Venezuela, Iran & ... Belarus?

Great Game Theory

Two days after the US seized the Venezuelan dark-fleet oil tanker Skipper, the Venezuelan ambassador to Russia has the second meeting in three weeks with Belarusian president Alexander Lukenshenko. As I’ve written before, this narco-state business is true enough, but it’s also just an excuse for regime change and the massive pay-off for US oil companies with the next stable regime.

The Skipper seizure serves the wider-purpose of enforcing wider US oil sanctions for nations like Russia and Iran. Venezuelan ports, so far, haven’t been scrutinized like terminals in Iran, so black-market oil transfers can happen at a largish scale.

So why Belarus? My guess is that Maduro knows his days are numbered without Trump having to tweet it. He’s likely is visiting with the Putin’s man in Minsk to feather a nest in exile after ruling out Russia and the White House ruling Cuba out for him. So regime change seems very likely now, but be careful what you ask for, these things never seem to go quite as planned.

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