucial point. Ownership is not a decorative legal formula. Ownership means that the state, acting on behalf of the nation, has the right to decide whether the resource remains underground or is extracted; and if it is extracted, under what conditions, with what public charge, and for whose benefit. The recent reform softens the link between ownership and the nation’s participation as owner of the subsoil, turning something that was once grounded in a general rule into something negotiable, adjustable, and highly discretionary.

A useful way of understanding the economic and social significance of the reform is to distinguish the different streams of public income historically associated with oil in Venezuela. Under the former hydrocarbon law, the nation participated in the oil business through three distinct channels: as owner, as tax authority, and as shareholder. The first channel, corresponding to ownership, was royalty. The second was taxation, arising from the state’s fiscal authority over the activity. The third was dividends, arising when the state participated through PDVSA and therefore received income in its capacity as stakeholder rather than as landlord or tax authority.

This distinction matters because the oil business has historically involved different claimants competing over the fruits of extraction. In a sector marked by extraordinary profitability and strategic importance, the owner of the rent, the fiscal authority, and the capitalist operator all seek to maximize their share of the value generated. In the Venezuelan framework that prevailed before 2026, those three roles were clearly present: the nation as owner of the subsoil, the state as fiscal authority, and the operator as capitalist actor. The new law alters the balance between them.

Royalty

The royalty is where the change is most revealing. As already noted, royalty is the clearest expression of ownership. It is paid upfront. It does not depend on profit. It is charged before taxes are assessed and before the remaining income covers the factors of production; that is, wages, interest, profits, and the other claimants on the project. In other words, royalty is not part of the production costs. If the oil price is 100 dollars per barrel and the agreed royalty rate is 30 per cent, the owner receives 30 dollars per barrel straight away. That is the proprietorial logic in its purest form.This has long been a battleground in the global oil industry. The dispute over rent has historically taken place between the operating companies, whether private national oil companies acting as operators, and the owner of the resource, that is, the landlord. Depending on the property-rights regime, that owner may be a private individual, as in parts of Texas, or the state, as in Venezuela and in most oil-exporting countries. Whether in Texas, Alaska, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Norway, the United Kingdom, Nigeria, or Venezuela, the property-rights regime has been the principal legal instrument through which the owner secures a share of the rent. It is a legitimate exercise of sovereignty, recognised by all parties involved in the global oil business.

And yet the new law, in practical terms, empties out that proprietorial logic by turning royalty into a negotiable variable within a range of zero to 30 per cent, something highly unusual in the global oil business. The potential scale of the loss becomes immediately clear once one thinks in terms of export volumes. At an oil price of 86 dollars per barrel, a 1 per cent royalty leaves the nation with less than one dollar per barrel, whereas a 30 per cent royalty yields 25.8 dollars. If Venezuela exports 800,000 barrels per day, that means roughly 688,000 dollars per day under a 1 per cent royalty, compared with 20.64 million dollars per day under a 30 per cent royalty. This is a dramatic compression of the owner’s income. It shows that a high oil price cannot compensate for the hollowing out of the royalty. Put simply, under the new law, higher oil prices will no longer automatically translate into greater income for the nation if royalties are arbitrarily lowered to the benefit of transnational capital. This is not a marginal fiscal concession; it is a radical compression of the nation’s proprietorial income. 

Taxes

Turning to taxes, under the previous legal framework, the fiscal regime included not only taxes on profits, but also local and municipal taxes on oil activity, together with other parafiscal charges and special contributions linked to extraordinary profits. These different channels gave the public side several routes through which to capture value from extraction. Under the new law, much of that architecture is displaced and compressed into an integrated tax on gross income that will also be set in a discretionary fashion up to a fixed ceiling. According to supporters of the reform, this new framework is designed to ensure the project’s “economic equilibrium.” But the political significance of that shift is considerable. What was previously structured through several distinct legal claims can now be more easily absorbed into a flexible package, negotiated project by project. In that sense, this is not simply simplification; it is a substantial thinning of the fiscal claim. Once the fiscal architecture becomes thinner, the public claim over oil value becomes weaker, more flexible, and ultimately more negotiable.

Table 2 illustrates the magnitude of the change using the March 16, 2026, marker Merey 16 price. Under the previous regime, taxes and parafiscal charges alone could amount to about $31 per barrel, or 36 percent of the barrel price. Under the post-reform interim scenario, that could fall to about $17.6 per barrel, or 20.5 percent.

Dividends

Finally, there are dividends arising from state equity participation, and these too must be distinguished from both royalty and taxation. Dividends are not paid because the nation owns the subsoil, nor are they collected because the state exercises fiscal authority over the activity. They arise because the state participates in the business as shareholder and therefore receives part of the profits in its capacity as investor. In other words, dividends represent the state’s participation in the profits of the business itself. But that income is not necessarily available for immediate public use in the same way as royalty or taxation. Part of it may be retained within the company, used for reinvestment, capital expenditure, debt service, or the wider financial needs of the enterprise. So, unlike royalty, which expresses ownership, or tax, which expresses fiscal authority, dividends are tied to the corporate logic of the business. Depending on the ownership structure, this channel of participation may range, illustratively, from zero to 60 per cent of distributable profits.

International jurisdiction of potential oil litigation

There is also an important jurisdictional dimension. By reducing the fiscal share captured by the state and by placing greater weight on contractual flexibility, the reform moves the sector towards a framework that is more exposed to international arbitration. At the same time, the sanctions and licensing regime has become part of a broader architecture of control over the oil business: control over access to the fields, control over marketing channels, and control over financial access to revenues. So, this is not merely a domestic fiscal reform. It is also part of a broader reordering of the legal and financial chain through which Venezuelan oil is governed.

Key takeaways

Supporters of the new law argue that it delivers increased flexibility, greater operability, improved investment prospects, and greater bankability. And that is not a trivial argument. In a country that has experienced production collapse, sanctions, institutional erosion, and a loss of market share, it is understandable that policymakers would seek a framework that appears more attractive to capital. In that sense, the reform may indeed reduce perceived risk and make projects easier to finance. It may also simplify part of the gross take and make negotiations easier. In that sense, the reform should not be caricatured. But it also entails the abandonment of each of the nation’s and the state’s historic roles in the sector, undermining the institutional fabric that once gave the oil economy a degree of stability and rationality.

For that reason, the disadvantages of the reform ultimately outweigh its potential benefits. What is lost is fiscal automaticity. That means the nation is no longer guaranteed a stable share by rule, but must now negotiate it, justify it, or recover it through more uncertain channels. Put differently, the reform replaces payment-by-rule with payment-by-negotiation on a case-by-case basis. In practical terms, each contract will generate its own conditions over each of the principal sources of public income arising from oil activity.

