Four days before then-Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro was captured by US forces on January 3, the United States Treasury announced sanctions against 10 Iranian and Venezuelan individuals and entities involved in the two countries’ weapons trade.
Among them was Venezuela’s state-owned Empresa Aeronautica Nacional SA, or EANSA. According to the US Treasury Department, the company maintained and oversaw the assembly in Venezuela of Mohajer-series unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) produced by Iran’s Qods Aviation Industries and had directly negotiated the purchase of millions of dollars’ worth of Mohajer-6 combat drones.
The relationship between the two companies dates back to 2006. The Iranian Mohajer-2 was produced in Venezuela as the Arpia and later developed into the armed ANSU-100, which the Treasury said was capable of launching Iranian-designed Qaem guided air-to-ground bombs. EANSA’s chairman had coordinated with members of both the Iranian and Venezuelan armed forces on UAV production inside Venezuela.
“The Treasury is holding Iran and Venezuela accountable for their aggressive and reckless proliferation of deadly weapons around the world,” Treasury Under Secretary John Hurley said when announcing the sanctions.
Diplomatic ties strengthened by Israeli humanitarian aid following devastating earthquakes
Now, a matter of months later, Venezuela’s relationship with Iran is back in the spotlight, but for very different reasons – reasons that may have Tehran worried. It was announced this week that Venezuela’s post-Maduro government is establishing an official consular channel with Israel for the first time in 17 years. After two wars with Israel in the past 14 months, Iran may worry its influence in Venezuela will now be tested.
Israel and Venezuela have not restored full diplomatic relations nor announced the reopening of embassies, but after talks between Venezuelan Foreign Minister Felix Plasencia and Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, they agreed to establish a mechanism to provide consular services and to continue technical cooperation that began after Israel sent personnel to assist Venezuela following June’s devastating earthquakes.
“The two countries agreed to allow the continuation of bilateral technical cooperation arising from the emergency and recovery efforts following the double earthquake,” Plasencia said in announcing the agreement, adding that they would establish a mechanism for consular services.
“Both governments recognize the importance of the relationship between the State of Israel and the Jewish community in Venezuela, which constitutes an important historic bridge of friendship between the two countries,” Venezuela’s government said in a statement, which was also issued by Israel’s Foreign Ministry.
It is the identity of Venezuela’s new partner, rather than any specifics within the agreement, that makes it relevant to Iran, and a sign of how far things have come since the turn of the century. Many countries around the world maintain relations with both the Islamic Republic and Israel, but few are so close to Iran and have seen such a diplomatic about-face with regard to the Jewish State.
Venezuela gave Iran a state partner in the Western Hemisphere to pursue anti-American policy
Former president Hugo Chavez condemned Israel during the 2006 Lebanon war in extreme terms, accusing Israel of “going mad and inflicting on the people of Palestine and Lebanon the same thing they have criticized, and with reason: the Holocaust. But this is a new Holocaust.”
In August of that year, Chavez had called for Israeli leaders to face a trial for genocide, stating the Jewish state had “done something similar or, perhaps worse, who knows, than what the Nazis did.”
In 2008, during a diplomatic disagreement with neighboring Colombia over the latter’s intrusion into Ecuador, Chavez said: “the Colombian government has become the Israel of Latin America.” Just one year later, during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, Venezuela expelled Israel’s ambassador and broke diplomatic relations, with Chavez declaring during a TV broadcast, “Damn you, State of Israel.”
In 2010, Chavez accused Israel and the Mossad of plotting against him and denounced Israel as a “terrorist and murderous state.”
While relations with Israel reached new lows under Chavez, Caracas also saw a deepening relationship with Iran. Chavez and former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, both self-styled anti-American revolutionaries, struck up a close rapport after Ahmadinejad took office in 2005, and the two leaders visited each other’s countries three times apiece between 2005 and 2007. On a July 2006 trip to Tehran, Chavez met with former supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and was awarded the Higher Medal of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the country’s highest state honor – a gesture that followed Chávez’s public backing of Iran’s nuclear program at the UN earlier that year. During the same visit, he accused then-president George W. Bush of having a “relationship with the devil.”
By the end of Chavez’s presidency in 2013, Iran and Venezuela had signed hundreds of agreements covering energy, banking, housing, agriculture, cement, and automobile production. The Center for Strategic and International Studies later estimated Iranian investments and loans in Venezuela at between $15 billion and $20 billion by 2012, although many projects either stalled or produced substantially less than their governments had promised.
Public dispute with Iran, Israeli earthquake aid drew Venezuela and Israel closer
However, under Maduro, the relationship took on a different meaning. US sanctions progressively restricted both countries’ access to conventional financial, energy and industrial markets, giving each something the other increasingly needed.
The extent of that dependence was evident by 2020, when the deterioration of Venezuela’s refining industry led to acute gasoline shortages. Iran supplied fuel, refinery components, and technical assistance to the isolated South American nation. The two governments subsequently developed oil swaps under which Iran supplied condensate and crude to Petroleos de Venezuela, SA (PDVSA), Venezuela’s state-owned national oil and gas company.
