President Trump has raised the prospect of the US remaining in control of Venezuela for years and said it would handle its oil sales “indefinitely”.
“Only time will tell” how long Washington will oversee the country, he told The New York Times in an interview published on Thursday. Asked how long it would remain the country’s “political overlord” and given the option of months, a year or longer, Trump said: “I would say much longer.”
Trump said the interim government in place since the abduction of Nicolás Maduro was “giving us everything that we feel is necessary” but acknowledged it would take years to resurrect Venezuela’s oil sector.
“We will rebuild it in a very profitable way,” he said. “We’re going to be using oil, and we’re going to be taking oil. We’re getting oil prices down, and we’re going to be giving money to Venezuela, which they desperately need.”
Referring to his announcement on Tuesday night that the US would obtain 30 million to 50 million barrels of Venezuelan crude oil, Trump said the US had begun to make money from oil that had been under sanctions.
He declined to be drawn on whether the US would put boots on the ground if the government blocked access to oil. “I really wouldn’t want to tell you that, but they’re treating us with great respect. As you know, we’re getting along very well with the administration that is there right now,” said Trump, who appears to be satisfied with the maritime blockade of sanctioned tankers in the Caribbean.
Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s vice-president who has become his interim replacement, has insisted there is no foreign power governing Caracas.
Delcy Rodríguez
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Thousands have rallied in support of Venezuelan sovereignty
ESTEBAN VEGA LA-ROTTA/GETTY IMAGES
Trump declined to answer questions about why he recognised Rodríguez over María Corina Machado, the opposition leader who won the Nobel peace prize last year.
Trump contrasted the operation to remove Maduro with Jimmy Carter’s failed attempt to rescue 52 American hostages from Iran in 1980, in which eight US servicemen were killed, as well as the disastrous 2021 withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, which was overseen by Joe Biden, though negotiated by Trump during his first term.
“You know, you didn’t have a Jimmy Carter crashing helicopters all over the place. You didn’t have a Biden Afghanistan disaster where they couldn’t do the simplest manoeuvre,” said Trump, who acknowledged he had been worried the operation at the weekend could end up being a “Jimmy Carter disaster”.
On Wednesday Diosdado Cabello, the Venezuelan interior minister, said that some 100 people died in the US attack on Saturday.