What is also lost is the clarity of a system in which the state charges because it owns the resource, not because the project happens to be commercially convenient. Once royalties become variable and fiscal terms are subordinated to the “economic equilibrium” of the project, the centre of gravity shifts. The guiding principle is no longer the nation as sovereign owner; it becomes the financial viability for the investor/operator. That is a profound political change presented as technical pragmatism.

In summary: the 2026 reform does not abolish formal ownership, but it hollows it out in practice. It replaces a more proprietorial fiscal logic with a more contractualized and discretionary one. That may attract investment, but it also weakens the automatic link between national ownership and national income. Whatever mechanism one chooses to emphasize, the result is much the same: 

• The nation no longer receives royalty by rule, but under externally conditioned arrangements. What is presented as flexibility is a retreat from ownership. 
• The state compresses its fiscal participation at every level. 
• The state oil company weakens its position as an investor. 

Once that happens, the central question is no longer simply, “How much is the state collecting?” but rather “Who decides, under what rules, with what traceability, and with what accountability?”

The historical context of Venezuela’s oil legislation

Venezuela’s oil history is not just a history of contracts or companies; it is a history of how the nation has tried to define its authority over the subsoil. Venezuela did not begin from the same position as many oil-exporting countries in West Asia or North Africa. It was already an independent republic when it developed its mining and hydrocarbons legislation. That matters, because it means Venezuela built a national jurisdictional framework around state ownership of mines and deposits, rather than inheriting a colonial concessionary order imposed from outside. That distinction is central.

From the early twentieth century onwards, successive legal frameworks progressively consolidated the republic’s sovereign claim over oil-bearing land. In other words, Venezuelan oil law was historically moving towards a more explicit assertion of the nation’s right to charge for the extraction of its natural wealth. This is one reason Venezuela mattered so much internationally: not only because it was a major producer, but because it became a reference point for fiscal regimes and sovereign oil governance, including later in the wider OPEC environment. In that sense, Venezuela’s experience was historically complete in a way that few other oil-producing countries were.

Nevertheless, there is a paradox surrounding the 1975-1976 nationalization of the oil industry. On paper, it ought to have marked the culmination of national control, but it did not deepen sovereignty. In practice, it helped produce a shift towards a more internationalized governance structure. The Ministry, as representative of the owner-nation, was gradually displaced by state oil company PDVSA, and PDVSA increasingly operated under a logic of global business rather than one of public sovereign rule. So instead of the owner-state speaking directly, the national oil company became the intermediary, and that had long-term consequences. Put differently, PDVSA, together with international oil capital, gained ground in the long struggle to reduce the landlord’s direct grip over rent.

This is where the historical relationship with Western transnational corporations becomes more nuanced than a simple story of foreign domination versus nationalist resistance. The issue is not merely the presence of Western companies, but the governance structures they operate under. Venezuela moved from a more classic proprietorial regime towards a more cessionary one, and later, especially in the late 1980s and 1990s, towards more liberal or non-proprietorial arrangements. The oil opening (“Apertura Petrolera”) of the 1990s is especially important here, because it reduced the fiscal burden and shifted the framework in a way that centralized the operator’s conditions. That was already a major break.

The Chávez years brought a partial reversal. The restoration of the property right was not merely ideological posturing; it was a restoration of a more classical fiscal logic, in which the sovereign character of the state take was reaffirmed. But that restoration took place amid other contradictions, including the politicization of PDVSA and the accumulation of debt. So even that phase did not resolve the deeper institutional tensions.

The 2026 reform, then, does not emerge from nowhere. It is a new chapter of a long historical movement: from national jurisdiction, to nationalization, to cessionary governance, to the oil opening, to partial reassertion, to crisis and collapse, and now to a new form of contractualization from a position of weakness. Venezuela’s oil history has been a struggle not simply over who owns the oil, but over who governs the terms on which ownership is exercised. The present reform is the latest chapter in that struggle, but it is a particularly radical one because it comes after institutional erosion and under a global order that is far more contractual, litigious, and externally structured than the one Venezuela faced in the mid-twentieth century.

Oil in the present geopolitical battle

The current geopolitical context of the US-Israeli aggression against Iran should, in principle, strengthen Venezuela’s bargaining position. When West Asia becomes more unstable, supply security rises as a strategic concern, and oil regains immediate geopolitical urgency, countries with large reserves and an established production history become more valuable. 

Venezuela has occupied that position before. Venezuelan oil played an important strategic role for the Allies during the Second World War, for example. Today, renewed disruption around Iran and the Strait of Hormuz has again tightened the market and raised the geopolitical value of accessible barrels.

That is precisely why the current outcome appears so paradoxical. If global conditions improve Venezuela’s leverage, one would expect the country to negotiate from a stronger position and to demand a larger participation. One would expect a legal framework that captures more rent, not less; that uses geopolitical scarcity to reinforce state take, not to dilute it. But the current reform, alongside the sequence of deals with foreign conglomerates, and combined with US control over revenues, seem to move in the opposite direction.

This leads to the second point: the geopolitical issue is not only price or supply. It is also about control. What is emerging is a form of sovereignty under tutelage. Venezuela may formally remain the owner of the resource, but effective control over commercialization, revenue channels, and external validation appears increasingly conditioned from outside. Whether one calls that tutelage, external supervision, or subordinated reintegration, the takeaway is the same: sovereignty over the resource is no longer identical to sovereignty over the business. Recent US licenses illustrate the point very clearly. Washington has opened the door to renewed oil transactions with PDVSA, but under Treasury oversight and with proceeds channelled into US-administered accounts. That is not normal sovereign control over national oil income.

This is where the distinction between the origin and the destination of rent becomes especially useful. Even before we ask what is done with oil income socially or politically, we first need to know how that income is generated: through what pricing, what discounts, what fiscal structure, and through which payment channels. If that first level is opaque, then both the origin and the destination of rent become politically indeterminate. In other words, the problem is not only that the country may receive less revenue. The problem is that the country may not even be able to clearly verify what it is owed, how, and why. That is a much deeper sovereignty problem.

As a result, a geopolitical context that would, in theory, favor Venezuela, sees the country re-entering global markets with weakened sovereignty, under a framework of greater flexibility for operators and less certainty for the nation. That is why the debate is no longer only about production volumes or export flows. The real debate is about the jurisdictional and political order that now governs Venezuelan oil: who authorizes, who commercializes, who arbitrates disputes, who tracks the proceeds, and who answers to the country.

What does a sovereign recovery look like?

Moving from critique to programme is difficult, and the first honest thing to say is that no one can predict the exact path ahead. Venezuela is emerging from collapse, sanctions, loss of market share, institutional erosion, and a deep social crisis. Any recovery scenario, therefore, is bound to be politically fraught. But one thing is clear: if the country does not rebuild the public intelligibility of oil income, then any so-called recovery may simply reproduce opacity, distrust, inequality, and social tension.

