Washington's announcement last week - in which it took control of 55% of a new project holding more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan crude oil, under field concessions that US officials say could extend for a century, as part of a broader energy agreement - seemed, at first glance, to be regional news. A post-Maduro resource deal in America's backyard.
But Venezuela is not the most prominent event, but rather the model. It calmly answers a question that has been looming over policy toward Iran for months: What does this administration consider a true victory?
The answer begins with a simple observation: Washington is waging two campaigns against its oil-producing rivals, and they increasingly resemble versions of the same strategy. In Venezuela, the United States used force - a military operation, a captive, and a provisional government willing to give up access to the oil fields for an entire century within 7 months. In Iran, this kind of resolution was never possible. After 6 months of open conflict, Tehran absorbed the pressure and did not collapse.
So, Washington resorted to its remaining tool: economic strangulation. In its tone and ambition, Treasury Secretary Scott Besent's Operation Economic Pariah mirrors Venezuela's strategy, promising to cut off "every economic lifeline" that supports Tehran, while putting China, the largest buyer of Iranian oil, in the crosshairs.
This detail is the real link between them. The two operations share a secondary goal that has nothing to do with ideology, but rather related to market power, as China is cut off from discounted crude oil, which is linked to sanctions. The Venezuelan joint venture displaces China from the top customer of the state oil company. The sanctions campaign against Iran targets Beijing's position as Tehran's largest trading partner.
This policy, more than any comprehensive theory of the Trump Doctrine*, explains his current moves. This hypothesis can be tested: Watch whether the deadlines for secondary sanctions imposed on Chinese buyers and shippers will actually be implemented, or will be quietly eased once Beijing hints at a real reaction.
The most telling question is what Venezuela reveals about the terms Washington will seek if Iran is brought back to the negotiating table. Sanctions are usually marketed as pressure to achieve limited results: ending the war and reducing the nuclear program. But Venezuela shows that when this administration has real influence over an oil-producing country, it does not just make political concessions, but rather turns this influence into control.
If Iran returns to negotiations economically drained, the model before Washington will not be the 2015 nuclear agreement's framework of sanctions relief in exchange for inspections. Rather, it would be closer to Caracas: American capital and offtake rights integrated directly into Iran's energy infrastructure, portrayed as an investment in reconstruction rather than spoils of war, and marketed domestically as costing American taxpayers nothing.
This vision deserves to be questioned, as Iran is not Venezuela. There is no captive leader, and no Delcy Rodriguez-style transitional government willing to sign century-long concessions. Any transfer of shares would require either a comprehensive settlement far beyond anything currently on the table or a complete collapse of the system, neither of which are close to today's baseline scenario.
In fact, history also contradicts this idea. Sanctioned countries facing real pressures - such as Iran under the 2015 agreement, Iraq in the 1990s, and Russia since 2022 - have suffered economic contraction, inflation and a decline in the value of exports before giving up their core assets. There is no real precedent for an “equity in exchange for relief” agreement in the absence of an obedient subordinate government, which Washington has in Caracas but does not have in Tehran.
Iran's oil sector is also much less deteriorated than its Venezuelan counterpart, and Tehran has spent two decades building alternatives to reduce its dependence on Washington's goodwill. Any agreement similar to the Venezuela agreement will collide with a deeper obstacle: the legacy of the 1951 nationalization under Mohammad Mossadegh, which made sovereignty over resources politically sacred to all Iranian factions, an obstacle that the Venezuelan constitutional text does not address.
Indeed, Venezuela's precedent itself may not hold. Its constitution grants the state primary ownership of hydrocarbon resources, and a century-old concession signed by an unelected government is precisely the kind of claim that a future elected government could revoke. Also, a model that may not last in Caracas is considered a fragile model that can be exported to Tehran.
These differences are the reason why an agreement similar to the Venezuela agreement is unlikely to occur in Iran any time soon. But it does not negate the comparison, but rather defines it. The real essence of this argument is not that Washington will repeat the Caracas experience in Tehran, but rather that the Venezuela agreement has given this administration a practical precedent for converting influence into control of resources when political circumstances allow it - tested once, and successfully sold at home - and this precedent will affect how negotiators define the desired outcome the next time Washington holds trump cards against an oil state, including Iran.
The question worth pursuing is not whether Tehran will sign a century-long concession next month, but rather whether the language of “reconstruction investment” and “sanctions relief partnership” will appear in any future negotiating path with Iran. If that happens, Venezuela will be the reason we already know what this language means.
