China, Iran, and Russia will Intervene in Venezuela to Threaten U.S. Regional Hegemony
The MOC
By
LT Sean F. Barry, USN
November 4, 2025
China, Iran, and Russia sent aid, capital, and arms through illicit trade networks to enable the Houthis’ attacks on western merchants and warships transiting the Bab al-Mandeb strait. They will do the same to aid Venezuela in a bid to challenge U.S. regional hegemony.
The United States must counter this strategy by countering its means – illicit trade. If the U.S. Navy fails to counter illicit trade in the Caribbean, the nation will face the greatest threat in its hemisphere since 1958 when Nikita Kruschev’s R-12 nuclear missiles arrived in Cuba.
In June 2025, U.S. Southern Command and U.S. Fourth Fleet began deploying warships to the Caribbean to defend the United States and its interests from Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro’s violent regime and subordinate transnational criminal organizations like Tren de Aragua, Cartel de los Soles, and the Sinaloa Cartel. The U.S. presence now includes the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group and 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, multiple Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers, a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser, MQ-9 Reaper drones, F-35B Joint Strike Fighter jets, and other maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft like the P-8 Poseidon. On October 24th the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group was sent to the Caribbean. Venezuela’s small arsenal is antiquated and poorly maintained, but two years of naval combat in the Red Sea show how a smaller force can challenge a superior force with foreign assistance. Maduro’s sweeping and increasingly desperate calls to arms makes it clear that no option will be left unconsidered to preserve his rule, especially those with proven track records.
The Red Sea Strategy Challenged U.S. Maritime Superiority
Three days after Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023, the Houthis began a campaign to target merchant vessels deemed sympathetic to Israel transiting the Bab al-Mandeb straits. Within months, the attacks became increasingly complex, frequent, and effective. U.S. and European warships escorting merchant vessels during Operation Prosperity Guardian were soon targeted. Iran unsurprisingly sent the Houthis arms, including anti-ship ballistic missiles and a wide variety of attack and surveillance unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), capital, and advisors, but they quickly found additional patrons seeking to challenge U.S. maritime superiority.
Illicit trade networks, prevalent in the region to facilitate the proliferation of arms and sale of illegal drugs like Captagon, were the primary method of aiding the Houthis. In January 2024, the U.S. seized thermal ship-targeting devices sent to the Houthis by a state-backed Chinese firm. By August 2024, reports emerged of Russian military intelligence advisors operating in Yemen. That same month, a Houthi delegation in Moscow brokered a $10 million arms deal with the Viktor Bout, the “Merchant of Death.” In October 2024, news broke that Russia gave targeting data to the Houthis, and multiple state-backed Chinese companies were sanctioned by the State Department for selling the group manufactured drone materials. Last April, China’s state-backed Chang Guang Satellite Technology Company was sanctioned by the State Department for providing targeting data to the Houthis from Earth-imaging satellites.
The decision to support the Houthi campaign was a sweeping success. Without accepting additional risk or costs, Iran dissuaded international political support for Israel, Russia indirectly countered western support in Ukraine, and China brokered safe passage for their merchants while U.S. Combatant Commanders relocated warships from the Pacific to the Red Sea.
The U.S. Navy successfully interdicted some illicit trade in the region and conducted strikes to the trade network’s associated infrastructure within Yemen during Operation Poseidon Archer, but the impacts were marginal. In less than two years, the Houthis attacked U.S. warships 170 times and merchant vessels 145 times. In the first year of the attacks, the average price of transporting a 40-foot container on a merchant vessel increased from $1,521to $3,777. The operations cost the U.S. Navy more than a billion dollars and 75% of historical shipping in the Bab al-Mandeb straits is now diverted around the Cape of Good Hope. The Houthis continue to launch attacks on Israel and have looked to expand their campaign by arming Somalia’s al-Shabaab.