A sovereign recovery does not mean autarky. It does not mean excluding foreign firms, nor does it mean mechanically returning to an earlier model. It means something more precise: restoring the link between ownership, public rule, and accountable income capture. In other words, if the nation owns the resource, then the nation must be able to know, verify, and govern how value is extracted from it. That means transparency over net prices, discounts, taxes, royalties, exemptions, payment channels, and the destination of funds. Without that, there can be no recovery in any meaningful sovereign sense. It would simply be resumed extraction.

A sovereign recovery also requires stripping away some of the ideological confusion that usually surrounds debates on natural resources. As Bernard Mommer argued more than twenty years ago, the governance of natural resources is, in many ways, a more elementary question than the conventional left-right divide suggests. In the case of oil and minerals, the deeper divide is above versus below. It is the tension between those who live and work on the surface (the nation, society, the public realm) and those who make their living from the subsoil.

That is why the question of ownership comes before the question of distribution, that is, before the question of what is done with the income generated by oil activity. Only after establishing the governance over the resource and the rules over its extraction does the familiar left-right question properly arise: how that income is used, whether for social spending, public services, etc., or private accumulation. 

The first step, then, is transparency. Not as a slogan, but as an institutional obligation. Who is selling? At what net price? Under what discounts? With what deductions? Paid where? Audited by whom? These are not minor administrative questions. They are the very mechanics of sovereignty in an extractive economy. If the country cannot answer them, then the state is no longer exercising full command over its principal source of income.

The second step is to move away from excessive discretion and back towards intelligible general rules. Contracts will always matter in oil. But there is a difference between contracts operating within a strong public framework and contracts effectively replacing public rule. Once everything becomes negotiable in the name of investment or “economic equilibrium,” the public realm shrinks and the executive realm expands. That is politically dangerous in any country, but especially in one where oil historically underpinned a broader social pact.

The third step is to reconnect oil income with social legitimacy. This is not an abstract issue. It is whether oil wealth translates to salaries, living standards, public services, social protection, and some minimum sense of collective benefit. If the country enters a new extractive cycle in which more oil is produced but public income remains narrow, opaque, or externally conditioned, then social tensions are likely to intensify rather than diminish. That is why a sovereign recovery cannot be measured by production figures alone. It must be judged by whether the nation regains an intelligible and legitimate claim over the income stream.

In simple terms, the average Venezuelan citizen is aware of fluctuations in crude prices because they know they affect the national budget. Oil income is widely and legitimately perceived as income belonging to the nation, and therefore as something that ought to support public services and collective welfare. Even when that income is later misused (through corruption, clientelism, or mismanagement) the underlying perception remains: oil revenue belongs to all Venezuelans.

That is also why the current situation can be described as one of sovereignty under tutelage. The country may still be sovereign in formal terms, yet it operates under external supervision in practical terms. Unless that gap is closed, the language of recovery will remain politically fragile.

Blas Regnault is an oil market analyst and researcher based in The Hague, whose work explores how oil prices move across time and what they tell us about the global economy. Drawing on years of experience in central banking, energy research, and international consulting, he brings together political economy, business cycles, production costs, and petroleum governance in a way that is both rigorous and accessible.

He has spent much of his career studying the deeper forces behind oil price trends and fluctuations, always with an eye on the institutional and geopolitical realities of the global petroleum market. Later this year, he will publish his book, Political Economy of Oil Prices: Trends and Business Cycles in the Global Petroleum Market, with Routledge.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.

Ministry of Commerce says sanctions against refineries accused of importing Iranian oil violate international law.

China has announced an injunction to block US sanctions placed on five Chinese refiners accused ‌of buying oil from Iran.

The sanctions announced by the United States Department of the Treasury late last month bar the companies from the US financial system and seek to penalise anyone doing business with the firms.

In a statement on Saturday, China’s Ministry of Commerce said the sanctions “improperly” restrict business between Chinese enterprises and third countries “in violation of international law and the basic norms governing international relations”.

The Commerce Ministry said it had issued a “prohibition order” stipulating that the sanctions “shall not be recognized, enforced, or complied with” to “safeguard national sovereignty, security, and development interests”.

“The Chinese government has consistently opposed unilateral sanctions that lack UN authorisation and basis in international law,” the ministry added.

It said the order blocked US measures against Hengli Petrochemical (Dalian) Refinery and four other so-called “teapot” refineries: Shandong Jincheng Petrochemical Group, Hebei Xinhai Chemical Group, Shouguang Luqing Petrochemical and Shandong ⁠Shengxing Chemical.

Announcing the sanctions on April 24, the US Treasury Department called Hengli “one of Tehran’s most valued customers”, saying it had generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for the Iranian military through crude oil purchases.

The Trump administration imposed sanctions on the other four refineries named by the Chinese ministry, among other facilities, last year.

China gets more than half of its oil from the Middle East, much of it from Iran.

According to commodities data firm Kpler, China bought more than 80 percent of the oil Iran shipped in 2025.

China’s “teapot” refineries operate independently and are generally smaller than the facilities run by state-owned oil giants, such as Sinopec.

The facilities, which have been crucial to China’s efforts to secure its oil supplies, capitalise on heavily discounted crude sold by countries under sanctions, such as Iran, Russia and Venezuela.

Teapots account for a quarter of Chinese ⁠refinery capacity, operate with narrow and sometimes negative margins, and have been squeezed recently by tepid domestic demand.

US sanctions have created additional hurdles for refiners, including difficulties selling refined products under their correct place-of-origin markings.

Donald Trump’s rhetoric and actions against Iran, Venezuela and Cuba over the last year have few parallels in modern history. They have to be seen as marking a new stage. As such they call for a reevaluation of analysis and strategy on the part of the Left.

Trump’s repeated threat to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages where they belong” is unmatched by the rhetoric of even the most notorious and brutal heads of state over the recent past. Decapitating the entire leadership of a country to compel total submission, as Washington and Tel Aviv have done in Iran, is also a novelty in war strategy. The kidnapping of Venezuela’s president and First Lady as a first step in attempting to establish a colonial relationship by taking complete control of the country’s principal source of revenue, namely petroleum, represents a throwback to practices associated with centuries-old imperial rule

These are examples of “hyper-imperialism,” a concept theorized by Samir Amin to describe the United States “as the sole capitalist superpower.” More recently, the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research has observed that U.S. hyper-imperialism persists despite a marked erosion of its economic and, though to a lesser extent, financial power. Its military supremacy is not only unrivaled, but is complemented by hybrid warfare, most notably “hyper-sanctions” and the use of lawfare.

