Zionism, the “Axis of Unity,” and the Battle for Venezuela
Summary: Venezuela underwent a dramatic geopolitical shift under Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, moving from warm relations with Israel to forging a defiant "axis of unity" with Iran and Palestine, culminating in the 2026 U.S. abduction of Maduro. This event, which the Venezuelan authorities said had “Zionist undertones,” delivered a strategic victory for Israel and a massive financial windfall for pro-Israel figures like billionaire Paul Singer, who profited from the seizure of Venezuela's key foreign oil asset, CITGO.
The relationship between Venezuela and Zionism represents one of the 21st century's most dramatic geopolitical realignments. For decades, the Latin American country maintained pragmatic, even warm, relations with Israel, engaging in trade and purchasing security technology. This changed decisively with the rise of Hugo Chávez and his Bolivarian Revolution. A staunch anti-imperialist, Chávez reframed Venezuela’s foreign policy as a direct challenge to American hegemony. The 2008-2009 Gaza War became the catalyst for a complete rupture. In January 2009, Chávez expelled the Israeli ambassador, severed all diplomatic ties, and denounced Israel's genocide. This was not an isolated gesture but the opening move in a new strategic alignment. That same year, Venezuela became the first Latin American nation to recognise the State of Palestine on the 1967 borders, established a Palestinian embassy in Caracas, and, by 2015, abolished visas for Palestinian passport holders. The message was clear: Venezuela had chosen its side in the Middle East's central conflict.
The other pillar of this new posture was a deepening alliance with Iran, Israel's primary regional adversary. Beginning in the mid-2000s, Presidents Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad proclaimed an “axis of unity,” a South-South brotherhood forged in the shared fires of resistance to imperialist sanctions and aggression. In 2005 Venezuela was the only country to vote against the resolution by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors condemning Iran's nuclear program. By 2009 about 270 cooperation agreements had been established across agriculture, industry, technology, and energy. Economic cooperation deepened significantly, particularly through oil-for-gold swaps and shared “resistance economy” strategies designed to bypass international sanctions. By 2020, Iran was sending tankers with condensate and gasoline to address Venezuela’s fuel shortages, while Venezuela supplied crude oil to Iran. This mutual support system represented a direct challenge to U.S. hegemony in the region.
Military cooperation also expanded dramatically. In 2012, Venezuela was discovered operating Iranian-made Mohajer-2 surveillance drones, marking the beginning of a long-term technological alliance. By 2022, Maduro publicly displayed armed Iranian combat drones built in Venezuela, making it Latin America's first country to field indigenous armed UAVs. This military partnership, which included the establishment of drone production facilities with Iranian technical assistance, alarmed U.S. officials who viewed it as an expanding Iranian military footprint in the Western Hemisphere.
By the time Nicolás Maduro succeeded Chávez, this anti-Zionist, pro-Palestinian, pro-Iranian stance had become a cornerstone of his regime's identity. He regularly framed political struggles in apocalyptic, religious terms. In late 2025, as U.S. military pressure intensified, Maduro accused “far-right Zionists” of trying to deliver Venezuela to “devils,” positioning his Christian supporters as “the people of David” fighting “imperialist demons.” He consistently offered Venezuela as a vocal advocate for Palestine, calling its cause “the most sacred cause of humanity” and, in 2025, offering to send Venezuelan builders and doctors to aid Gaza. This foreign policy created a stark domestic divide. The U.S.-backed opposition, led by figures like María Corina Machado, positioned itself as the direct ideological opposite. Machado, who signed a cooperation pact with Israel's Likud party in 2020, pledged to restore diplomatic relations with Israel, move Venezuela’s embassy to Jerusalem, and declared that “Israel’s struggle is our struggle.” Venezuela was thus cleaved into two irreconcilable camps: a government aligned with the Iran-led “Axis of Resistance” and an opposition aligned with the U.S.-Israel “Axis of Genocide”.
