Joe Biden Eases Oil and Gas Sanctions on Top Iran Ally Venezuela, Likely Funding Hamas

CARACAS — The Biden administration temporarily lifted oil and gas sanctions on Venezuela on Wednesday evening, allowing the socialist regime of dictator Nicolás Maduro to sell oil in U.S. and international markets.

The sanctions relief is the largest concession of its kind to Maduro under leftist American President Joe Biden since he took office in 2021. It occurred on the same day that United Nations sanctions on Iran’s missile program expired and hours before Iran — a critical ally to Maduro and partner in rehabilitating Venezuela’s oil industry — once again threatened to destroy key American ally Israel.

Venezuela’s socialist regime has maintained deep ties to Iran and Hamas that stretch beyond their shared anti-U.S. and anti-Israel sentiments, including generous businesses and farmland gifts to the Islamic regime.

Iran is the world’s top state sponsor of terrorism and is believed to have funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to the Sunni jihadist terror organization Hamas, the author of a gruesome massacre claiming more than 1,400 innocent lives in Israel on October 7. The Hamas “al-Aqsa flood” featured the torture, abduction, and mass killing of civilians, including gruesome scenes, such as the decapitation of babies, and terrorists uploading videos of themselves online desecrating corpses. A Hamas spokesman told the BBC on the record the day of the attack that Iran provided “direct backing” for it.

Tamar, Yonatan, and their children — Shachar (6), Arbel (6), and Omer (4) — were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists in Kibbutz Nir Oz. (@EladStr Twitter/X)

The Maduro regime openly expressed support for Hamas following the October 7 attack. The socialists justified Hamas’s atrocious actions by claiming the alleged “impossibility of the Palestinian people to find in the multilateral international law a space to assert their historical rights.”

Iran will likely benefit from the temporary relief in Venezuelan oil sanctions. Tehran is ramping up plans to build an oil refinery in the Syrian town of Homs alongside the Maduro regime and has invested heavily, together with Iran and Syria, to yield further profits for the three authoritarian regimes. Over the past year, Iran has greatly assisted Venezuela in restoring its rundown oil refineries after more than two decades of socialist mismanagement left the entirety of Venezuela’s oil industry in a near-ruined state. Iran has also begun refining its own oil in Venezuela’s repaired refineries as of 2022.

The gift of lifting oil and gas sanctions will, effective immediately, allow Maduro and his cash-starved regime to profit from the sale of oil to U.S. markets and to receive foreign investment for Venezuela’s oil industry for a period of six months at least. The six-month lifting of sanctions is initially slated to end on April 18, 2024, but can be renewed if the socialist regime follows through with its “commitments and take[s] continued concrete steps toward a democratic election by the end of 2024.”

The licenses granted by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) allow oil and gas transactions with Venezuela’s state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) oil company, as well as transactions with the state-owned Minerven gold company. OFAC also temporarily lifted a ban on trading certain Venezuelan sovereign bonds and PDVSA’s debt and equity.

The lifting of sanctions, according to OFAC, greenlights transactions related to the “production, lifting, sale, and exportation of oil or gas from Venezuela, and provision of related goods and service” and the payment of its corresponding invoices. Additionally, it allows for “new investment in oil or gas sector operations in Venezuela” and the delivery of oil and gas from Venezuela to creditors of the Government of Venezuela and PDVSA’s entities.

The Biden administration issued the temporary lift of oil sanctions on Venezuela in response to the Maduro regime and the “opposition” Unitary Platform signing an agreement in Barbados on Tuesday towards holding so-called “free and fair” elections in the second half of 2024.

“The United States welcomes the signing of an electoral roadmap agreement between the Unitary Platform and Maduro representatives,” OFAC’s press release read, continuing:

Consistent with U.S. sanctions policy, in response to these democratic developments, the U.S. Department of the Treasury has issued General Licenses authorizing transactions involving Venezuela’s oil and gas sector and gold sector, as well as removing the ban on secondary trading.