What needs to be added to the concept of hyper-imperialism, particularly Trump’s version of it, is its sui generis nature. To find a parallel for the kind of hegemony the United States now exercises – highlighted by the continuous indiscriminate use of force and the threat of it – one would have to look back to the Roman empire or even earlier. One of Trump’s innovations is his deployment of the military to reinforce the system of economic sanctions, examples being the interdiction of oil tankers, the quarantine of Cuban oil, and full-scale war against Iran.

Trump II’s foreign policy hardly represents a complete break from the past. The groundwork was laid by past Democratic and Republican administrations. However, his actions force the Left not only to reformulate strategies, but to reconsider past evaluations and analyses of nations of the Global South subjected to extreme forms of imperialist aggression. The resistance to U.S. aggression must be given greater weight when evaluating governments. In addition, the popular desperation and exhaustion that erode revolutionary fervor and distance people from those same governments should be understood in light of the daily trauma people endure as a direct result of imperialist actions.

What Trump’s hyper-imperialism tells us

The starting point is to recognize that since Trump’s return to the White House, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba have been in a de facto state of war, which is an escalation of the multiple forms of hostility and aggression of past years. This is key to how all three nations should be judged. While the Left’s commitment to democracy needs to remain unquestionable and unwavering, in these cases primary responsibility for democracy’s somewhat uncertain prospects lies with the siege imposed by imperialist powers. No one other than James Madison said “Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded.”

The encirclement imposed by hyper-imperialism on Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela illuminates salient features of imperialism going back in time: first, Washington has honed the sanctions regime into a powerful tool, sometimes inflicting damage comparable to armed intervention; second, imperialism is the principal driver of the pressing economic problems facing the three nations; third, the justification for the actions taken against the three nations does not hold up under scrutiny; and fourth the brutality of the sanctions system underscores the need for its complete elimination. The discussion below looks at these points.

Tehran’s response to Operation Epic Fury underscores the crushing impact of sanctions. The nation’s leaders have made clear that the lifting of sanctions – as well as “international guarantees of U.S. non-interference” in the nation’s internal affairs – is a non-negotiable condition for ending the current conflict. That is to say, the Iranian leaders place the destruction caused by the sanctions on a similar footing as the bombs.

In the case of Venezuela, the events leading up to the abduction of Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores on January 3, 2026 reveal the far-reaching and highly coordinated machinery underpinning the sanctions regime. The second Trump administration’s tracking of the “ghost fleet” carrying Venezuela’s sanctioned oil—and its interdiction of several of those vessels— underscores how far Washington has gone in perfecting sanctions enforcement since the early years of the Cuban Revolution.

The first Trump administration pioneered in promoting “overcompliance” in which Washington’s well-publicized monitoring was designed to assure that companies and financial institutions world-wide would shun all transactions with Venezuela, even ones not specifically targeted by the sanctions. The aim was to impose a veritable blockade. Mike Pompeyo and Elliot Abrams spearheaded a campaign – drawing on the FBI, the Treasury, U.S. embassies, and the intelligence community – to scrutinize the dealings of companies worldwide with Venezuela, in what amounted to a warning shot to companies throughout the world. Even firms that engaged in oil-for-food swaps, which were not proscribed by the sanction regime, were warned that they ran risks. Companies under investigation were likewise told that penalties could be suspended if they halted all dealings with Venezuela.

A retrospective look at the first Trump administration’s sweeping enforcement measures and their devastating impact reinforces the argument that the sanctions have been so harmful that they need to be dismantled unconditionally and entirely. This position contrasts with that of liberals such as the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), which criticized the sanctions against Venezuela yet called for using “negotiations to flexibilize financial and oil sanctions” as leverage to secure concessions. Indeed, power brokers in Washington also favored sanctions relief as a bargaining tool to push the Maduro government to enact market-oriented reforms to the benefit of U.S. capital.

A full grasp of the scale and severity of Washington’s “war” on Venezuela undercuts the notion upheld by some on the left who argue that the sanctions were no more to blame for the nation’s pressing problems than government mismanagement. An even harsher position on the left affirms that the sanctions “do not explain the root causes of the societal collapse we have lived through.” 

Likewise, the forcible removal of Maduro and Flores demonstrates that Washington was intent on dismantling a government whose example and policies ran counter to U.S. interests. Prior to the January 3 kidnapping, some on the left in Venezuela and elsewhere denied that Washington sought to remove Maduro from power because they were convinced that he had effectively sold out. But they were wrong insofar as Washington clearly wanted Maduro out. Pedro Eusse, a leading member of the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), which broke with the Maduro government in 2020, wrote in July 2025, “Everything indicates that the true intention of the US and its allies’ policy of aggression toward the Venezuelan government has not been its overthrow, but its subordination.”

In the case of Cuba, the extreme measures of the Trump II administration against the nation also shine light on the cruelty and effectiveness of the system of sanctions per se. Trump’s navy-enforced quarantine on oil shipments is a first for the nation since the October 1962 missile crisis. The result has been recurring 16-hour blackouts that have disrupted water delivery, hospital operations, food production, and garbage collection.

The quarantine spotlights Cuba’s near total dependence on oil, in contrast to nearby Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, which generate a significant share of their electricity from coal and natural gas. The dependence stems precisely from the sanctions, which impeded imports and pushed Cuba into relying almost entirely on Venezuelan oil—only for Trump to cut off that supply too.

Indeed, the quarantine underscores Cuba’s reliance on Venezuelan oil and the reciprocal solidarity that saw fuel exchanged for Cuban medical personnel. That’s a plus for Maduro. The program undercuts the claim of some on the left that Maduro’s foreign policy, in the words of the PCV, never moved beyond an “anti-imperialist rhetoric” without substance.

The Washington-crafted narrative on Cuba and the reaction to it by the mainstream media and the Left are curious. In contrast to the demonization directed at Venezuela and Iran, Washington’s condemnation of Cuba has been relatively hollow and has gained little traction in mainstream outlets or left-leaning circles. The anti-Cuba vilification—driven by hardline anti-Communism—remains largely confined to the far right, epicentered in Miami. The official rhetoric is a departure from the wording in 1982 when the State Department designated Cuba as a State Sponsor of Terrorism due to “its long history of providing advice, safe haven, communications, training, and financial support to guerrilla groups and individual terrorists.” Now the Trump administration’s justification for the same designation is that the Cuban government grants “safe harbor to terrorists” and refuses to extradite them.

As false as the narco-terrorism case against Maduro is, it nonetheless offered a rationale that undoubtedly resonated with at least a slice of public opinion. Compare that to Marco Rubio’s line on Cuba which flatly denies the catastrophic effects of the oil quarantine. Rubio claims “we’ve done nothing punitive against the Cuban regime” and adds, the blackouts “have nothing to do with us.” Instead Rubio faults the Cuban leadership on grounds that “they want to control everything.” A classic case of victim-blaming, but with few buying into it. A YouGov survey in March found that only 28 percent of U.S. adults support the U.S.’s blocking of oil shipments to Cuba, as opposed to 46 percent opposed.

