The Duran Podcast - U.S. DECAPITATION plan for Venezuela

Episode Date: September 10, 2025

U.S. DECAPITATION plan for Venezuela

All right, Alexander, let's do an update on the situation in Venezuela. We have the U.S. warships and about four and a half thousand military personnel, either in the region or approaching the region. I'm talking Venezuela's region. The United States is moving towards Venezuela. We have the situation with the strike on the boat in the Caribbean. I don't think we've talked about that yet. And I think it would be interesting to hear your thoughts, especially from an international

law perspective, the fact that the United States obliterated, destroyed a boat, which they claim was carrying drugs, drug trafficking boat with 11 people on it. We're talking a speedboat, right, as we're talking about, not a big ship or anything like that. And there's a lot of people, even within the Republican Party, for example, Rand Paul, who are very worried with that development and take issue with what the U.S. military and the Trump White House did by just destroying this boat and killing the 11 people without seizing it or understanding exactly what was going on or what it was going. carrying, or even if it was carrying narcotics. Anyway, so, I mean, that's been an interesting development and a lot of debate around that boat. But the bottom line is that there is a narrative foundation that is being constructed so that

the Trump White House can take action against Venezuela. What kind of action? We discussed it in a previous video. Obviously, the military assets that are being moved towards Venezuela, are not enough for an outright all-in invasion. But something is taking place or something is about to take place with regards to Venezuela. Is it military pressure to try and force some sort of change in leadership? Is this just the beginning of continued military buildup?

What do you think the Trump White House is aiming to do? There was just one more point. There was an interesting article about Rubio in the Associated Press, which talked about how Rubio, his project, his number one international project in his entire career in the Senate, has been about Venezuela and about Latin America in general. This is definitely something that Rubio has been aiming for for over 20, 25 years. years. So your thoughts? Well, absolutely. Now, I get to say this about the attack on the speedboat. I think it was outrageous. I think there's a very, very strong case to say that it was outright

murder on the high seas. Now, you know, quite plausibly, the people on that speedboat were drug smugglers, trafficking drugs, moving drugs, smuggling drugs. I mean, you know, that's entirely plausible. But I don't think that there is conclusive evidence that that was the case. And besides, if there was strong reasons to think that that was the case, and I think the worst strong reasons to think that was the case, well, the United States, what they should have done is that they should have given the people on the speedboat a warning, told them to stop, sent people from the U.S. Navy, which is enormously powerful in the region now, to board the boat, to arrest the people, to search the boat, I mean, all of those kind of things, and to bring criminal prosecutions

against them, you know, for all the crimes that they're alleged to have committed. It said what we had was an attack, a destruction of this boat and the people on it. to me, frankly. I mean, it looks like, as I said, it looks like murder. It looks like a hit. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing that you would expect a country like the United States to be doing. I say that.

I mean, many people will take issue with this. They say it's exactly what the United States does. But I disagree. I don't think this ought to have happened in the way that it did. And it is completely unsurprising that people, many people, Rand Paul, for example, are concerned about it because they should be. But the thing is, it served a purpose, a political purpose, which was that it was another brick in the narrative that has been constructed, that there is a massive problem in drug smuggling from Venezuela, that the people who run Venezuela, the Maduro government, aren't really a government properly speaking at all. They are a drugs cartel.

They've been given a name, apparently. I'm not sure, I don't remember what it is, but they've been given a name, that this is a criminal, an organized crime group that has basically taken control of a country, that it is acting in a way that is hostile to the United States, and is engaging in criminal activity against the United States. So you attack ships, boats. We don't even know who was or what the connection of this boat was to Venezuela itself and who owned it there and who was running it and who was operating it. But anyway, you do that. You attack this boat. You say it's part of the criminal activity of this cartel.

You present it as evidence in effect that this cartel is doing one of the things that it is supposed to be doing. You move more ships into the area. You provoke the Venezuelans into countermeasures. The Venezuelans send up F-16 fighter jets. You say that those fighter jets were buzzing American warships. You give orders to have those fighter jets, those F-16 fighter jets, operated by Venezuela shot down. You move F-35, fifth-generation stealth fighters,

to the area. To me, all of this looks like a gradual build up to some kind of military campaign. I cannot see any other explanation for this. Yes, 4,000 US troops are not enough to occupy an entire country like Venezuela. I mean, that's inconceivable. But maybe the Trump administration believes that if there's an attack on Venezuela, if there's military strikes against Venezuela, If there's air strikes against the government in Venezuela, that will precipitate a crisis. Divis split on the part of the military. The government might collapse. And that would be enough to achieve the outcome that the United States wants.

