Venezuela

Caracas, September 23, 2026. The Venezuelan press first notes, in Donald Trump's lengthy speech before the United Nations General Assembly, the passage that directly concerns it: the American president claimed "a massive military operation" carried out in January "in the heart of the Venezuelan capital, Caracas", which allowed for the "detention of a criminal, a dictator" — Nicolás Maduro, captured along with Cilia Flores and now incarcerated in a federal prison in New York, twenty minutes from the UN headquarters. Runrun.es reports that interim president Delcy Rodríguez and the rest of the Venezuelan delegation followed this account "passively" from their seats. Trump added, regarding Venezuelan oil: "to the victor go the spoils", before warning that the operation served as an "alert" for the rest of Latin America and that Washington would not authorize "any threat" to its security in the hemisphere, resorting to its "military might" if necessary.

On the same day, according to Descifrado, Trump assured that his administration is "working with Venezuelan leaders" to build "a better future", citing the release of hundreds of political prisoners and a bilateral energy agreement — 65 billion barrels according to El Nacional — supposedly representing more than 60% of global crude and set to lower energy prices on a global scale.

It is within this same security framework that the Venezuelan press reports, in response, the announcement regarding Iran: El Nacional confirms that Trump described as "very good" a three-hour meeting held in New York between his special envoys and the Iranian delegation, while specifying that the war continues. None of the articles consulted mention the delegations that left the room during the speech, nor the Cuban response to the comments about Havana, nor the remark by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez about the lack of facts in the speech.

For Caracas, the lesson learned has less to do with diplomacy towards Tehran than with the demonstration of force already applied to Venezuela: the same hand that considers "annihilating" Iran is the one that claims the capture of Maduro, a warning that Trump himself presented as valid for "the rest of the nations" in Latin America.