“Treasury is prepared to amend or revoke authorizations at any time, should representatives of Maduro fail to follow through on their commitments,” the statement continued. “All other restrictions imposed by the United States on Venezuela remain in place, and we will continue to hold bad actors accountable. We stand with the Venezuelan people and support Venezuelan democracy.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, through a press statement issued on Wednesday evening, similarly welcomed the negotiations between the Maduro regime and the “opposition” towards “free and fair” elections.

The Venezuelan “opposition” is slated to hold a self-organized primary election on Sunday to pick a rival to go against Maduro in 2024’s “free and fair” election.

Former lawmaker María Corina Machado is poised to win the primary election. However, the Maduro regime imposed a 15-year ban on Machado from running for or holding public office through 2030. With all major “opposition” candidates either banned or in exile, Maduro, presently, has no actual rival in the upcoming election.

Next year’s “free and fair” presidential election still has no set date beyond the “second half of 2024.” Historically, Venezuela holds its presidential elections around December, with three notable exceptions: October 2012, when late socialist dictator Hugo Chávez was elected for a third term; April 2013, a snap election following the death of Chávez in which Maduro was elected; and May 2018, a sham presidential election held by Maduro that allowed him to cling onto power.

The sanctions temporarily lifted on Wednesday are not limited to Venezuela’s PDVSA and Minerven companies. According to the Maduro regime, the license included lifting the corresponding sanctions imposed on the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) and the regime’s state-owned Banco de Venezuela (BDV), allowing the financial institutions to carry out oil- and gas-related financial transactions.

An additional license, also granted on Wednesday evening, allowed the state-owned Conviasa airline to carry out all related transactions for the repatriation of Venezuelans from “non-U.S. jurisdictions in the Western Hemisphere to Venezuela.” The license, according to the Maduro regime, will “open the way for the Venezuelan airline to operate without restrictions.”

Conviasa was sanctioned in 2020 during the Trump administration for helping “shuttle corrupt regime officials around the world to fuel support for its anti-democratic efforts.” 

The Maduro regime has used Conviasa’s airplanes to transport not just its own officials, but the regime’s allied peers in the region such as Cuba’s figurehead president Miguel Díaz-Canel. Last year, Argentine authorities seized a Venezuelan airplane that belonged to a Conviasa subsidiary suspected of having ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)-Quds Force, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.

The Biden administration previously issued a license to California-based Chevron that allows the company to resume oil production and exports from Venezuela to the United States. Chevron’s exports have reportedly led to Venezuela experiencing a surge in oil exports throughout 2023 as well as a 113-percent growth in Venezuela-U.S. trade over the past year.

The United States, during the administration of former President Donald Trump, imposed sanctions on PDVSA in response to the myriad human rights violations Maduro committed against his own people, including the killing, torture, and rape of political dissidents. The now-temporarily-lifted sanctions banned the sale of Venezuelan oil in U.S. markets.

The Maduro regime immediately celebrated the sanctions relief on Wednesday through social media and local state media.

In a state media broadcast, Maduro declared that a new era of “respect, equality, and progress” in different economic areas had begun with the United States.

“With these agreements and decisions that have been taken, Venezuela is entering the oil and gas market in a progressive manner,” Maduro said, “pledging” to commit to what was agreed upon between his regime, the “opposition,” and the United States.

The Venezuelan socialist regime has historically used Venezuela’s vast oil reserves and PDVSA’s revenue to maintain its grip on Venezuela and spread its ideological influence throughout the world. PDVSA also funds the lavish lifestyles of the regime’s high-ranking officials and their families.

In 2020, regime defector and former Oil Minister Rafael Ramírez claimed that some $700 billion in PDVSA revenue was “lost” during his ten-year tenure from 2004 to 2014. The Maduro regime, which once forbade the opposition from investigating Ramírez and PDVSA’s massive corruption, is now accusing Ramírez of having stolen $4.85 billion.

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.