And they might be right. You see, I don't know enough about the situation in Venezuela. at the time when they came up with the Guaido operation, I thought that this had been carefully prepared and might succeed. And it turned out that it wasn't prepared, well prepared at all, and that Guido had minimal support within Venezuela, and that a critical mass of people in Venezuela, for all the economic problems,

still supported the government of Venezuela, Venezuela against this kind of external pressure that was being mounted against it. And the Guaido affair ended in a total debacle. Perhaps it'll be the same this time, in which case the debacle will be much, much, much bigger. But that seems to be, to me, to be the direction of travel. The United States is trying to engineer regime change in Venezuela. There is no other explanation for what it is doing. Do you think it's going to be something similar to what the United States and Israel did

with Iran in the 12-day war in that the strategy was to try and take out the leadership? I mean, it does seem like Trump wants to avoid boots on the ground, right? For obvious reasons and starting with political reasons. He doesn't want the U.S. to put boots on the ground in Venezuela. Well, at least for now, that's how it appears, given the makeup of the forces that are in the region or approaching the region. So do you believe that the goal may be to, or the strategy may be to not only put pressure on Maduro, but to try and come up with some sort of an operation or start an operation that

will remove the leadership? I mean, is this the world that we're, this is the direction of the world that we're heading towards it, it seems. I mean, you saw it in Iran, you saw it in Yemen. That New York Times article with North Korea in 2019 in Trump's first term where it says that the Navy SEALs wanted to plant a listening device in North Korea so they can listen to what Kim Jong-un was going to say before negotiations. It seems like Trump gets himself caught up in these types of operations. he prefers these types of operations and scheming rather than, say, the George W. Bush approach, which is just, let's just go in or something like that.

I mean, I don't know. What's your take on? No, I think that's exactly what it is. I mean, where this is clearly leading to is air strikes, missile strikes, intended to decapitate the Venezuelan leadership. And the calculation is, if that happens, and happens successfully, Maduro and other people who are key members of the leadership are killed in these missile and air strikes, and one must assume that the United States is conducting an intelligence operation in Venezuela in order to prepare the ground for that.

Then the assumption will is that the entire regime, the entire government of Venezuela, will simply implode, and, you know, that you can then perhaps we'll have gone wide. I believe the Trump people still recognize him as the president of Venezuela or someone else and you can take over and things can go back to the way they were. I think this is exactly the plan. It's not based on boots of the ground. There aren't enough boots on the ground, but there are enough missile and air assets to mount exactly that kind of campaign. And that is exactly where we're heading. And we already see that, you know, they've killed some people on this boat.

and it's conditioning us to prepare. I was going to say the same thing. Now, go ahead. I was going to say the same. That was going to be my follow-up question to you. It feels like people are being conditioned to accept the strikes on targets, civilian targets, speedboats, smuggling drugs, whatever, Maduro, Caracas, whatever. It seems like this is a conditioning exercise.

Yeah, exactly what it was. as I said, it served its purpose and it prepares the ground for what is under, I have no doubt about this, what is going to come. If you wanted to conduct a genuine anti-drug smuggling operation, you wouldn't be deploying, you know, missile destroyers and have 35 fighter jets to the region. It is absurd to think that you would do a thing like that. This is clearly an operation. Obviously, Rubio, as you rightly said, is driving it because he's obsessed with Venezuela. And probably, by the way, if he succeeds in Venezuela, he'll transfer his interests to Cuba, just to say. But anyway, this is clearly what this is.

And as I say, it's going to play out. It may take a couple of days or weeks, but sooner or later, I have no doubt that we are going to get there. We're going to have the airstrikes on Caracas. They will be targeting Maduro himself and probably other key people in Venezuela as well in the military, in the intelligence and security complex. And they're going to be said that these people are drug smugglers and members of cartels and that killing them is justified, just as killing other members of the same cartel

was justified on that boat that was just destroyed in the way that it was. So we are being prepared step by step for that, for that. Now, I hope the Venezuelans, I presume the Venezuelans, understand this and that they're going to take precautions. One of the most incredible things about the decapitation strike that was prepared and was attempted against Iran back in June is that the Iranians did not prepare for it. I mean, they let themselves be caught by surprise.

