Changing the imposed system

By Heshmatollah Rahnama

TEHRAN - The U.S. policy of “regime change” in the world countries is to keep America intact and prevent the collapse of the American Empire. After losing power in the West of Asia, Washington is struggling to regain influence in the Latin American region. 

Regime change is brought by the U.S. when Washington loses influence in states as that is the case in Venezuela. 

With influence on Columbia, Brazil, Argentina, and various right-wing states, the U.S. has endeavored to implement its illegal demands in the region. 

The right-wing nations of South America are grappling with many problems, but their governments try to cover the issues with anti-Venezuelan policy. 

Columbia, particularly in Cúcuta, where humanitarian aid organizations come together, needs the assistance far more than anywhere else. 

A man who is supposedly a “freedom seeker” in the public eye, is no one but Juan Guaidó who received his training in the U.S. regime change system for a few years. In a few months leading up to the unrest in Venezuela, Guaido was indirect contact with the right-wing radicals who believe in street violence. 

In a simple phone call to U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, Guaido declared himself interim president of Venezuela, and soon after the New York Times acknowledges him as “credible rival” for incumbent Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro saying Guaido has a refreshing style and vision for Venezuela’s progress. Bloomberg News, too, praises Guaido for revival of democracy, and the Wall Street Journal calls him the new democratic leader. 

Many countries in Europe, Israel, Canada, and other right-wing Latin American states, known as Lima Group, acknowledged Guaido as the legitimate Venezuelan president.  

Marco Terrugi, an Argentinian sociologist and leading chronicler of Venezuelan politics, says, “Juan Guaidó is a character that has been created for this circumstance.”

Diego Sequera, a Venezuelan journalist and writer agreed, “Guaido is more popular outside the country especially among the Ivy League University (the 8 American influential and private universities) and Washington says he is well-known there and will remain faithful to the project. 

Luis Vincent Leon, a Venezuela’s leading pollster writes, “These radical leaders have no more than 20 percent in opinion polls”. According to León, Guaidó’s party remains isolated because the majority of the population “does not want war. ‘What they want is a solution.”

Guiado, picked by Washington, does not seek freedom and national interest of the Venezuelans and surely wants the collapse of a country that for the past two decades has been a bulwark of resistance to U.S. hegemony. 

Throughout the administrations of U.S. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Chavez survived numerous assassinations and plots. His successor, Nicolas Maduro, has survived three attempts on his life.

On October 5, 2005, with Chavez’s popularity at its peak, five Venezuelan “student leaders” arrived in Belgrade, Serbia to begin training for an insurrection.

The goodwill was offered by the Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies, an ONG center funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

This is one of the U.S. government’s main arm of promoting regime change. The disclosed information at Stratfor r revealed that CANVAS “turned its attention to Venezuela” in 2005 after training opposition movements that led pro-NATO regime change operations across Eastern Europe.

In 2007, Guiado graduated from the Andres Bello Catholic University (UCAB) with a degree in industrial engineering. He then moved to Washington to enroll in the Governance and Political Management Program at George Washington University, under the tutelage of Venezuelan economist Luís Enrique Berrizbeitia (former executive director of the IMF who was ousted by Chavez). 

The Institute for Advanced Studies in Management (IESA) and the University of George Washington (UGW) are two Venezuelan institutions that are known as the Venezuelan opposition base, and UGW is the home to educate many of the Caribbean secret services and is a specialist in international politics.

In the same year, Guaido with the support of the U.S. launched Generation 2007, through CANVAS activists and specialized staff. In an email disclosed by the WikiLeaks in 2007, former U.S. ambassador to Caracas William Brownfield praised Generation 2007 for exerting pressure on the Venezuelan government. 

Taking advantage of the past, in 2009, Guaido reappeared differently. He launched the political party “Voluntad Popular”. 

The party's leadership was leftist Leopoldo Lopez, educated at Princeton University and active in NED programs. He is elected as mayor of a wealthy Caracas region. In a country with all social problems, Lopez displayed the image of a Venezuelan aristocracy and was perfectly aligned with Washington.

In 2010 when Venezuela was experiencing the worst drought of the last decade, a severe shortage of electricity caused a shortage of water in the country, and the global economic downturn and a decline in oil prices caused a critical crisis in the country. At this time, Voluntad Popular and its foreign sponsors tried to get the most out of it. 

Stratfor and CANVAS, Guardian's main advisers and its anti-government team planned the VZ elections, which depended on the collapse of the country's electrical system by 70 percent in April 2010.

“This could be the watershed event, as there is little that Chavez can do to protect the poor from the failure of that system,” the Stratfor internal memo declared.

 “This would likely have the impact of galvanizing public unrest in a way that no opposition group could ever hope to generate. At that point in time, an opposition group would be best served to take advantage of the situation and spin it against Chavez and towards their needs.”

While the scenario envisioned by Statfor did not come to fruition, the Popular Will party activists and their allies cast aside any pretense of non-violence and joined a radical plan to destabilize the country.

the Venezuelan opposition was receiving a staggering $40-50 million a year from U.S. government organizations like USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy, according to a report by the Spanish think tank, the FRIDE Institute. 

In November, 2010, Guaidó, Goicoechea, and several other student activists attended a secret five-day training at the Fiesta Mexicana hotel in Mexico City.

The meeting had reportedly received the blessing of Otto Reich, former official in George W. Bush’s Department of State, and the right-wing former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.

Guaidó and his fellow activists hatched a plan to overthrow President Hugo Chavez by generating chaos through protracted spasms of street violence.

In  2014, demonstrators erected violent barricades across the country, turning opposition-controlled quarters into violent fortresses known as guarimbas.

While international media portrayed the upheaval as a spontaneous protest against Maduro’s iron-fisted rule, there was ample evidence that Popular Will was orchestrating the show.

Around 43 were killed during the 2014 guarimbas. Three years later, they erupted again, causing mass destruction of public infrastructure, the murder of government supporters, and the deaths of 126 people, many of whom were Chavistas. In several cases, supporters of the government were burned alive by armed gangs. Guaidó was directly involved in the 2014 guarimbas.

In 2016, the collapse of Popular Will under the weight of the violent campaign of destabilization it ran alienated large sectors of the public and wound much of its leadership up in exile or in custody. Guaidó came in second place during the 2015 parliamentary elections, winning just 26% of votes cast in order to secure his place in the National Assembly. However, there is no record left of him as a representative in any project.

In December 2018, Guaidó sneaked across the border and junketed to Washington, Colombia and Brazil to coordinate the plan to hold mass demonstrations during the inauguration of President Maduro. The night before Maduro’s swearing-in ceremony, both Vice President Mike Pence and Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland called Guaidó to affirm their support.

A week later, Senator Marco Rubio from Florida, Senator Rick Scott from Florida and U.S. representative Mario Diaz-Balart from Florida all met with Trump and his Vice President Mike Pence in the White House and Trump agreed to back up Guaido if he declares himself the new president..

According to the Wall Street Journal, although on January 10, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had personally met Guiedo, in a press conference back on January 25, Pompeo had mistakenly referred to him as “Juan Guido.”

Guaido can meet the U.S. demands. According to the Trump administration, Washington now has the right element aligned with the U.S. strategy inside Venezuela.