In addition, Rubio’s assertion that the only novelty is that Cuba is “not getting free Venezuelan oil anymore” is blatantly fallacious. Rubio is well aware of Venezuela’s swap with Cuba involving the latter’s International Medical Brigades, which maintain a sizeable presence in Venezuela and elsewhere. This is precisely why Rubio has vigorously attempted to sabotage the program throughout the region, unfortunately with a degree of success.

If the oil quarantine demonstrates anything it’s that the hardships facing the Cuban people are rooted in Washington’s war on Cuba, now going on 65 years. Criticism of Cuban government policies, or of socialism itself, comes in a distant second place.

The Trump II disaster should be an eye opener

Trump’s bullying offensive abroad has fueled mounting opposition to interventionism and has even fostered anti-imperialist sentiment in the United States. Just one week into the 2026 Iranian bombings, 53 percent of the U.S. population opposed the strikes, in sharp contrast to U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and Iraq, which enjoyed large majority support at the outset. That the former editor of The New Republic called the U.S. war on Iran imperialistic is telling. In a New York Times op-ed, Peter Beinart wrote “Donald Trump’s foreign policy vision is imperialism.”

One lesson of recent events is particularly relevant for the Left: the demonization of heads of state is a sine qua non for military intervention. In the case of Iran and Venezuela, the discrediting combines some fact with a large dosage of fake news. In the case of Maduro, the demonization which dates back to shortly after he assumed office in 2013, was taken to higher levels as a result of the controversial presidential election of July 28, 2024, which the opposition claimed was fraudulent. Subsequently the corporate media consistently tagged the word “autocrat” and “dictator” onto Maduro’s name. Six months later, Trump was in office and the vilification escalated to a new pitch. Indeed, the branding of Maduro as a narco-terrorist was an indispensable prelude to the bombing of boats in the Caribbean and the subsequent kidnappings – notwithstanding the doubts raised by some media outlets regarding the veracity of the claim.

The takeaway is that the Left needs to distinguish between criticism and demonization and take cognizance of the possible dire consequences of the latter.

The demonization of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his inner circle also set the stage for imperialist actions, but, of course, his government could not be placed in the same category as those of Cuba and Venezuela.

Furthermore, as in Venezuela and Cuba, harsh sanctions have been conducive to shadow economies, clientelistic networks, and fraudulent dealings, patterns well documented in numerous studies on sanctions throughout the world.

Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, a prolific scholar on Iran who is highly critical of the government, told Jacobin “While the Islamic Republic is paranoid, it is also very much under siege from all sides.” He also notes the intrinsic relationship between the sanctions and the nation’s pressing problems: “Sanctions and structural weaknesses of the Iranian economy feed off one another — there’s a symbiotic relationship between them.”

In short, any serious reading of Iran must foreground the role of sanctions—an approach that inevitably tempers the tendency to cast its leadership in purely demonizing terms.

The lessons of July 28, 2024

The issue of the accurateness of the July 28, 2024 election tallies in Venezuela needs to be reframed. Those elections could not have been democratic, regardless of the announced results, because Venezuelan voters had a gun pointed at their heads: reelect Maduro and the sanctions continue; elect an opposition candidate and the sanctions will be lifted.

The overwhelming majority of Venezuelans knew full well what was at stake. Luis Vicente León – the nation’s leading pollster, himself a member of the opposition – reported that 92 percent of the population believed that the sanctions negatively impacted the economy, and most characterized the effect as “very negative.” (The poll puts the lie to the State Department’s repeated claim that the sanctions only harm government officials.)

A similar scenario played out in the Nicaraguan presidential elections of 1990 when opposition candidate Violeta Chamorro upset the Sandinistas in the midst of a devastating, U.S.-promoted civil war. But there was a fundamental difference. Far from demonizing the Sandinistas, Chamorro accepted a power-sharing transition agreement with them. In contrast, for over a decade prior to the July 28 elections the opposition’s main leader, María Corina Machado, had ruled out negotiations with those who had allegedly violated human rights. She never tired of voicing the slogans “no immunity,” ”no to amnesty,” “no agreements with criminals,” often with specific reference to the Chavistas and to Maduro himself. Maduro and his followers had every reason to fear the type of repression that the opposition initiated during the two-day abortive coup it staged in April 2002 against the Chavista government. Even opposition pollster León admitted that the fear was well-founded.

Marta Harnecker, the renowned leftist theoretician, wrote that the Sandinistas erred in holding the 1990 elections amid U.S. promoted violence and sabotage. Harnecker labeled the decision to organize elections “on terrain shaped by the counterrevolution” a “strategic error.”

A reevaluation and reinterpretation of the July 28 elections is instructive. The hard-core Chavistas accept the official results which showed Maduro winning with nearly 52 percent of the vote. The opposition refutes that claim. A third position is defended by supporters of Maduro who nevertheless express skepticism and point out that because of a massive hacking attack from outside the country, it may be impossible to ever know the true count.

The debate about the accuracy of the official results of July 28 sidesteps the overriding issue of whether the elections should have been held in the first place. Indeed, the idea of conditioning elections on the lifting of sanctions was not far-fetched. A year before the elections, Maduro, in a reference to the United States, declared: “If they want free elections, we want elections free of sanctions.” Subsequently, Elvis Amoroso, the Chavista head of the nation’s electoral council, tied the participation of European Union electoral observers to its lifting of sanctions. At the same time, the Biden administration indicated its willingness to bargain with the Venezuelan government along those lines.

Carlos Ron, a former vice-minister and currently an analyst for Tricontinental, told me that the Chavista leadership ruled out delaying the elections in order to demonstrate its democratic credentials in the face of the international smear campaign. Ron said “At that moment, greater importance was placed on the need to defend the democratic character of the Bolivarian political process and its continuity, and abide by the Constitution, in the face of imperialist pressures.”

Maduro’s intentions may have been commendable. But the decision overlooked one compelling reason to suspend the electoral process. Tying the holding of elections to the removal of the sanctions would have placed the entire blame for setbacks to democracy where it belonged: U.S. intervention in Venezuela’s internal affairs.

In defense of democracy

As a rule, the Left has always championed the defense of democracy. In this sense, the Left’s vision compares favorably with U.S.-style “liberal democracy,” shaped by the influence of big money and other inherently undemocratic practices such as gerrymandering, the Electoral College and voter suppression.

Historically, however, the Left has faced formidable obstacles on this front. For instance, it has come to power in countries like Russia, China and Cuba that were lacking in democratic tradition. That, however, was the least of the problem. Its main problem has been, and continues to be, imperialist hostility which limits options.

