When the Washington Times were considering an investigative piece I wrote from Venezuela in 2002 on the leftist power grab by president Hugo Chavez they were hesitant at first. There was going to be a coup and Chavez would soon be history, one of the editors thought, not sure if the story was worth column space until tanks rolled up to the presidential palace. Venezuela’s leftist regime now stands as a regional power broker; swaying other governments, dictating terms to oil companies and intimidating neighbors, in alliance with Iran and Russia which have supplied it with billions of dollars worth of weaponry, including S-300 missiles and Sukhoi jet fighters.

This week the regime is bill boarding a prisoner swap arranged with the Biden administration as part of negotiations to ease economic sanctions on its oil trade imposed by president Trump. Two American ex green berets caught in a half baked coup attempt bearing hallmarks of a false flag operation some years ago, are being exchanged for a drug trafficker connected to top members of the regime captured in an international manhunt by U.S. federal agents. (READ MORE from Martin Arostegui: Russia Mounts Its Comeback)

It’s difficult for most Americans to conceive that a country with astronomic inflation, massive exodus of refugees, a paralyzed oil industry, and a government until recently besieged by street protests, could stay in power let alone rise as a global player. But reality has overtaken assumptions and the worry now is that Chavez’s heir, Nicolas Maduro, may annex neighboring Surinam’s oil rich western border region of Esequibo and fatten his already dominant share of South America’s energy reserves.

 Washington’s complacency about Venezuela could be partly attributed to an institutional reluctance to accept that Cuba’s bankrupt communist tyranny could continue acting subversively following the fall of the Soviet Union. But Fidel Castro turned out to be the mentor of Chavez who brought in thousands of Cuban advisors to run Venezuela’s security services and enforce his political control through social programs designed in Havana.

Venezuela has also become “Iran’s base of operations in Latin America,” says Dr. Evan Ellis, Latin America specialist at the U.S. Army War College. IRGC Quds Force officers are stationed there according to Pentagon reports. An Argentine ex intelligence officer, who asked to remain anonymous, says that the Iranians are running clandestine operations from Caracas to support Hezbollah cells being formed among Muslim communities throughout the hemisphere, possibly supplying Mohajer strike drones that are now being assembled at the army complex of Maracay outside Caracas.

Washington’s slumber while Venezuela was snatched from under its nose may have also been induced by Cuban moles occupying sensitive positions at the State Department and the Pentagon, such as ambassador Manuel Rocha, charged as a Cuban spy last month by the FBI.

Little is yet known about specific tasks Rocha performed for Cuba while mascarading as a conservative hardline republican. Bolivian international lawyer Christian Barrientos observes that Rocha’s 2000—2002 term as ambassador to Bolivia was marked by “extensive Cuban penetration of key institutions, universities, unions, syndicates and social organizations supporting the radical MAS movement of Evo Morales” which organized violent protests that toppled a pro U.S. government in 2003.

Rocha’s personal attacks on Morales, denouncing his leadership of rural coca growers who supply the base ingredient of cocaine, are widely believed to have helped propel the leftist leader in the polls. He was elected president in 2005, turning Bolivia into Venezuela’s closest ally. “Rocha never seemed to mention Cuba” comments Barrientos “which should have been of more concern than the cocaleros.” (READ MORE: Russia and Iran’s Deadly Terrorist Diplomacy)

Rocha could have also kept U.S. policy makers in the dark about Havana’s intentions when he served as Latin America advisor on the NSC. Declassified state department cables show that no one seemed to know anything about Chavez when he first erupted on the political stage as a putchist colonel in the 1990s. Nor was there knowledge about the “Bolivarian” movement of rebel officers that became the inner core of his government, when he won 1999 elections paraded as a social democrat in the New York Times.

Policy makers would have also listened to the Latin America analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency, Ana Belen Montes, arrested by the FBI as she placed calls to her DGI handlers at the Cuban UN mission on Sept. 11, 2001. She and Rocha were not paid agents, driven solely by ideological loyalty to “the leadership of the revolution” according to recordings made by federal investigators in their sting operation on the ambassador. If Cuba could get such high quality spies for free, Venezuela may be able to get more with money that the regime may soon have flowing in to its coffers.

The Biden administration is allowing Chevron to resume Venezuelan oil shipments to US refineries, opening the way for Maduro to negotiate a similar deals with other oil companies such as Royal Dutch Shell, which he is also pressuring to freeze exploration in Surinam until Venezuela resolves the dispute over Esequibo. “He may be planning a gray zone operation along Surinam’s border region modeled on the Russian strategy in Donbass,” says Dr Ellis.

Venezuela appears to have become something of a template for ongoing leftist takeover attempts in Europe and even closer to home. Spain’s socialist president Pedro Sanchez, who just assumed the rotating presidency of the European Union, has taken a page from Chavez’s playbook by skirting his country’s constitution to cement alliances with extreme leftists and regional separatist groups to marginalize conservative opposition parties which won the largest share of votes in the last elections.

The socialists joined a small party established by ex members of the Basque terrorist ETA, HB Bildu, which has known links to the Venezuelan regime which some of its members served in security roles, to dislodge the conservative mayor of Pamplona, placing the historic Basque city which inspired Hemingway’s classic novel The Sun Also Rises under separatist control.

Sanchez has called for the EU to lift all sanctions on Venezuela and there are signs that Spain’s historically close relations with the U.S. military may be coming into question. Two Spanish army officers have recently been arrested for informing U.S. agencies about communist members of parliament who are supporters of Iran and Hamas. One lawmaker from the party Podemos recently circulated pictures of himself mingling with Palestinian gunmen in Gaza. The U.S. has maintained military bases in Spain for over a half a century which serve as key logistical waypoints for deployments to the Mideast. (READ MORE: Poland’s Liberal-Democracy Has Adopted Martial Law)

Canada’s Justin Trudeau, a declared admirer of Fidel Castro, has been moving his country ever closer to a leftist dictatorship, using climate change and transgender legislation to muzzle the media while relentless political warfare waged by leftist democrats to block Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential bid is starting to resemble Venezuela’s systematic methods of criminalizing opponents. Exiles in the U.S. were quick to draw parallels between the FBI’s shock raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate last year and repression they have experienced. Trump’s subsequent series of arraignments also bear an eerie resemblance to the inquisitorial practices imposed on opposition leaders that I observed when there. The Venezuelan opposition candidate for president in elections scheduled for next year, Maria Corina Machado, has just been “disqualified” for hate speech.

America’s well-tested system of legal checks and balances is proving resilient against bureaucratic abuses and there are hopeful signs that Latin America may be turning around as well. The newly elected president of Argentina, Javier Milei, vowed to “break ties with terrorist and communist states,” singling out Venezuela, in his inaugural speech. He will have a tough job clearing up decades of leftist misrule by Peronistas and his success may depend on whether Washington can get clearheaded about supporting friends in Latin America, instead of aping its enemies.