The Duran Podcast - Regime change escalation escalator

Episode Date: December 21, 2025

Regime change escalation escalator

All right, Alexander, a couple of days ago, Trump posted on Truth Social that there is a blockade on Venezuela, a sanctioned oil tankers blockade on Venezuela. He's very upset with Venezuela because Venezuela stole the United States as oil and the land and assets and stuff like that. And he wants it back. As far as the blockade goes, we don't really have any details as to how this blockade is going to work. but a blockade is an act of war. I don't think I'm wrong in saying that. The Congress, they're backing up Trump. Yes. There was a motion in Congress, mostly backed by Massey and a couple of other people in Congress lawmakers who wanted Congress to push back on Trump. And Congress is saying, nope, we'll give Trump the power to continue down this trajectory with Vendera. Venezuela. And the statements about the oil and the gas and the assets being stolen, that goes back to Chavez and nationalizing these assets. It was a long time ago. And there are open court cases with all of these assets from the oil giants and they need to be resolved. Okay. But that's what Trump is referring when he's talking about, the stolen land and assets. I don't think legally, I don't think that has any bearing on a blockade or going to war with

a country, right? Venezuela's gold has been stolen by, I believe it's in the UK. Yeah. Right now, Venezuela's gold. So, I mean, you know, these are things that I imagine has to get worked out through the court system in a normal, sane world, whatever your beliefs are as to who did what, to whom. Anyway, your thoughts on everything that is going on. No, you're absolutely correct about this.

a few things to say, first of all, we did actually, just to remind people, because if we don't, nobody else will, we did actually predict that everything seemed to be moving directly towards a sea blockade. You said it. You said it straight up. This is going to be a blockade. It was about a week and a half ago, yeah. Exactly.

But we said about a week and a half ago that this is what was going to happen, and sure enough it has. It looks as if there may have been a discussion within the administration about you know, decapitation strikes and missile strikes and attacks on military bases in Venezuela and that kind of thing. Somebody's looked at this. They obviously decided that can't work or that the risks are too great. And so they've fallen back on this idea of a sea blockade. Now, a blockade is absolutely an active war. It is completely wrong. I understand that the United States, or at least the administration is trying to get around this by saying that they're going to

seize sanctioned tankers. That's only sanctioned tankers that they're going to seize. So it's not a complete blockade. I personally think that these arguments are difficult to sustain legally and in terms of seizing oil tankers. Well, saying that you're only going to see sanctioned tankers is really a pointless thing because, of course, the United States is going to sanction whatever tanker, he chooses to seize. So it's absolutely circular logic, legal logic, and circular legal logic is always bad logic and is resorted to people by two, by people who have in practice, no legal case. So this, to me, I have to say, this looks illegal as well, just as you said. The third thing that I do have to say about this is, remember a few weeks ago,

It was all about fentanyl drugs, all that sort of thing, stopping drug smugglers, sending drugs across the Caribbean. Boats were, you know, destroyed, people were killed, and that was what it was all about. Suddenly, suddenly, we have a completely different explanation that it's all about getting back all the assets, the American assets, that the Venezuelans have supposedly stolen. So the narrative has done a complete switch. I read Trump's true social posts. I was surprised to see that illegal drugs won't even mention them. Just to say, it does seem to me remarkable that, as I said, they've just switched the narrative. So suddenly, so completely, without any proper explanation.

But there it is. The true social post does not specifically refer to regime change. In theory, if the Venezuelans were to return all of these assets that Trump is talking about to the US or to their US owners, then the sea blockade would be lifted and it would all be over. But then he calls the Maduro government the illegal. Magdura regime, which all but confirms that in the end, this is indeed about regime change. Just saying.

And, well, seizing oil, obviously, it would choke Venezuela's economy. Venezuela's economy is major export is oil. But going back to what we have discussed in previous programs, one of the countries that receives Venezuelan oil. For which Venezuelan oil has been a lifeline is Cuba. So this looks to me like an oil blockade of Cuba every bit as much as it is an oil blockade of Venezuela. Just saying. Now, there are ways that Cuba could receive oil from other parties. I've discussed Russia in the past. The Russians have shown willingness to provide escorts for tankers, Russian tankers, or tankers that carry Russian oil. And they could certainly do this in supplying oil to Cuba.

They could easily supply oil to Cuba. It would not dent their exports to any particular degree. Cuba is a small country. But of course, the Cubans have to make that decision. They have to talk to the Russians. It has to be sorted out. the arrangements take time to sort out. Inevitably, this is going to create disruption in Cuba too.

And last but not least, what Trump is trying to do, which I suspect is an attempt to achieve regime change in Venezuela. I've no doubt about it. Well, it can only work if, as I said, the blockade really does choke off the Venezuelan economy and does lead to a collapse of the Venezuelan economy. The United States can only do this for a limited amount of time. It cannot keep such a large proportion of its navy permanently off the coast of Venezuela in this way.

After some weeks, some months, the pressure to transfer these assets back to the United States or to reallocate them to other places that are more important is going to start to grow and Trump is going to have to conceive that. As to your legal points, whether the nationalization of American-held assets in Venezuela is a pretext for war or for actions of this kind, they are not. And the US government itself once argued against using nationalizations in that way. And as a British person, the precedent that stands to mind for me is the Suez Crisis of 1956.