Precisely for that reason, the Left needs to tread cautiously in the way it frames the issue of democracy in nations that are in the crosshairs of imperialism. In the three countries discussed in this article, the Left can’t deny that democracy has been infringed upon. The Maduro government, for instance, stripped the PCV – the country’s oldest political party, forged in a history of militant struggle including two periods of clandestine resistance armed struggle in the 1950s and 1960s – of its legal status, transferring recognition to a marginal breakaway faction that appropriated its name and symbols.

Nor can it deny that discontent is currently widespread in the three nations, which became most evident in the Iranian “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests and those of the first days of this year. In Cuba and Venezuela, protests reflect widespread disillusionment, even while the mobilizations have been manipulated and financed from abroad.

One troubling sign in Venezuela is that the disturbances have spread out from upper-middle class neighborhoods where they were confined during the 4-month protests (the “guarimba”) of 2014 and, albeit less so, during those of 2017. The two days following the July 28, 2024 elections, for instance, protests were registered in Caracas barrios such as Petare, the city’s largest. Reflecting on the protests, long-standing Caracas resident and international commentator Phil Gunson reported “Petare is a traditionally Chavista zone, but ever since a few years ago, people have been distancing themselves from the government.”

The Left can’t turn its back on this reality. But nor can it join mainstream voices that channel dissatisfaction into blanket vilification of governments under imperial siege. Rather its line has to be basically: “What do you expect!” In the face of hyper-imperialist aggression these countries are at war, figuratively and in some cases literally speaking. Criticism needs to be framed within this context.

Lenin’s concept of democratic centralism – the principle designed to guide the internal workings of his political party – is instructive. In his writing throughout his political career, party democracy remained a constant, but the degree of centralism depended on the political climate in the nation. Along similar lines, the Left’s adherence to democracy can never be minimized. However, valid criticism of undemocratic practices in countries like Venezuela and Cuba in which the Left is in power needs to consider those actions as overreactions to imperialist aggression.

In this era of intensified hyper-imperialism, the Left is compelled to stand behind nations like Cuba and Venezuela, and recognize that the real blame for backsliding including violation of democratic norms lies with imperialism. The barbaric actions of Trump II are making this imperative clearer than ever.

Steve Ellner is a retired professor of the Universidad de Oriente in Venezuela where he lived for over 40 years and is currently Associate Managing Editor of Latin American Perspectives. He is the author and editor of over a dozen books on Latin American politics and history. In 2018 he spoke in over twenty cities in the U.S. and Canada as part of a Venezuelan solidarity tour.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.

This article was originally posted in CounterPunch.

Tehran, Iran – Iran’s national currency has plunged to new lows as authorities mobilise to dampen the impact of the naval blockade enforced by the United States.

The Iranian rial shot above 1.81 million to the US dollar on the open market by early afternoon on Wednesday before partially recovering. The embattled currency changed hands for about 1.54 million earlier this week, and its rate was about 811,000 per US dollar a year ago.

The rial had remained relatively stable over the past two months after experiencing an earlier drop as US forces amassed in the lead-up to the US-Israeli war on Iran, which began at the end of February.

The latest freefall follows on from unchecked inflation, which has been increasingly plaguing the Iranian economy as a result of mismanagement and sanctions, and continues to ravage households. Washington now has three aircraft carriers in the region and is bringing in more troops and equipment as Israel expresses readiness to restart fighting, three weeks after a ceasefire began.

Iran’s authorities this week projected a hardened stance on negotiations with Washington, and pledged to fight the naval blockade of Iran’s southern waters, which the US Central Command insisted on Tuesday had “cut off economic trade going into and coming out of” the country.

Amid threats by US President Donald Trump, the Iranian government has also tried to empower its own border provinces to import essential goods by reducing red tape. It has also allocated $1bn from the sovereign wealth fund to buy food, and made a partial policy U-turn to restart offering a preferential subsidised exchange rate with the goal of reducing prices, despite concerns about corruption.

Non-oil trade takes hit

According to customs data released by state media, Iran’s non-oil trade has been negatively affected after commercial ties were disrupted or cut off as a result of the war, and critical infrastructure was bombed.

Iran’s customs authority put the total value of non-oil trade in the Iranian calendar year that ended on March 20 at close to $110bn, with $58bn going to imports. The figure was about 16 percent lower than the year before.

The volume of non-oil trade was valued at approximately $9bn for the 11th month of the calendar year ending on February 19, and $6.46bn in the final month, indicating a drop of about 29 percent in connection with the war, which started on February 28. The final month was also about 50 percent lower than the more than $13bn estimated value for last year’s corresponding month.

Part of the drop is linked with the fact that shipping has been significantly disrupted through the Strait of Hormuz as Iran and the US spar over control of the strategic waterway. The US and Israel also directed some of their thousands of strikes against ports, naval facilities, airports, and railway networks across the country.

Iran’s top steel and petrochemical producers were also extensively bombed, as were oil and gas facilities, power stations, and major industrial zones. The US and Israel have threatened to take Iran “back to the Stone Age” through systematic bombing of civilian infrastructure like power plants.

To manage the impact and preserve domestic supply, Iranian authorities have imposed temporary restrictions on exports of steel, petrochemicals, polymers and other chemicals.

Oil exports in the crosshairs

The US is using its military capabilities and economic chokeholds to drive down Iran’s oil exports, a goal that it has also pursued over recent years through sanctions.

Since mid-April, the US military has been deploying its soldiers to take over or inspect ships transiting through waterways near Iran, in addition to targeting what is known as a shadow fleet of tankers used by Iran to circumvent sanctions and ship its oil.

Warships and thousands of troops could still launch a ground invasion or destructive aerial attacks against Iran’s Kharg and other critical islands, and the Trump administration expects increased pressure on Iran’s oil sector due to hampered access to export routes and supertankers keeping the oil stored on the water.

The US Treasury has been blacklisting refineries in China, the biggest buyers of Iranian crude oil, and going after the banking and cryptocurrency channels alleged to be facilitating Tehran’s oil trade, and having links to the IRGC – which Washington considers a “terrorist” organisation.

“We will follow the money that Tehran is desperately attempting to move outside of the country and target all financial lifelines tied to the regime,” said US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on social media.

Chinese refineries buy roughly 90 percent of Iran’s oil shipments, and imported a record 1.8 million barrels per day ⁠in March, according to Vortexa Analytics data cited by the Reuters news agency, which also said purchases were expected to slow due to worsening domestic refining and processing margins.

According to figures released by the General Administration of Customs of China, the volume of the country’s bilateral trade with Iran during the first quarter of 2026 stood at $1.55bn, down 50 percent year-on-year.

In March, the first month of the war, trade stood at $184m, which was nearly 80 percent lower than the year before and 64 percent lower than the month before. China’s imports from Iran and exports to the country were both considerably reduced as a result of the war.

