Forward base, uranium reserves: Ex-US NSA details Russia-China-Iran power play in Venezuela

Former US National Security Adviser John Bolton has said Venezuela under Nicolas Maduro had effectively become a forward operating base for rival powers, including Russia, China, Iran, and Cuba, arguing that their activities - from oil, to Hezbollah coordination, to uranium reserves - posed a direct national security threat to the United States.

Bolton said the decision by US President Donald Trump to finally move against Maduro was long overdue, but warned that removing Maduro was only the first step and that the regime itself appeared to remain intact.

"I wish we had done this back in 2019, but better late than never," Bolton said in an interview with MS Now. "It's exactly the right thing to do for a number of reasons relating directly to American national security interests to remove Maduro."

Bolton, who served as US NSA from 2018 to 2019, cautioned that Maduro's removal alone does not dismantle the power structure in Caracas. "The fact is, removing Maduro is not removing the regime. All the evidence we have to date, and it is limited, is that the regime is continuing to function," he added.

He said the central danger lay in the continued presence and interests of foreign powers determined to keep the regime alive. "One key factor here is that there are a number of foreign powers - Russia, Cuba, China, and Iran - that very much want that regime to stay," Bolton said. "I mean, that is the national security threat."

Bolton said Russia, in particular, viewed Venezuela as strategically more valuable than Cuba. "There's been a heavy Cuban and Russian presence there," he said. "The Russians see Venezuela as a kind of forward operating base in the western hemisphere, that's much better for them than Cuba. Because it's not 90 miles away, it's across the Caribbean."

He said Cuba's interests were equally existential. "Obviously, the Cubans have seen the Maduro regime as critical to keeping their regime in power through the transfer of subsidised oil shipments and other kinds of cooperation," Bolton said. "So the Cubans very much feel that if Maduro's regime falls, the post-Castro regime in Cuba might fall too, which would be an excellent idea. Their fears are correct."

The former NSA said China's stake in Venezuela centred on energy and reconstruction capacity. "The Chinese who seek access to petroleum anywhere in the world have the capacity to rebuild the deteriorated oil infrastructure in Venezuela and make it again a much more effective oil producer that the Chinese would take full benefit of," he said.

Iran's footprint, he said, went far beyond diplomacy. "And the Iranians, for a long time, their embassy in Caracas has been their largest embassy in the world," Bolton said. "They use it to coordinate Hezbollah activities in the Western Hemisphere, to launder money, that they've obtained through their oil sales in violation of our sanctions, and also just to keep an eye on the very, very extensive Venezuelan reserves of uranium."

Asked what Venezuela itself was doing to endanger US national security, Bolton said the Chavez–Maduro system had enabled all of this activity. "Well, the Chavez-Maduro regime, really has allowed all this to happen," he said. "And as a base of operations just for Hezbollah, alone in the Western Hemisphere, that endangers regional stability that obviously affects us."