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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14407/venezuela-mafia-state

To make matters worse, many of Maduro’s 2,000 generals are also heavily involved in the drug trade, aiding the very networks they are supposed to be battling…. Meanwhile, much of the country is also controlled by “pranes,” crime lords who run gangs from within the country’s prisons.

“Illicit narco trafficking through Venezuela is up some 40 percent.” — Navy Admiral Craig Faller, head of U.S. Southern Command, The Hill, May 23, 2019.

“The administration’s strategy seeks to force the estimated 15,000 Cuban military and security personnel out of Venezuela. ‘[O]nce the rocks start rolling downhill, the regime itself is unsustainable,’ Bolton said.” — U.S. National Security Adviser John R. Bolton, as reported by Bill Gertz in the Washington Free Beacon, June 17, 2019.

In an op-ed in the New York Times on June 11, Abraham F. Lowenthal and David Smilde propose a humanistic vision for the current Oslo negotiations between representatives of the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and the democratic opposition, led by Juan Guaidó — recognized by more than 50 countries as Venezuela’s interim president.

According to Lowenthal and Smilde, “The divisions within Maduro’s coalition laid bare during the failed April 30 uprising, coupled with Juan Guaidó’s unsuccessful call for the support of the armed forces, may have finally persuaded key people on both sides that the only viable way forward is a negotiated transition.”

To support this argument, the authors provide examples of previous “negotiated transitions” — such as Chile in 1988 and Poland in 1989. Neither case can be applied to Maduro’s Venezuela, however, which is neither a military dictatorship, like that of Augusto Pinochet, nor a classical Communist regime.

Venezuela — as described in an interview with The Hill in May by Navy Admiral Craig Faller, head of U.S. Southern Command — is “a mafia… an illicit business that [Maduro is] running with his 2,000 corrupt generals. It’s ruining the country. And the effects of that are compounding every other security problem in our neighborhood. Every security problem is made worse by Venezuela.”

In his interview, Faller pointed to Venezuela’s gold and drug trades, which are helping to fund the remnants of Colombia’s FARC communist guerrillas. “The data and statistics show that their numbers have increased because of what they can gain in terms of freedom of maneuver and the economic opportunity that they get from illicit trafficking and partnering with the Maduro regime,” Faller said. “Illicit narco trafficking through Venezuela is up some 40 percent.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/iran-to-increase-uranium-enrichment-in-violation-of-2015-nuclear-treaty/

Iranian officials announced on Monday that they will begin to increase uranium enrichment in violation of the 2015 international nuclear treaty from which the U.S. already has withdrawn.

Behrouz Kamalvandi, a spokesman for the Atomic Energy Agency, said the country’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium will surpass the limit established under the treaty within ten days, according to the Iranian news agency Tasnim.

The announcement by Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency comes weeks after Tehran threatened to violate the 2015 nuclear treaty if the pact’s remaining European signatories failed to shield the country from the effects of U.S. sanctions within 60 days.

Kamalvandi left open the possibility of returning to compliance with the treaty if the European parties help to relieve some of the burden of U.S. sanctions by establishing alternative trade arrangements.

“As long as they comply by their commitments, these will go back,” Kamalvandi said during a televised press conference at the country’s Arak nuclear plant.

Tensions between the U.S. and Iran continued to escalate last week after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that Iran was responsible for an attack on two oil tankers that occurred in the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday morning.