The removal of the United Arab Emirates as a major trade partner and import market for Iran has also significantly affected the country’s economy, increasing its reliance on land neighbours like Turkiye and Iraq to the west and Pakistan to the east.

The UAE, a big part of the Trump-led Abraham Accords that saw multiple countries normalise relations with Israel, was heavily targeted by ballistic missiles and drones launched by Iran.

The UAE has closed down numerous Iranian institutions on its soil over the past two months, including financial facilitators, instructed Iranian citizens to leave, and has said it will take years to restore bilateral relations to previous levels.

April 29 (UPI) — The United States has sanctioned 35 entities and individuals accused of overseeing a shadow-banking network that moved tens of billions of dollars for Iran, as the Trump administration flexes Washington’s financial might amid a stalemate in peace negotiations with Tehran.

The sanctions announced Tuesday come as U.S.-Iran peace negotiations came to a halt last week after Tehran said it would not participate in talks until the United States lifted its blockade of sea-based trade to the Middle Eastern nation.

Those blacklisted by the Treasury include several private companies known as rahbars, which manage thousands of overseas companies used by Iranian banks cut off from the international financial system to execute payments for Iranian trade.

According to the Treasury, these rahbar companies coordinate with Iranian exchange houses and front companies to conduct international trade on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran’s Armed Forces General Staff, the National Iranian Oil Company and other sanctioned entities.

“By dismantling these financial channels, we advance the administration’s policy in the conflict with Iran and underscore our commitment to imposing maximum pressure on Iran,” State Department spokesman Thomas Pigott said in a statement.

The punitive action was part of what the Treasury calls Operation Economic Fury, a branded escalation of President Donald Trump‘s broader maximum-pressure campaign against Iran.

Coinciding with the sanctions on Tuesday, the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control issued an alert to financial institutions over the risks they face for doing business with so-called teapot oil refineries in China, primarily in Shandong Province, that import and refine Iranian crude oil.

According to the alert, China is the largest purchaser of Iranian oil, and the Treasury has designated multiple small China-based refineries since March of last year.

“The United States will further disrupt illicit funding streams that finance Iran’s malign activities,” Pigott said.

“We will not relent in our efforts to deny Iran and its proxies the resources they use to threaten U.S. interests and regional stability.”

Trump first employed the maximum-pressure campaign strategy to coerce Iran into negotiations over its nuclear program in 2018 after unilaterally withdrawing the United States from a landmark multinational accord that sought to prevent Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Iran then breached its commitments under the deal, enriching uranium up to 60%, far exceeding the accord’s 3.67% but below weapons-grade levels.

Trump restored the maximum-pressure campaign after returning to office in 2025, and the United States bombed three major Iranian nuclear facilities that June.

The United States and Israel have since escalated their pressure campaign, attacking Iran in strikes that triggered a war now halted by a fragile cease-fire to permit peace talks.

Iran has imposed restrictions on energy trade through the Strait of Hormuz, prompting the United States to impose a blockade of Iran’s ports in response to what it describes as Tehran holding a major share of the world’s energy supplies hostage.

Taiwan has downplayed the impact of new Chinese sanctions targeting European defense companies involved in arms sales to the island. The measures, announced by China, restrict exports of dual use goods to seven firms, marking a rare move against European entities over Taiwan related issues.

Despite the escalation, Taiwan’s Defence Minister Wellington Koo said the sanctions would not disrupt the island’s ability to procure military equipment.

China’s Expanding Use of Sanctions

Beijing has increasingly used economic and trade restrictions to respond to foreign involvement in Taiwan’s defense. While similar sanctions have frequently targeted U.S. arms manufacturers, extending them to European companies signals a broader willingness to pressure multiple partners simultaneously.

The move reflects China’s ongoing effort to isolate Taiwan internationally and deter military cooperation with the island.

Limited European Military Role

Europe’s direct role in arming Taiwan has historically been limited. Major defense exports such as fighter jets have not been supplied for decades due to concerns about damaging relations with China.

However, smaller scale cooperation and component level trade have continued, making these sanctions symbolically significant even if their immediate practical impact is modest.

Diversified Supply Strategy

Taiwan relies heavily on the United States for its defense needs, but it has also worked to diversify procurement channels in recent years. According to Koo, this strategy ensures that disruptions from any single source, including sanctioned European firms, can be mitigated.

Growing support from parts of Central and Eastern Europe, particularly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has also provided Taiwan with additional diplomatic and logistical avenues.

Geopolitical Context

The sanctions come amid heightened global tensions and shifting alliances. China views Taiwan as its own territory and strongly opposes any foreign military assistance to the island.

At the same time, Taiwan’s security concerns have intensified, prompting it to strengthen international partnerships and defense preparedness.

Analysis

China’s decision to target European companies represents an escalation in its economic statecraft, aiming to widen the cost of supporting Taiwan beyond the United States. While the immediate impact on Taiwan’s military capabilities appears limited, the move could have a chilling effect on future European involvement.

Taiwan’s confidence reflects its reliance on U.S. support and its broader diversification strategy. However, repeated sanctions and pressure campaigns could gradually narrow its options, especially if European firms become more risk averse.

For Europe, the sanctions pose a strategic dilemma between economic ties with China and growing political alignment with Taiwan and its partners. For China, they reinforce its stance on sovereignty while testing how far it can push back against international support for Taiwan without triggering broader backlash.

Overall, the episode underscores how economic tools are increasingly being used in geopolitical competition, even when their direct material impact remains limited.

With information from Reuters.

The Trump administration’s January 3 military strikes opened a new era of US imperialism in Venezuela built on the plunder of the country’s resources. This interactive infographic explains Venezuela’s recent pro-business reforms, US neocolonial impositions through licenses, and the conglomerates that have already taken advantage to strike agreements.

(Click on the crosses for additional information)

(Click here to download the full infographic)

Mérida, April 20, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The Venezuelan government launched a “Great National Pilgrimage” to oppose economic sanctions on Sunday, April 19, coinciding with the 216th anniversary of the country’s declaration of independence.

The nationwide mobilization seeks to channel popular opposition to the US-led economic blockade into a sustained, nationwide movement. 

The pilgrimage was inaugurated in three Venezuelan regions, with a calendar of marches, assemblies, and cultural activities covering the remaining 21 states before a closing event in Caracas on April 30. 

In western Zulia state, Acting President Delcy Rodríguez led a rally through the streets of Maracaibo. Addressing a crowd, Rodríguez linked the historical struggle for independence to the modern-day resistance against Washington’s unilateral coercive measures.

“It is a date that marks the first cry for independence from a united people, and so, beginning with that historic date, I feel compelled to embark on this pilgrimage,” she declared to the crowd.