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The Venezuelan government is one of very few that always stood up against Zionism
The simmering conflict boiled over on 3 January. Following months of escalating U.S. sanctions, drone strikes on Venezuelan vessels, and the designation of Maduro’s government as a terrorist entity, in an act of international banditry U.S. special forces raided Caracas, kidnapped President Maduro and his wife, and jailed them in New York on narco-terrorism charges. The reaction from Caracas was immediate and framed within its longstanding worldview. Vice President Delcy Rodriguez denounced the operation as having “Zionist undertones,” a direct accusation of Israeli involvement. This was not mere propaganda but a reflection of the preceding weeks’ rhetoric. Just days before the raid, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had publicly claimed Iran was “in cahoots” with Maduro and could send arms to Venezuela, implicitly justifying aggressive action. The U.S. official tasked with managing the aftermath, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, is a longtime hawk on Venezuela and a noted recipient of pro-Israel lobby donations, cementing the perception in Caracas of a coordinated effort. One of his three key demands for Venezuela's future is that it sever all ties with Iran and Hezbollah.
The kidnapping of Maduro delivered clear strategic benefits to Israel and its allies. First, it neutralised a leading, vocal state sponsor of the Palestinian cause and a hub for Iranian influence in Latin America. Second, it created the potential for a radically pro-Israel government to come to power in Caracas, which would represent a monumental strategic victory. Finally, and most concretely, it solidified a massive financial windfall for individuals closely tied to pro-Israel causes.
At the centre of this financial dimension is the leading genocide bankroller and Zionist billionaire Paul Singer. A so-called “vulture capitalist,” Singer's firm, Elliott Management, specialises in buying distressed debt at a discount and litigating for full repayment. He is also a monumental force in U.S. politics, having donated tens of millions to pro-Israel electoral campaigns and being ranked among the top donors to AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. In late 2025, an affiliate of Elliott won a controversial U.S. court-mandated auction to seize Venezuela’s crown jewel foreign asset, the CITGO oil refining network, for $7.3 billion - a sum analysts believed was billions below its true market value. The court-appointed “Special Master” who selected Elliott's bid was Robert Pincus, a self-described “proud Zionist” who serves on AIPAC's national board. For the Maduro government, this was a brazen theft of national property. For critics, the sequence was telling: a U.S. court, overseen by a Zionist, awarded a critical Venezuelan state asset to another Zionist billionaire's fund, and weeks later, the U.S. military removed the government that objected to the sale. As U.S. Congressman Thomas Massie noted, Singer stood to make “billions of dollars on his distressed CITGO investment, now that this administration has taken over Venezuela.”
Trump’s attack on Venezuela offers several lessons. Firstly, Zionism and imperialism are inseparable. They are two heads of the same hydra. The political project, the financial looting, and the military aggression are coordinated and Caracas is just the latest front in a broader war waged by the U.S. and Israel against any state or group that resists their dominance, whether in Gaza, Damascus or Tehran.
Secondly, the “opposition” is a tool of foreign masters. The puppet Machado and her ilk represent the interests of imperialism and the Zionist project, not the Venezuelan people. Their promised “democracy” is a mask for colonial subjugation, just like the Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces operating in the West Bank or Iran's Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi who, backed by a sophisticated Israeli-funded operation, is at the forefront of ongoing western efforts to replace the current government of Iran.
Thirdly, finance-capital is a weapon of war. The cases of Singer and Pincus demonstrate that modern imperialism operates not only with guns but with banks, courts, and hedge funds. The theft of CITGO is an act of economic warfare as critical as any drone strike. Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, described exactly how corporate entities profit from illegal occupation, apartheid and genocide in her report ‘From economy of occupation to economy of genocide’.
Finally, the imperialists are powerful, yes. They have their high-tech weapons, their billions, their control of the global narrative and they have kidnapped a president. But they cannot kidnap a revolution. The Palestinian diaspora in Venezuela, standing with Maduro, understands this truth deeply: the struggle is one. The “axis of unity” will endure and the dawn of a truly multipolar world, free from imperialist and Zionist domination, is inevitable.
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