Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodriguez, will soon visit the United States, a senior U.S. official said, signaling President Donald Trump’s willingness to engage with the oil-rich country’s new leader despite years of hostility. Excluding United Nations gatherings, it would be the first bilateral visit by a sitting Venezuelan president in more than a quarter-century.
The White House official, who was not authorized to discuss details publicly, said no date has been set. Caracas has not confirmed the trip. Rodriguez remains under U.S. sanctions, including an asset freeze, even as she casts the outreach as pragmatic. “We are in a process of dialogue, of working with the United States, without any fear,” she said, pledging to address differences “through diplomacy.”
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The tentative thaw reflects a transactional shift. As a flotilla of U.S. warships remains off Venezuela’s coast, Rodriguez has allowed the U.S. to broker sales of Venezuelan oil, eased paths for foreign investment and overseen the release of dozens of political prisoners. Washington, in turn, has signaled openness to incremental change over sweeping regime overhaul.
At home, Rodriguez has moved to consolidate control, reorganizing the military’s top ranks and appointing 12 senior officers to regional commands. The shake-up underscores the central role of the armed forces in any political transition and the pressure on the interim leader to align security elites behind her agenda.
The domestic risks are acute. Hardliners including Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez remain influential, and analysts say their support is not assured. Cabello, on his weekly state television program, denied reports he had met U.S. officials ahead of Nicolás Maduro’s ouster, calling it “a campaign.” “I haven’t met with anyone,” he said.
Public tensions have flared as well. Protesters in the port city of La Guaira demanded the release of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, underscoring how quickly Venezuelan politics have pivoted since the disputed 2024 elections and the subsequent reshuffling of power.
Trump has so far indicated he is comfortable working with Rodriguez while maintaining leverage over oil, the country’s economic lifeline. Earlier this month, he hosted exiled opposition leader and Nobel peace laureate Maria Corina Machado at the White House. After initially dismissing her ability to command Venezuela’s security services, Trump said he would “love” to have her “involved in some way.”
Washington has said Machado’s party won the 2024 vote that it deems was stolen by Maduro. Yet the administration’s approach has favored incremental engagement over forced change—a calculation some observers say is rooted in avoiding Iraq-style nation-building. “Those kinds of intervention operations—and the deployment of troops for stabilisation—have always ended very badly,” said Benigno Alarcon, a political analyst at Andres Bello Catholic University in Caracas.
That stance has angered democracy activists who insist all political prisoners be freed with amnesty and that fresh elections be held under robust international oversight. They argue any rapprochement that leaves repressive structures intact risks entrenching a softened version of the old order.
The prospective trip would mark a stark departure from the era that followed Hugo Chavez’s rise, when Caracas cultivated ties with U.S. adversaries in China, Cuba, Iran and Russia. Whether Rodriguez can keep the security establishment onside while opening diplomatic and economic doors to Washington remains the central test as both capitals gauge the next steps.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
