Trump Unveils India–Venezuela Oil Deal After Maduro’s Ouster

Great-power engineering of oil flows has precedent: after the 1953 CIA-MI6 coup in Iran, the consortium that replaced Mossadegh’s nationalised company channelled crude back to Western firms within months. The lightning removal of Maduro on 3 Jan 2026, the overnight rewriting of tax terms, and Trump’s tariff-carrot to pivot India mirror that playbook, confirming a long trend in which Washington wields sanctions and market access to choreograph energy geopolitics (Iran 2018-, Russia 2022-, Venezuela 2019-25). On a 100-year arc the episode matters because it tests whether the petrodollar order can still redirect barrels by diktat; each forced reroute, however, also prods China, India and the wider Global South to build alternative clearing systems. If history rhymes, today’s short-term U.S. control could, like Britain’s after Suez in 1956, seed a gradual erosion of leverage as others seek insulation from abrupt regime-energy linkages.