Venezuelan leaders have sought to highlight the impact of unilateral coercive measures on living standards and public services to push for their withdrawal.

“We want Venezuela to be free of sanctions, so that it can grow without restrictions,” Rodríguez affirmed at the Zulia rally. “I am speaking to the people of the United States, Europe, and the governments of those countries. Please stop levying sanctions against the Venezuelan people.”

In Puerto Ayacucho, Amazonas, National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez led a parallel mobilization on Sunday. He emphasized that the pilgrimage is not merely a political event but a “spiritual and national defense” of the country’s right to self-determination. The campaign’s launch in border states highlighted the disruptions to public services that are generally more acute away from the capital and surrounding areas.

The government’s initiative was also backed by sectors of the moderate opposition. Timoteo Zambrano, deputy from the Democratic Alliance, vowed that his political faction would participate in the pilgrimage.

“[Pilgrimage] is a deeply religious term that unites the world’s religions. We are witnessing a new moment to fight together against sanctions and the blockade,” he said in a press conference in Caracas on Saturday.

For his part, Acción Democrática Secretary-General Bernabé Gutiérrez claimed that Caracas must ask the Trump administration to release proceeds from oil exports “so they reach the state coffers and allow for the solution of our problems.” 

Since January, the White House has imposed control over Venezuelan crude sales, with Venezuela-owed royalties, taxes, and dividends mandated to be deposited in US Treasury-run accounts before being returned to Caracas at US officials’ discretion.

The “Great National Pilgrimage” takes place against a backdrop of nearly a decade of economic pressure from Washington. The first Trump administration launched a “maximum pressure” campaign in 2017 with the goal of triggering regime change.

US Treasury sanctions targeted multiple economic sectors, from mining to banking, and particularly targeted the oil industry, causing an estimated US $25 billion in yearly revenue losses. The blockade also effectively gridlocked Venezuela from international credit markets and saw Venezuelan foreign assets frozen and seized. 

Since the January 3 US military attacks and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro, Caracas and Washington have fast-tracked a diplomatic rapprochement. Acting President Rodríguez has struck a conciliatory tone toward the US, recently thanking Trump and US officials for their efforts in reestablishing “cooperation.”

The US Treasury Department has maintained wide-reaching sanctions in place but issued a series of general licenses in the hydrocarbon, mining, and banking sectors, allowing Western entities to deal with Venezuelan counterparts under restricted conditions.

Edited by Ricardo Vaz in Caracas.

Caracas, April 15, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued two new general licenses on Tuesday facilitating transactions with Venezuelan state institutions.

 for Venezuela on Tuesday: a commercial license (No. 56) and a financial license (No. 57), signaling a partial easing of restrictions while maintaining key controls.

General License 56 (GL56) authorizes US entities to negotiate and sign “contingent contracts” for future commercial operations in Venezuela. This allows firms to move forward with agreements, investments, or projects, though their final execution remains subject to separate OFAC approval.

The waiver maintains important restrictions, including a ban on payments in gold or cryptocurrencies, as well as prohibitions on transactions involving China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Cuba. It likewise forbids transactions involving Venezuelan debt and does not unblock currently frozen Venezuelan assets.

For its part, General License 57 (GL57) permits a broad range of financial operations with the Venezuelan Central Bank (BCV), as well as Venezuela’s public banks: Banco de Venezuela, Banco Digital de los Trabajadores, Banco del Tesoro, and entities in which these institutions hold a 50 percent or greater stake.

The allowed transactions include opening and managing accounts, conducting US dollar transfers, issuing loans, and providing banking services. The BCV was sanctioned in April 2019, effectively isolating Venezuela from international financial circuits and increasing costs for basic transactions.

The latest sanctions waivers are expected to facilitate financial flows to the Venezuelan economy, including the transfer of Venezuelan oil revenues that are currently controlled by the Trump administration. US authorities have returned a confirmed US $500 million out of an initial deal estimated at $2 billion, while US and Venezuelan officials have confirmed the purchase of US-manufactured medicines and hospital equipment using Venezuelan funds.

Analyst Hermes Pérez warned that reincorporation into the SWIFT system and establishment of US-based accounts could take several months due to security and technological requirements. Other economists argued that GL57 could allow the Central Bank to stabilize the Venezuelan foreign exchange system.

For several years, a parallel exchange rate between the US dollar and the Venezuelan bolívar has coexisted with the official one set by the Central Bank, often with a gap above 50 percent that fueled distortions in retail activities and currency speculation.

Since the January 3 military strikes and kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the Trump administration has issued several licenses to expand US influence in the Caribbean nation, particularly in key economic sectors such as hydrocarbons and mining.

In parallel, Venezuelan authorities have promoted several pro-business reforms, while multiple Trump officials and corporate executives have come the South American country and held meetings with the acting government led by Delcy Rodríguez.

The latest waivers coincided with the visit to Caracas of a US Department of Energy delegation led by Assistant Secretary Kyle Haustveit. Rodríguez hosted the official on Wednesday in a work meeting at the presidential palace.

During a short, televised intervention, Rodríguez argued that OFAC licenses do not provide sufficient “legal certainty” and reiterated calls for Trump to lift unilateral coercive measures against the country.

“An investor requires greater legal certainty. A license does not provide long-term legal guarantees because it is subject to temporality,” she argued. Rodríguez claimed Washington and Caracas have “enough maturity” to establish “long-term” energy cooperation ties.

“We are working very hard on changes that can attract investment, and which can build an energy cooperation agenda with the United States,” she said.

Rodríguez additionally disclosed recent meetings with representatives from ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, stating that authorities have “taken into account recommendations” from oil majors in recent legislative overhauls. Both ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips refused to accept hydrocarbon reforms under former President Hugo Chávez in the 2000s, later securing multi-billion-dollar arbitration awards against the Caracas as compensation for the nationalization of their assets.

Haustveit and the Energy Department delegation were also present on Monday during the signing of agreements with Chevron that granted the Texas-based conglomerate an increased stake in the Petroindependencia joint venture and awarded an additional extra-heavy crude bloc for exploration to the Petropiar mixed company. Chevron owns minority stakes in both joint enterprises with Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA.

Shell, Eni and Repsol are among the other energy giants to have recently advanced in deals with the Venezuelan government under the improved conditions of the new Hydrocarbon Law.

US Chargé d’Affaires in Venezuela Laura Dogu was also present at the Chevron deal-signing ceremony and the meeting with Haustveit’s delegation. However, the White House announced Wednesday that her post will be taken over by veteran diplomat John Barrett.

Barrett, who previously served as chargé d’affaires at the US Embassy in Guatemala since January 21, 2026, was recently accused by Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo of interference during judicial elections for the Constitutional Court held in March.

Edited by Ricardo Vaz in Caracas.