President Donald Trump said at a press conference on Saturday that the United States will govern Venezuela until power is transferred from the Maduro regime, otherwise continued attacks and occupation await.
How the US will "govern" Venezuela is unclear. Trump said an invasion would not be necessary because the initial attack, as he described it, was so successful.
One possibility is that they have made a deal with at least parts of the Venezuelan military and that that is what will be used, says Fredrik Uggla, a researcher at Uppsala University.
Compare with Iraq
Uggla believes that one of the most important questions, in the event of a takeover, is who will control the military.
The Americans probably have a plan if they say this, but I can't really understand what it would look like.
The opposition has politicians they can highlight who have legitimacy in the Western world - not least Edmundo González Urrutia, who was considered by several international observers to be the rightful winner of the 2024 election.
That's not the problem. There are politicians here who are ready to take over - but who will then take over a state apparatus that has been governed by a completely different ideology for a quarter of a century, says Uggla.
He compares it to what happened after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
It's more like taking over Iraq after Saddam Hussein, where they drove out the Baath Party and then everything collapsed.
Oil ambitions
At Saturday's press conference, Trump claimed that Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro's close ally, had taken over and was "willing to do what we think is necessary."
That's not how it sounded to her, when in a speech to the nation she emphasized that Maduro was Venezuela's only president.
"We are ready to defend Venezuela, we are ready to defend our natural resources," she said.
Overnight Sunday, local time in Sweden, Venezuela's Supreme Court ordered Rodríguez to become interim leader.
Trump also spoke openly about his oil ambitions in the country, saying that US oil giants will "go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the broken oil infrastructure and start making money" for Venezuela.
But in December, Politico reported that Trump had asked oil companies about their interest in taking over the neglected oil production in Venezuela - and that he was met with a firm no.
Regardless, it is hard to believe that any Venezuelan politician in the opposition or the regime could say that "the Americans are getting our oil." That would be a death blow to them in Venezuelan public opinion.