If the Venezuelans are caught by surprise, then frankly, I mean, they are every bit as incompetent as some people say. I presume not, and I presume that the Russians and the Chinese, and by the way, the Cubans who have a well-organized intelligence apparatus, are advising them that, you know, this time they really do need to take precautions and make sure that, you know, when the strike, when the attack comes, they're ready. But it could happen at any time. Yeah, I mean, the Trump administration, they have three years ahead of them, so they have time to plan this all out and to build the narrative. and put down the foundation of Maduro, the drug smuggler, the drug kingpin, right, the Tony Montana kind of character, which is what they're doing, which is what they're going to do. And, you know, the attack on the speedboat got, to my shock, it got mixed reactions in that there were a lot of people that were horrified by it. But there were a lot of

of people that were very happy with it and very encouraged by what the Trump administration did. Yes. Which to me, I was surprised at that, but there it is. Well, there is an intelligence, an intelligent aspect of this, which people should not underestimate, because of course, drugs, illegal drugs, have been a massive scourge in the United States. It is something that many, many people in the United States have come up against. And they know all about that.

They know about the fact that many of these drugs come from South America, from Colombia, from Mexico. There's lots of Hollywood films. We all know them discussing all of this. So this fits in to a picture that Americans already have about bad things happening. you know, in the South American, Latin American world. And bad things that affect them personally. I mean, many people in America know people, other people,

who have been involved or have been affected or have seen their lives destroyed by drugs. So build this narrative, Maduro, drugs linchpin, cartel, runs a cartel, he's smuggling drugs into the United States. He explains why there's all these problems in your neighborhood. It's a compelling story and one which many people are going to buy. It's the Hollywood narrative.

It's the Hollywood narrative. Exactly. And a lot of people are going to buy into it. And a lot of people are going to buy into it. And a lot of people will say, this is the proper use of the U.S. armed forces, not, you know, going off to Iraq and gave you, gay. Well, the vice president said that. Well, the vice president, exactly.

not going to Iraq or Iran or wherever it is and doing things that are not important, the U.S. is doing something that is really helping Americans in their everyday lives. I mean, I'm not going to unpack this. It is wrong at so many levels. And as I understand it, most of the drugs that go to the United States had actually come through Venezuela. Anyway, but it's not going to be something that most Americans are going to hear. And that's, the Hollywood story is one by contrast that they all know, they're all familiar with, they can buy into.

And it plays into the experience they have in their everyday life. Everyone's already been preconditioned for many, many decades on this year. It's very similar to Russia, isn't it? Everyone's been conditioned and China. Everyone's been conditioned. Russia is the enemy. Russia is this. And China is the same.

So, I mean, these are easy stories and narratives to build on if you're preparing for some sort of a military operation. You have an already pre-prepared foundation that you can work off of. It's a script. Yeah, you have a script. Yeah, thousands of movies. Yeah, exactly. Just the final question. How much of this do you think is connected to spheres of influence and the political article from a couple of days ago, which talked about the United States pulling out focus, resources, attention away from Asia and China and moving it more towards North America and South America. I think it does have a connection in the sense that I do think that at least some people, Elbridge Colby and perhaps Pete Higgs-Seth, have begun to sense that this time period in history when the United States could control what was going on in the Asia Pacific and in Europe

and could be dominant in all sorts of places, could exercise vast, sweeping influence everywhere. That time is passing that America is overextended, that the rival great powers, China and Russia, first and foremost, are now becoming too strong. And that this is the moment, therefore, for the United States to withdraw back to its own. neighborhood to consolidate there, to establish its own secure sphere of influence there. And the American sphere of influence is a very easily defined one. And it was the American sphere of influence, by the way, before the Second World War. It is the Western Hemisphere. The American continent, the North America, South America, Central America. When I say North

America, that extends to places like Canada and Greenland. I think that this does fit into this, but there are also personal factors. I mean, Trump doesn't like Maduro. He doesn't like Hugo Chavez before, you know, the previous leader. He doesn't like any of that, any of that kind of lash in American socialism that he's talked about many times in very, very critical ways. and the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, absolutely hates Venezuela and Maduro. And in his case, it's clearly partly personal. And I think that drives it as well. So, yes, I think there is a measure of grand strategy here.

But there's also other more simple factors. And of course, let's never forget the oil. Venezuela's enormous oil reserves, which is so important to secure America's energy future. But only, they're not that easy to tap. I mean, it's Venezuelan oil is basically tar. So I learned it's very heavy oil. But, I mean, I don't suppose that's any very important long term problem. So all of these things playing together.

So the oil, the personal animus, the grand strategy. It all comes together. You hit Venezuela at this particular time. Yeah, it's all there. Yeah, okay. We will end the video there. The durand.com. We are on Rumble and X and Telegram.

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