How could Trump’s move against Venezuela impact China, Russia, Iran and Cuba? Clutch Fire

The United States’ biggest strategic adversaries quickly condemned President Trump’s decision to order U.S. strikes on Venezuela and the raid to capture now-former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. China, Russia and Iran all called it a violation of Venezuela’s sovereignty and international law. Cuba, just south of the U.S. and a close ally of Caracas, also condemned the attack as President Trump predicted his decisions could lead to the collapse of the government in Havana.

As all of those countries had maintained close economic and political ties with the Maduro regime, the dramatic, unilateral U.S. action is likely to have some impact on them, and while that impact may not be tremendous financially in all cases, the message sent by Mr. Trump could be just as important.

“What I think is clear is that we’re entering a new phase of great power competition,” Ryan C. Berg, the director of the Americas Program and head of the Future of Venezuela Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told CBS News. “Some of the rules, some of the unthinkables, some of the things that we wouldn’t have previously imagined being part of the operation are now on the table as options.”

A test of China’s foothold in the Americas as it threatens Taiwan

China, which buys most of Venezuela’s oil, said it was “deeply shocked” by the weekend strikes and removal of Maduro, and the foreign ministry in Beijing said the U.S. had “clearly violated international law” with its actions.

“We have never believed that any country can act as the world’s police, nor do we accept that any nation can claim to be the world’s judge,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Sunday, citing “sudden developments in Venezuela” without explicitly mentioning the U.S.

“The sovereignty and security of all countries should be fully protected under international law,” he said, speaking for the first time since Maduro’s capture by U.S. special forces.

China’s official foreign policy is broadly based on a position of neutrality when it comes to foreign conflicts, and despite Beijing’s continuing economic support for Venezuela and unwavering political ties amid the standoff between Caracas and Washington, some analysts say China is unlikely to intervene directly.

“There isn’t much in the way of material support that China can offer Venezuela at this time, but rhetorically, Beijing will be very important when it leads the effort at the U.N. and with other developing countries to rally opinion against the U.S.,” Eric Olander, co-founder of the China-Global South Project, told the Reuters news agency. “What we’ve seen in the cases of Zimbabwe and Iran, both sanctioned by the West, is that China demonstrates its commitment to these relationships through trade and investment, even under difficult circumstances.”

But that economic bond was likely far more vital to the geopolitically isolated Maduro regime than it was to China.

China’s purchases have amounted to a whopping 80% of Venezuela’s total, relatively paltry petroleum exports, which Reuters said amounted to less than a million barrels per day during 2025 (compared to about 3 million barrels per day 25 years ago). According to Reuters, Venezuelan exports amounted to only about 4% of the oil China has purchased in recent years.

But Berg said even if President Trump does get U.S. oil firms to move in and start rebuilding Venezuela’s decrepit infrastructure to boost production, there are still financial implications for Beijing.

“The big question that remains unknown at this point is whether all of that production, and especially any increase in production in Venezuela that might occur, is going to come to the United States, or whether it will be sold on international markets,” Berg told CBS News. “Remember, Venezuela was sending about 80% of its oil to China. Much of that was to service debt. If China all of a sudden doesn’t get that 80% of Venezuela’s exports, it is not only losing energy security, but also in a situation where Venezuela is now no longer repaying its debts.”

“There’s a huge risk here for China that some of its energy security is in fact redirected away from China and toward the United States or toward other markets because of this play in Venezuela,” Berg said. “China has a way to make up for what Venezuela represented, but it is not going to be easy, especially as the United States is simultaneously squeezing Iran, one of its other top sources of oil.”

On the non-economic front, there’s also concern that Chinese President Xi Jinping could use Trump’s move as justification to launch his own unilateral military action, with an invasion of Taiwan, the U.S.-backed democratic island just off mainland China’s coast. 

Taiwan punches well above its weight economically thanks to close ties with the West and as the world’s most important producer of advanced semiconductors for artificial intelligence and weapons.

Since coming to power in 2012, Xi has reiterated his policy of unifying China with Taiwan, and he has never ruled out the use of force to do so.

Russia condemns “destabilizing” action, 4 years into its invasion of Ukraine 

In Moscow, President Vladimir Putin had still issued no public comment on the American attack on Venezuela by Tuesday, but former President Dmitry Medvedev, who often telegraphs the Kremlin’s talking points, said Washington’s actions were both “illegal” and “destabilizing.” 

Medvedev also said, however, that the moves ordered by Mr. Trump were in defense of U.S. national interests, given Venezuela’s vast proven oil reserves.

“It must be acknowledged that, despite the obvious unlawfulness of Trump’s behavior, one cannot deny a certain consistency in his actions,” Medvedev said, according to Russia’s state-run TASS news agency. “He and his team defend their country’s national interests quite harshly.”

