January 6, 2026

If there was ever one iota of doubt that Donald Trump is all about regime change against any government that he opposes, the unlawful, illegal kidnapping of Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro and his spouse, Cilia Adela Flores, on Jan. 3 should have erased those doubts forever. It doesn’t matter whether a country is part of Latin America like Venezuela or exists on the other side of the world in West Asia. Any government that refuses to be bullied into surrendering its sovereignty can become a target of Trump’s modern day Monroe Doctrine.

Just days before the U.S. bombing of Venezuela, the White House was blatantly encouraging the anti-government protests happening in Iran, a country also rich with oil reserves. Trump stated that the U.S. would come to the defense of “peaceful” protesters in Iran. The Iranian government has acknowledged the demands of the protests while sending a strong warning that the U.S. has no right, under international law, to intervene into the internal affairs of its country.

The truth is that the U.S. has attempted to subvert the Iranian economy with sanctions, which Washington put in place since the 1979 Iranian revolution under the false pretext that Iran sponsored “state terrorism.” In reality, the Iranian people had deposed the hated U.S.-backed puppet Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi during their revolution.

The organization SanctionsKill describes sanctions as “a weapon of economic war, resulting in chronic shortages of basic necessities, economic dislocation, chaotic hyperinflation, artificial famines, disease and poverty. In every country, the poorest and the weakest — infants, children, the chronically ill and the elderly — suffer the worst impact of sanctions. U.S.-imposed sanctions violate international law and are a tool of regime change.” (sanctionskill.org)

Since Trump has reoccupied the White House for over a year, not only have these sanctions been kept in place but they have been maximized, especially in the areas of oil production, exports, private sector investment and sales on the world capitalist market. Trump seeks to bring down the current Iranian government on the economic front with high inflation, targeting its nuclear energy program and punishing Iran for its unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian Resistance.

What the Trump regime has done to Venezuela and is attempting to do to Iran should be a wake-up call to the rest of the world, especially the Global South. Any country whose government seeks any measure of independent economic development or sovereignty, especially to control its resources, could find its people caught in the crosshairs of a desperate, dying imperialist system, where violence or the threat of it is its only recourse. Just ask the people of Syria, Libya, Iraq, etc., who have experienced violent regime change by U.S. and Western imperialism.

Only the people in Venezuela, Iran and other developing countries have the right to determine their destinies and to select their leaders themselves, without any kind of coercion or interference by Trump, the CIA and the Pentagon. And it is the task of the workers and oppressed based in the Global North to show anti-imperialist solidarity with our class siblings in the struggle to get the imperialists off their backs.