The Same Strategy will be Used in the Caribbean to Challenge U.S. Regional Hegemony
China, Iran, and Russia will use their successful Red Sea strategy in the Caribbean for even greater gain. Within months, the U.S. naval presence may struggle to maintain maritime superiority while facing agile, technologically advanced, well-funded, asymmetric adversaries with unimpeded supply lines. Maduro’s narcoterrorism enterprise is even better suited for this strategy to be successful than the Houthis were; the autocracy is involved in the illegal drug market not as a producer, but as a distributor, with its government and military introducing billions of dollars of drugs to global markets annually. Maduro’s bureaucrats also preside over gold and oil black markets. China, Iran, and Russia will use this infrastructure to circumvent political pressures and sanctions, as they did in the Red Sea
But Chinese, Iranian, and Russian support for Venezuela will threaten more than U.S. maritime superiority. Caracas is just 1,473 miles from Miami, 838 miles from the Panama Canal, and 674 miles from U.S. military concentrations in Puerto Rico. Iranian-supplied scud missiles were modified by the Houthis to strike targets in Israel up to 1,242 miles away. In September 2024 China conducted an unannounced test of the Dong-Feng-31 intercontinental ballistic missile. The nuclear-capable warhead and its mobile transporter-erector-launcher (TEL) were featured during the September Victory Day Parade. In the Caribbean, China, Iran, and Russia have the opportunity to place threats well within range of the United States and its interests. Maduro will be eager to receive whatever financial and military assets he can from wherever he can while the country nears economic collapse with world-record inflation at 564.7% per year. The question that remains to be answered is whether there are any limits to Maduro’s pursuit of self-preservation. Is a man capable of declaring Christmas in October to defend his popularity also capable of importing nuclear weapons to defend his regime?
China, Iran, and Russia have already established a historical precedent of providing Venezuela with capital and material to threaten U.S. regional hegemony. In 2015, Venezuela launched an Earth-imaging satellite with a Chinese Long March 2D rocket. Made by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology, the rocket is also used by the Chang Guang Satellite Technology Company to launch the same Earth-imaging satellites that provided targeting data to the Houthis. Russia supplied Venezuela’s Su-30MK2 fighter jets and was quick to aid Maduro during the 2019 crisis, while state-backed Chinese defense firm Norinco outfitted the regime’s police force with military-grade riot gear. After the tear gas cleared, Chinese technology firms like the state-owned China National Electronics Import & Export Corporation imported internet censorship, digital surveillance, and cyber warfare systems to solidify Maduro’s dictatorship. Iran delivered Pekyaap II Zolfaghar-class fast attack crafts to Puerto Cabello in 2021. A year later Maduro paraded Iranian Shaheed UAVs in near-exact matches to drone variants the Houthis paraded in Sanaa. In July the state-controlled Russian arms firm Rosoboronexport broke ground on a munitions factory in Venezuela in an ongoing attempt to avoid arms exports sanctions. China purchases 95% of Venezuela’s oil exports, valuated in excess of $3.65 billion annually, and state-controlled Russian oil firm Rosneft invested $9 billion in Venezuelan development projects.
The United States Must Counter the Means of its Adversaries’ Strategy: Illicit Trade
China, Iran, and Russia’s Red Sea strategy relies on illicit trade. To counter illicit trade is to counter the means by which China, Iran, and Russia execute this strategy. Ongoing strikes against Tren de Aragua vessels not only impede cocaine smugglers but dismantle and threaten an entire industry that will be mobilized against the United States.
Makeshift submarines, modified pleasure boats, and refitted aircraft optimized for drug trafficking will just as easily transport weapons or be employed as the launch platforms for the weapons themselves. These assets are already influenced and potentially commanded by Venezuela’s senior military officers. According to the Treasury Department, the Cartel de los Soles, or “Cartel of the Suns,” is comprised of uniformed Venezuelan military and intelligence officials who provide logistical support to Tren de Aragua and the Sinaloa Cartel’s trafficking operations. The “Suns” portion of the group’s name is a reference to the sun insignia often found on Venezuelan military uniforms.
While the U.S. Navy has already demonstrated its superior firepower against these threats, most recently against even a makeshift submarine, the operational risks increase significantly if the threats are militarized. The U.S. Navy must develop new tactics and adapt existing procedures to counter these dual-use threats.