Berg said the U.S. operation in Venezuela supports a philosophy held by Russia’s government, which launched the ongoing war in Ukraine with its full-scale invasion of the resource-rich eastern part of the neighboring country nearly four years ago.

“The Russians have for a long time thought of themselves as a great power, and in their opinion, great powers get exclusive spheres of influence to behave how they wish. I think it guides much of their behavior in Eurasia, and certainly in Ukraine. And I think they think the same way about the United States,” Berg said.

Berg said Russia uses its relationships in what it perceives as the spheres of influence of other great powers to show its strength.

“Every time they are ready to pursue aggression in the European theater, it’s almost like clockwork, they have a trip of a significant political official to Latin America and the Caribbean,” Berg said.

Russia did this ahead of its invasion of Georgia in 2008, for instance, when then-President Dmitry Medvedev visited Venezuela and Russia carried out joint naval exercises with Venezuelan forces. It was the first major Russian fleet deployment to the region since the end of the Cold War. 

As Russian forces seized control of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, meanwhile, Putin visited Brazil and met with Maduro and other Latin American leaders. Then, in a visit that ended less than a week before Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov visited Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba.

These were all “significant diplomatic visits to Latin America that were meant to show visibility to the United States, and they presaged aggression in the European theater,” Berg said.

Iran grappling with protests under a threat from Trump

Iranian government forces have been trying to quell protests against the country’s rulers for 10 days — the most significant unrest to sweep the nation since 2022. So far, at least 29 protesters have been killed amid clashes with security personnel, the U.S.-based Human Rights News Agency group said Monday.

Mr. Trump said last week that if Iran, “violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue,” warning that his administration was “locked and loaded and ready to go.”

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed that Iran would “not yield to the enemy,” and reiterated a common claim that the U.S. and Israel were behind the anti-government unrest.

But for some Iranians, desperate to see the end of more than four decades of rule by hardline Islamic clerics, the U.S. action against Venezuela has fueled hope that Mr. Trump might wield similar pressure tactics against their own authoritarian leadership.

“I think many Iranian people will be inspired by that (message), have been inspired by that,” Maziar Bahari, editor of the Iranian news site IranWire, told CBS News on Saturday. “The message has made the Iranian regime more careful about its actions and using violence against people.”

“I don’t think (the protests) are going to lead to the toppling of the regime, because there is no alternative in sight,” Bahari said. “But there will be some change in the actions of the regime, change in the decisions of the regime, especially after President Trump’s message.”

The protests across Iran were echoed in London over the weekend, where one demonstrator who said she would like to see the country’s former Western-backed monarchy restored told CBS News she hoped Mr. Trump’s action in Venezuela would send a signal to Tehran.

“What’s happening in Venezuela is a kind of warning for the Islamic Republic. That’s the message from America or Israel: ‘That will happen to you, Khamenei.’ That’s the message,” said the protester, who gave only her first name, Ghazal.

When asked if she believed the people braving Iran’s security forces to protest might also be looking at Venezuela and hoping for similar action in their own nation, Ghazal reiterated her optimism.

“Definitely something will change, and the Islamic Republic will fall down very soon,” she said.

Trump says “Cuba looks like it is ready to fall”

A day after the U.S. operation in Venezuela, Mr. Trump predicted to journalists on Air Force One that Cuba’s 67-year-old communist government could soon collapse as a result of the operation.

“Cuba looks like it is ready to fall,” Mr. Trump said Sunday. “I don’t know if they’re going to hold out, but Cuba now has no income. They got all their income from Venezuela, from the Venezuelan oil.”

“What President Trump was referring to is actually internal regime collapse,” Berg said, stressing that Cuba is “going through one of the worst moments that it’s had since the 1990s,” when the Soviet Union dissolved, taking its support for the Caribbean island nation with it.

“I imagine that one of the demands of the new government in Venezuela would be to cut off the shipments of barrels of oil to Cuba, some of which is used to satisfy the domestic demand within Cuba, but also a lot of it sent onwards and sold to other markets for profit,” Berg told CBS News. “If that support dries up, Cuba will be in an even tougher position.”

Maduro was an important economic and political partner to Cuba, and the government in Havana said 32 Cuban nationals were killed in the U.S. operation in Venezuela — security forces who were there serving at Venezuela’s request.

“For that sister nation and for her people, we are ready to give, as for Cuba, from our own blood,” the Cuban government said in a statement Saturday, condemning the U.S. operation. Cuba’s government called on the international community to condemn the U.S. actions and impose consequences.

“All of the nations in the region should be on alert, because the threat hangs over all of them,” the statement said.

But even if the current government in Cuba does collapse, Berg doesn’t foresee a pro-American regime taking its place.

“When it comes to the Cuban regime, we have decades and decades of anti-Americanism — so-called anti-imperialism,” he said, calling a “night-to-day flip to become pro-American and pursue policies that somehow give them autonomy from U.S. pressure” highly unlikely.