Venezuela – what now?
The Briefing Room
BBC
4.8 • 731 Ratings
🗓️ 8 January 2026
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Following the dramatic capture of the President of Venezuela and his wife by US special forces on January 3rd, The Briefing Room asks what’s next for Venezuela? Nicolas Maduro and Cilia Flores have been indicted on drug trafficking and weapons charges in a New York court while in Venezuela the deputy president, Delcy Rodriguez has been sworn in as the country’s interim president. Meanwhile Donald Trump says he is in charge of Venezuela. David Aaronovitch and a panel of Latin American experts discuss who will actually govern Venezuela, what’s going to happen with the oil industry and what the implications are for the rest of the region.
GUESTS Hal Hodson, Americas editor, The Economist Christopher Sabatini, Senior Research Fellow for Latin America at Chatham House Vanda Felbab-Brown Senior Fellow Foreign Policy, Brookings Institution
Presenter: David Aaronovitch Producers: Caroline Bayley and Kirsteen Knight Production Co-ordinator: Maria Ogundele Sound Engineer: James Beard Editor: Richard Vadon
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:09.6 | On January 3rd, US forces lifted a head of state from a South American country |
| 0:14.8 | and transported him over 2,000 miles to a prison in New York. |
| 0:19.8 | We are running Venezuela now, said Donald Trump. |
| 0:23.7 | In fact, the deposed dictator's deputy seems to be in charge, |
| 0:27.5 | and according to the US president, making oil deals with the US. |
| 0:32.2 | Meanwhile, the US State Department declares that it's our hemisphere, |
| 0:35.7 | and White House aides threaten US intervention |
| 0:38.3 | in a range of territories from Colombia to Greenland. So what does running Venezuela mean? Is it all |
| 0:46.5 | about the oil? And who's next? Step into the briefing room and together we'll find out. |
| 0:54.7 | To try and get a handle on all this, I'm joined by Hal Hodson, America's editor for |
| 0:59.2 | The Economist, Christopher Sabatini, Senior Research Fellow for Latin America at Chatham House |
| 1:03.9 | in London, and Vandafelberg Brown, senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings |
| 1:09.2 | Institution in Washington. |
| 1:11.1 | First, let's take a quick look at the recent history of Venezuela. |
| 1:14.1 | It was a Spanish colony until the early 19th century. |
| 1:17.0 | But after that came a long period of dictators and military hunters |
| 1:20.3 | interspers with attempts at democracy. |
| 1:23.0 | And by the 80s, it was pretty wealthy from oil |
| 1:26.1 | and a democratically elected government was in place. |
| 1:29.0 | And it should have been one of the richest countries in South America. |
| 1:32.2 | But it didn't work out that way. |
... |
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