Under the Trump administration, it's a new ballgame.

For years, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has survived not because he is clever, or legitimate, or even particularly competent, but because he had powerful friends in dark places. 

The Venezuelan dictatorship wasn’t propped up by popular mandate. It was erected by a shadow network of Iranian operatives, Hezbollah facilitators, cocaine pipelines, and money-laundering schemes that stretched from Caracas to Beirut to Benin and back again. When Western media talked about “sanctions evasion,” they skipped over the part where Venezuela functioned as a kind of offshore logistics hub for Iran’s most dangerous proxy terrorist organization.

And for nearly a decade, they got away with it.

“The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook,” explained Josh Meyer for POLITICO way back in 2017. “An ambitious U.S. task force targeting Hezbollah’s billion-dollar criminal enterprise ran headlong into the White House’s desire for a nuclear deal with Iran.”

The details were hair-raising at the time:

“In its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States, according to a POLITICO investigation.

The campaign, dubbed Project Cassandra, was launched in 2008 after the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle East-focused military and political organization into an international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering and other criminal activities.

Over the next eight years, agents working out of a top-secret DEA facility in Chantilly, Virginia, used wiretaps, undercover operations and informants to map Hezbollah’s illicit networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign security agencies.

They followed cocaine shipments, some from Latin America to West Africa and on to Europe and the Middle East, and others through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States. They tracked the river of dirty cash as it was laundered by, among other tactics, buying American used cars and shipping them to Africa. And with the help of some key cooperating witnesses, the agents traced the conspiracy, they believed, to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.” — Josh Meyer. POLITICO. 2017.

Project Cassandra uncovered that Hezbollah had become a global drug-trafficking and money-laundering empire, using cocaine, used-car front companies, and international banking networks to generate billions for its terror operations and Iran’s agenda. 

But as U.S. agents closed in on the network, the Obama administration repeatedly blocked prosecutions, arrests, and sanctions — not because the evidence was weak, but because officials feared jeopardizing the Iran nuclear deal and broader diplomatic engagement with Tehran. 

This effectively shut down Project Cassandra, allowed major Hezbollah criminals to walk free, and enabled the organization to expand its operations throughout Latin America, Africa, Europe, and even the U.S.

Unsurprisingly, those criminal organizations and affiliations have thrived in the years since.

“The Maduro-Hezbollah Nexus: How Iran-backed Networks Prop up the Venezuelan Regime,” reported Joseph M. Humire for the Atlantic Council on October 7, 2020. “Too often, Hezbollah in Venezuela is characterized as only a potential terrorist threat. In reality, the Lebanese terrorist group has helped to turn Venezuela into a hub for the convergence of transnational organized crime and international terrorism.”

“Hezbollah’s crime-terror network in Venezuela has facilitated Iran’s cooperation with the Maduro regime,” Humire explained. “The United States, allies, and international institutions must ramp up regional counterterrorism collaboration, crack down on illicit financial networks, and build stronger ties with Lebanese and other Arab communities in Latin America.”

Under the Obama Administration, a cozy relationship with Iran was enough to buy time, leniency, and room for diplomatic maneuvering for Maduro’s regime. Fast forward to 2025, and a close, personal relationship with Iran — to say nothing of Hezbollah — is not the security blanket it once was.

When the Trump administration took office, the fog began to lift.

Suddenly the vice president of Venezuela, El Aissami, was designated a global narcotics kingpin — something DEA agents had been pushing for nearly a decade. Kassim Tajideen, one of Hezbollah’s top financiers, was arrested in Morocco and extradited to the United States. The administration began openly linking the Maduro regime to Hezbollah’s criminal structure, something Washington had tiptoed around for years.

And for the first time, Maduro couldn’t count on Iran’s diplomatic shield.

The Trump administration wasn’t negotiating a nuclear deal with Tehran. They weren’t courting “moderates” inside Hezbollah. And they certainly weren’t worried about offending the Quds Force. That shift in posture changed everything. It signaled that the era of strategic indulgence was over — not just in the Middle East, but in Latin America, where Hezbollah’s tentacles have been entrenched for decades.

Maduro suddenly found himself exposed. No fog. No cover. No indulgent superpower eager to avoid “rocking the boat.”

President Donald Trump, unlike his predecessors, seems to have gotten the message: There is no daylight left between Iran-backed terrorist networks in the Middle East and the Maduro regime — and there hasn’t been for a long time.

If Donald Trump’s cabinet officials are ever called before Congress to give justification for narco-boat strikes, they will be able to do so — using news stories by major media outlets as evidence. The connection between terrorist organizations and narco-traffickers was well-established until the moment Trump turned his attention to this matter. 

Suddenly, mainstream media outlets have forgotten all the critical reporting they did linking Middle Eastern terror networks with South and Central American drug cartels.

Trump obviously doesn’t care to ignore the reality of the narco-jihad criminal connection. He cares even less about preserving the U.S. nuclear deal with Iran.

Maduro, for his part, seems to be reading the writing on the wall, even if U.S. news media outlets are stubbornly refusing to do so.

“Maduro asked for $200m in deal with Trump to flee,” Rob Crilly revealed for the Telegraph on December 3. “Venezuela’s president asked to keep $200m of his private wealth, amnesty for his officials and safe harbour in a friendly country as part of a deal with Donald Trump to step down and flee, sources said.”

“Those familiar with a phone call between the two leaders told The Telegraph that the plan fell apart owing to Nicolas Maduro’s demands for a blanket amnesty for as many as 100 top officials,” Crilly reported. “During the 15-minute call, the two leaders also disagreed on how to set up a transitional government and on the location Mr Maduro would flee to from Venezuela.”

Does that mean Venezuela’s criminal empire is over? Not yet. Corruption on that scale doesn’t dissolve overnight. Hezbollah’s networks remain active. Iran still needs a Western Hemisphere foothold. And Maduro still clings to power through repression and foreign patronage.

But the strategic assumption that protected him for years — that U.S. policy toward Iran would also shield its proxies — has vanished.

Under the Trump administration, the Western Hemisphere is no longer safe territory for Tehran’s favorite proxy. And Nicolás Maduro, once confident in his immunity, now finds himself standing in the open — with far fewer places left to hide.

(Contributing writer, Brooke Bell)