The dual-use capabilities of these criminal organizations’ maritime assets poses challenges to the U.S. force’s rules of engagement. Great care must be taken to positively identify threats and distinguish them from noncombatants. Success in this regard will be defined by the speed with which the U.S. Navy can identify and engage a threat. It is significantly easier to identify and engage an 844-foot-long warship than it is for the same warship to identify and engage a wooden skiff laden with explosives. Early coordination across intelligence and law enforcement agencies will be essential in assessing these threats.
Interdicting, confiscating, or destroying these dual-use assets must be a core mission of the U.S. Navy in the region. The Amphibious Ready Group is uniquely positioned to support these operations with sea-based rotary and fixed wing aircraft like MV-22 Ospreys, F-35Bs, AH-1 Cobras, and UH-1Y Venoms that can track and target vessels in a larger area at a greater speed than any single Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. The embarked Force Reconnaissance Platoon and 3rd Battalion 6th Marine’s Battalion Landing Team are capable of supporting interdictions at sea. Each of the U.S. assets’ unique capabilities, honed for the most strenuous combat environments, need to be retooled and utilized in novel ways to counter this threat.
Countering illicit trade in the southern Caribbean alone will not suffice. The drug trade’s infrastructure beyond Venezuela are gateways of opportunity for adversary influence. In 2016, Ecuador began a $1.2 billion modernization of its port in Posorja. Today the port is South America’s leading cocaine distribution hub and local annual homicides are up by a factor of thirteen. In January 2024, a submarine carrying $27 million of cocaine was intercepted off the coast of Colombia’s notorious drug port, Buenaventura. These well-funded and often used gateways will be repurposed to introduce arms and other illicit goods from international waters to over-land smuggling networks where U.S. interdiction is complicated by terrain and sovereignty. Last week the Treasury Department sanctioned Gustavo Petro, the President of Columbia, on narcotics related charges not dissimilar from those levied on Maduro, signaling a coordinated policy effort to counter the drug trade’s infrastructure beyond the Caribbean. U.S. and partner warships and aircraft must be properly dispersed not only in the Caribbean, but to South America’s northern pacific coastlines to execute a broader policy to disrupt illicit trade on the periphery of Venezuela’s shores.
If the United States fails to counter illicit trade, China, Iran, and Russia will successfully challenge its regional hegemony. As these countries look to implement their Red Sea strategy in the Caribbean, attempts to import technology, arms, capital, and other dual-use materials to Venezuela or its proxies must be met with action. Washington must continue its clear messaging that its policy is to counter threats to U.S. national security, and U.S. naval forces in the Caribbean must be prepared to enforce this policy by countering illicit trade.
Sean F. Barry is a U.S. Navy Surface Warfare Officer and Integrated Air and Missile Defense Warfare Tactics Instructor serving as Plans and Tactics Officer and Air Defense Officer aboard USS Jack H. Lucas (DDG 125), the first Flight III Arleigh Burke-class Guided Missile Destroyer. He previously deployed to U.S. 5th Fleet and U.S. 6th Fleet in support of operations Prosperity Guardian, Poseidon Archer, and the defense of Israel. He is a graduate of Boston College and enrolled in the Naval War College’s Fleet Seminar Program. He can be followed on LinkedIn.
The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Department of the Navy or Department of Defense.
Center for Maritime Strategy
By LT Sean F. Barry, USN
China, Iran, and Russia sent aid, capital, and arms through illicit trade networks to enable the Houthis’ attacks on western merchants and warships transiting the Bab al-Mandeb strait. They will do the same to aid Venezuela in a bid to challenge U.S. regional hegemony.
The United States must counter this strategy by countering its means – illicit trade. If the U.S. Navy fails to counter illicit trade in the Caribbean, the nation will face the greatest threat in its hemisphere since 1958 when Nikita Kruschev’s R-12 nuclear missiles arrived in Cuba.