Garmell Nasser, the president of Egypt, nationalized the Suez Canal, which meant, in effect, expropriating the assets of the British and French shareholders. The British and French governments then arranged to invade Egypt because of that. And the United States opposed it and said that what the Egyptians had done was their sovereign right. And that was the legal position that the Eisenhower administration took then. And it is undoubtedly the correct one, the Trump administration is taking the opposite position today. There you go. There you go.

So Susie Wiles did an interview with Vanity Fair, an 11 part, 11 interviews within the year. And one of the disaster, expose, by the way. But anyway, the chief of staff, one of the questions she was asked about was Maduro. What exactly is the strategy going on with Venezuela and Maduro? And her quote is not exactly what she said. Maybe it is exactly what she said. But I believe it was something along the lines of Trump's plan is to blow up boats until Maduro cries uncle. Pretty much, that's what she said.

Is this a plan? Is this a strategy, really? Is this really what this is all about? That's the thinking in the Trump administration. We're going to blow up boats until Maduro says stop. I'll leave. Okay. I'm going to leave.

You guys win. Yeah. Put Machado in there as president. And isn't time working against Trump when you try to employ this type of strategy? And then my follow-up question to you is, when does the pressure get too great from the neocons, from the Lindsay Graham's, from the Rubios, where they then go to Trump and say, you know what? this blowing up boat until Maduro cries uncle is not working, so now we need to launch airstrikes. You know what this reminds me of a great deal is, is the pressure that the Clinton and Bush administrations put on Saddam Hussein in Iraq, to ever tightening sanctions,

ever greater restrictions, the expectation was that choking off the Iraqi economy would lead to regime collapse. And of course, that never happened. In fact, within Iraq itself, Saddam Hussein's positions became gradually stronger because in order to keep things functioning, power had to become increasingly centralized. And that meant that it became centralized in him. And eventually, when it became clear that regime collapse in Iraq was never going to come. Well, as we all know, it ended up with the invasion. So this is exactly what this is going to lead to.

It is impossible to imagine the United States now backing off from this until it achieves regime change in Venezuela. And if all of these other measures, you know, blowing up boats, seizing oil tank, because if none of that works, then sooner or later the pressure to actually go in there. and take the action, the decisive action, that will collapse the regime and bring Maduro down, that is certain to grow, just as it did in the early 2000s of the United States. So we are on that escalator-escalator. And what we've discussed before with escalatory escalators is once you get on them, it's all but impossible to take off, get off. They started by attacking small boats, which they said were carrying drugs,

now they're seizing tankers, now they're talking about sea blockades, sooner or later. It'll be air strikes and missile strikes, and eventually it will be all out invasions. It is very, very difficult to see how that can be prevented. And I think in order to be prevent, to stop it completely in its tracks, it would have to have a completely different administration with an entirely different agenda coming to office in Washington. And I don't see that happening. And lastly, just to say, with Saddam Hussein, Congress supported all of the escalations every step of the way.

Of course, we saw how disastrously that ended. But Congress, of course, has learned nothing. And they are again supporting every one of these escalations with respect to Venezuela, as they've just done. Not an off-topic question, a question connected to Venezuela. What do you make of Julian Assange's legal action against the Nobel Foundation, the Nobel Peace Prize Foundation? He's filed a criminal complaint against them. And what the complaint says, what the filing says is that with Maria Machado receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, there are ample public statements showing that the U.S. government and Maria Corina Machado have exploited the authority of the prize to provide them with the causes Morales for war with the object of installing her by force in order to plunder $1.7 trillion in Venezuela and oil and other resources. Basically, Assange is saying that the Nobel Peace Prize was given to someone that is calling for war,

calling for regime change. What do you make of what Assange has done? Well, I think that politically he's absolutely right. Whether he can succeed legally, I mean, I don't know, because I presume this case would have to be brought in Norway. and difficult to imagine the Norwegian courts ruling against the Peace Prize Committee, which from what I know about it, is mostly made up of Norwegian politicians, just to say. What I do know is that Alfred Nobel's, the Alfred Nobel Foundation in Sweden, are extremely unhappy about this Nobel Peace Prize award.

And of course, if they either join this legal case or bring some kind of action themselves, then, of course, it is an entirely different matter. But they are apparently saying that this was completely inappropriate prize, that Machado ticks none of the boxes that Alfred Nobel set out when he said who should be awarded this prize. I mean, it fulfills none of the conditions of Alfred Nobel's original award. And going beyond that, I mean, she's obviously the wrong person anyway, for the very same reasons as the ones that Assange is saying. So, you know, I would have thought that would be even more concerning for the Nobel,

more concerning for the Nobel Prize Committee than what Assange is doing, which is not to say that what Assange is doing. not actually have a significant legal effect in time. We'll see. I personally think that the Nobel Price was captured, neocon captured, long ago. It was perhaps only a matter of time before the foundation in Sweden finally recognized that fact. It looks as if the Machado affair was just, the line that, you know, finally was the point where they went too far. A smart move by Assange. I mean, he brings attention to the fact that the Nobel Peace Prize has been neocon captured,

and he also brings attention to the regime change. Absolutely. That is being planned by the Trump administration with Maria Machado. Mario Machado, exactly. He really brings a lot of attention to it with this court case, whatever the outcome may be. Exactly. Exactly. All right. We will end the video there. the duran.orgals.com. We are on X and Rumble and Telegram. We are also on substack. So look for us

there and go to the Duran shop, pick up some merch. There's a link in the description box down below. Take care.