Venezuela imported around 73,000 barrels per day of Iranian crude and condensate in 2022 and approximately 40,000 barrels per day in 2023, according to company records and shipping data cited by Reuters.
Iran was also working inside Venezuela’s refining infrastructure. Tehran agreed to a roughly €110 million overhaul of the 146,000-barrel-per-day El Palito refinery, while plans were developed for Iranian state refiner NIORDC to work on the much larger Paraguana refining complex.
The relationship was further strengthened in June 2022, when Maduro and then-Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi signed a 20-year cooperation plan covering oil, petrochemicals, defense, agriculture, tourism, and culture, including Iranian repairs to Venezuelan refineries and the export of Iranian technical and engineering services.
“Venezuela has shown exemplary resistance against sanctions and threats from enemies and Imperialists,” Raisi said at the time. “The 20-year cooperation document is testimony to the will of the two countries to develop ties.”
Khamenei was explicit about what Iran believed it had achieved in Latin America.
“The successful experience of the two countries showed that resistance is the only way to deal with these pressures,” he said during Maduro’s visit. “The two countries have such close ties with no other country, and Iran has shown that it takes risks in times of danger and holds its friends’ hands.”
“You came to our aid when the situation in Venezuela was very difficult, and no country was helping us,” Maduro told Iranians in response to Khamenei’s comments.
Given such close relations and the departure of both Maduro and Khamenei from the geopolitical scene, the changes taking place in 2026 cannot be overstated.
The Iranian-Venezuelan alliance also gave Iran an established state partner in the Western Hemisphere willing to cooperate with the Islamic Republic’s defense industry and support its challenge to American policy.
There were the occasional signs that this arrangement was becoming less attractive to Caracas before Maduro’s removal.
In March 2024, Reuters reported that PDVSA had fallen behind on its side of oil-swap agreements, prompting Iran to halt cargoes in May 2023. Projects had stalled, and the two governments had failed to come close to their ambitions for $25 billion in trade and investment.
Less than $10 billion in business remained active, according to the Reuters report. More significantly, when Washington temporarily relaxed sanctions and Venezuela gained greater access to international markets, PDVSA began favoring customers that could pay cash rather than sending cargo to Iran under the swaps.
Iran’s greatest economic value to Venezuela came when Venezuela had few alternatives. If access to US and other Western markets, investment, technology, and customers is restored, Iranian cooperation has to compete with options that sanctions had previously removed.
Maduro’s capture helped to speed up that change.
The US made clear that reducing Iranian influence was among its objectives, and just days after Maduro was removed, American officials were pressing acting President Delcy Rodríguez to distance Venezuela from Iran, Russia, and China. Initial US intelligence assessments reportedly questioned whether Rodríguez, Maduro’s former vice president, would comply, but the developments that followed have moved consistently in that direction.
Caracas began an exploratory process with Washington within days of Maduro’s removal. In March, Venezuela and the US formally agreed to restore diplomatic and consular relations.
Then, in July, came a public dispute with Tehran.
On July 28, Venezuela summoned the Iranian ambassador and presented him with a formal diplomatic protest over what its Foreign Ministry called “contemptuous and inappropriate” remarks concerning Venezuelan institutions and authorities. Reports linked the dispute to Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s assertion, while discussing negotiations with Washington, that Iran was “not Venezuela.”
Venezuela went further than simply complaining about the remark. The Foreign Ministry demanded “the cessation of any allusion or comparison that undermines the dignity, sovereignty, institutional integrity, or good name” of Venezuela.
When set against Khamenei’s description four years earlier of two countries with ties so close that neither possessed an equivalent relationship elsewhere, it is a mighty fall from grace.
Less than two weeks after Venezuela protested against Iran, the establishment of official consular cooperation with Israel was announced.
The move also came just one month after Israel and Israeli aid organizations rushed to Venezuela to help deal with the aftermath of an earthquake which left over 6,300 dead according to latest estimates, and over 70,000 injured. The IDF also traveled to Venezuela to help with the aid efforts.
Rodríguez thanked Israel last month for sending “a highly specialized and professional group” after the twin earthquakes that recently shook the country. The team, she said, was brought in through the efforts of Venezuela’s Jewish community, allowing the Venezuelans “to connect with the Israeli government,” and was helping determine which damaged buildings might still hold survivors and whether they still contain bodies needing to be recovered.
This does not automatically mean that Caracas has decided to end its relationship with Tehran. Venezuela has yet to announce any withdrawal from the 20-year cooperation agreement or termination of Iranian military cooperation. The infrastructure developed during two decades of relations cannot be dismantled through a consular agreement.
The more useful question is what Venezuela still requires from Iran.
In 2022, Maduro could tell Tehran that Iran had helped when “no country was helping us.” In 2026, that is no longer applicable.
Venezuela again has access to diplomatic and economic arenas with the West that were previously unavailable, and its government has demonstrated that it is prepared to publicly rebuke the Iranians. With renewed ties with Israel, it offered Venezuela another friendly option when it appeared no one else would help them. And for the Iranians, that must be a worrying prospect.