What’s next for Venezuela?

On an Air Force One flight on Sunday night, President Donald Trump had a harsh warning for Delcy Rodríguez, the interim president of Venezuela.

“If they don’t behave, we’ll do a second strike,” Trump told reporters. He declined to name who would lead Venezuela but simply said, “We’re in charge.”

Trump’s threat appeared aimed at putting pressure on Rodríguez, who was sworn in to her interim office on Monday afternoon amid national upheaval. A former vice president and confidante to Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, Rodríguez has provided conflicting statements on whether she’ll cooperate with the United States.

In a Saturday news conference, Rodríguez said the U.S. operation to attack the capital city of Caracas and seize Maduro and his wife violated Venezuela’s sovereignty. But by Sunday, she had toned down her rhetoric.

“We prioritise moving towards balanced and respectful international relations between the United States and Venezuela,” Rodríguez wrote in a social media post. “President Donald Trump, our peoples and our region deserve peace and dialogue, not war.”

But with conflicting statements from U.S. and Venezuelan officials, it is unclear who is ultimately calling the shots in Caracas. And it’s unclear how the United States will be involved moving forward. In the days following Maduro’s dramatic capture by U.S. forces—involving a surprise weekend raid in Caracas—Trump and his Cabinet have offered differing explanations on what is next for the embattled South American nation.

Analysts say the Maduro-snatching move was a long time coming. Roxanna Vigil, an international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Trump’s Cabinet officials have been clear that they consider Maduro an illegitimate leader. Furthermore, Maduro’s capture fits into the second Trump administration’s renewed focus on the Western Hemisphere. But she said the administration needs a clearer plan for what to do now.

“On the one hand, it was not surprising that this came to be,” Vigil told me. “What is surprising right now is that there does not seem to be a plan for what comes next in Venezuela.”

Vigil said Venezuela could turn to opposition candidate Edmundo González, whom many believe won the 2024 vote, or hold new elections. But when such a transition might take place—if ever—is unclear.

Trump said on Saturday that “we’re going to be running Venezuela for some time.” But he did not specify a timeline or how specifically the United States would control the country. In an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Sunday morning, Secretary of State Marco Rubio clarified that the administration aims to control Venezuela by controlling the conditions of its economy through an ongoing oil blockade.

“What we are running is the direction that this is going to move, moving forward—and that is we have leverage,” Rubio said. “The leverage that we have here is the leverage of the quarantine.”

Venezuela contains roughly one-fifth of the world’s proven oil reserves. But due to extreme economic downturn, along with international sanctions, it has only produced around 1% of global crude output. With Maduro in U.S. custody, shares in oil and energy companies have surged. And Trump has said that righting the socialist country’s oil industry is his priority.

“We’re going to have to have big investments by the oil companies to bring back the infrastructure,” he told reporters on Air Force One on Sunday. “We’re going to run everything. We’re going to run it, fix it. We’ll have elections at the right time.”

But some say the president’s priorities are backwards. Without a democratically elected leader, the Venezuelan people remain in confusion about who is running the country.

“Every time there is a discussion of my country, oil is always included,” Diego Arria, former Caracas governor and former Venezuelan ambassador to the United Nations, told me. “I understand that for Trump the issue of oil and the potential to do greater business is important. But for us, the most important thing is to recover our freedom and to have democracy. And then you can have all the operation of oil that you like.”

Rodríguez, the interim vice president, has served as Maduro’s confidant since at least 2018, when Maduro appointed her to the vice presidency. Her brother is the president of the National Assembly, which has long been controlled by Maduro. He administered the oath of office on Monday.

“To us, she is a very dangerous character,” Arria said. As a member of the opposition party, he says he has not been able to set foot in his home country in 11 years.

“I was surprised when the president said that he and Marco Rubio had spoken to this lady and that she agreed to perform according to Trump’s orders,” he said. “How are you going to ask someone who hates you to follow your directions?”

Although Maduro has been ousted, his entire Cabinet remains. With Rodríguez in charge, it’s unclear whether his regime is truly toppled. Evidence indicates Edmundo González won the 2024 election despite Maduro’s refusal to count ballots from out-of-country citizens. Yet Trump told reporters this weekend that the opposition party does not have enough support to govern.

“It is a good thing for the Trump administration to pay more attention to the Western Hemisphere. Prior administrations had neglected the region,” Vigil said. “But if the priority is stability, there is already a democratically elected leader who hasn’t been allowed to govern.”

While Trump has described U.S. oil companies as eager and ready to send new infrastructure help to Venezuela, Vigil said the investors first need the certainty of a secure government. Between 2004 and 2007, former President Hugo Chavez nationalized the oil industry and pushed out U.S. companies like ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips. Chevron is the only U.S.-based company that arbitrated new agreements and remained in Venezuela. Trump has accused Venezuela of stealing U.S. investment since it has still not paid billions of dollars awarded by international arbitration courts to the companies that left.

“Investors need to be confident that they are not going to lose their investment like they did under Chavez and Maduro,” Vigil said. “Without a clear plan for a transition to democracy, what you can expect is likely a power struggle within the Maduro regime’s inner circle.”

After news of Maduro’s capture broke, a crowd of demonstrators protested outside the White House. “From Palestine to Venezuela, U.S. out of everywhere!” they chanted, accusing Trump of war crimes over oil.

Meanwhile, about a mile away, a separate group of Venezuelans danced and celebrated at a statue of Simón Bolívar, who overthrew Spanish control of Venezuela in 1813.

Under Maduro, an estimated 8 million of Venezuela’s 30 million citizens have fled the country since 2014. Now, many hope for a transition to a democracy and thank Trump for achieving what they thought impossible.

“I’m from a country where democracy was lost,” Oscar Rodríguez, a dual American-Venezuelan citizen, told me in a phone call. Now a Philadelphia resident, he grew up in Valencia, a town roughly 100 miles from Caracas, but fled in 2016 due to rising crime, political unrest, and an unstable economy. “It’s a country that’s been on hold for 25 years.”

Now a commercial pilot with American Airlines, Rodríguez is also a registered Democrat. But on Saturday, he said, he watched in disbelief and in tears as video footage showed helicopters circling Caracas. Later that day, Trump posted an image of Maduro in a gray sweatsuit and handcuffs.

“Almost 100% of Venezuelans I know, we are thankful to the U.S. for this involvement, because we were hopeless,” Rodríguez said. “More things need to happen, but it’s the beginning of the end, and it’s a good start.”