In June 2025, U.S. Southern Command and U.S. Fourth Fleet began deploying warships to the Caribbean to defend the United States and its interests from Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro’s violent regime and subordinate transnational criminal organizations like Tren de Aragua, Cartel de los Soles, and the Sinaloa Cartel. The U.S. presence now includes the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group and 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, multiple Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers, a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser, MQ-9 Reaper drones, F-35B Joint Strike Fighter jets, and other maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft like the P-8 Poseidon. On October 24th the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group was sent to the Caribbean. Venezuela’s small arsenal is antiquated and poorly maintained, but two years of naval combat in the Red Sea show how a smaller force can challenge a superior force with foreign assistance. Maduro’s sweeping and increasingly desperate calls to arms makes it clear that no option will be left unconsidered to preserve his rule, especially those with proven track records.
The Red Sea Strategy Challenged U.S. Maritime Superiority
Three days after Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023, the Houthis began a campaign to target merchant vessels deemed sympathetic to Israel transiting the Bab al-Mandeb straits. Within months, the attacks became increasingly complex, frequent, and effective. U.S. and European warships escorting merchant vessels during Operation Prosperity Guardian were soon targeted. Iran unsurprisingly sent the Houthis arms, including anti-ship ballistic missiles and a wide variety of attack and surveillance unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), capital, and advisors, but they quickly found additional patrons seeking to challenge U.S. maritime superiority.
Illicit trade networks, prevalent in the region to facilitate the proliferation of arms and sale of illegal drugs like Captagon, were the primary method of aiding the Houthis. In January 2024, the U.S. seized thermal ship-targeting devices sent to the Houthis by a state-backed Chinese firm. By August 2024, reports emerged of Russian military intelligence advisors operating in Yemen. That same month, a Houthi delegation in Moscow brokered a $10 million arms deal with the Viktor Bout, the “Merchant of Death.” In October 2024, news broke that Russia gave targeting data to the Houthis, and multiple state-backed Chinese companies were sanctioned by the State Department for selling the group manufactured drone materials. Last April, China’s state-backed Chang Guang Satellite Technology Company was sanctioned by the State Department for providing targeting data to the Houthis from Earth-imaging satellites.
The decision to support the Houthi campaign was a sweeping success. Without accepting additional risk or costs, Iran dissuaded international political support for Israel, Russia indirectly countered western support in Ukraine, and China brokered safe passage for their merchants while U.S. Combatant Commanders relocated warships from the Pacific to the Red Sea.
The U.S. Navy successfully interdicted some illicit trade in the region and conducted strikes to the trade network’s associated infrastructure within Yemen during Operation Poseidon Archer, but the impacts were marginal. In less than two years, the Houthis attacked U.S. warships 170 times and merchant vessels 145 times. In the first year of the attacks, the average price of transporting a 40-foot container on a merchant vessel increased from $1,521to $3,777. The operations cost the U.S. Navy more than a billion dollars and 75% of historical shipping in the Bab al-Mandeb straits is now diverted around the Cape of Good Hope. The Houthis continue to launch attacks on Israel and have looked to expand their campaign by arming Somalia’s al-Shabaab.
The Same Strategy will be Used in the Caribbean to Challenge U.S. Regional Hegemony
China, Iran, and Russia will use their successful Red Sea strategy in the Caribbean for even greater gain. Within months, the U.S. naval presence may struggle to maintain maritime superiority while facing agile, technologically advanced, well-funded, asymmetric adversaries with unimpeded supply lines. Maduro’s narcoterrorism enterprise is even better suited for this strategy to be successful than the Houthis were; the autocracy is involved in the illegal drug market not as a producer, but as a distributor, with its government and military introducing billions of dollars of drugs to global markets annually. Maduro’s bureaucrats also preside over gold and oil black markets. China, Iran, and Russia will use this infrastructure to circumvent political pressures and sanctions, as they did in the Red Sea
But Chinese, Iranian, and Russian support for Venezuela will threaten more than U.S. maritime superiority. Caracas is just 1,473 miles from Miami, 838 miles from the Panama Canal, and 674 miles from U.S. military concentrations in Puerto Rico. Iranian-supplied scud missiles were modified by the Houthis to strike targets in Israel up to 1,242 miles away. In September 2024 China conducted an unannounced test of the Dong-Feng-31 intercontinental ballistic missile. The nuclear-capable warhead and its mobile transporter-erector-launcher (TEL) were featured during the September Victory Day Parade. In the Caribbean, China, Iran, and Russia have the opportunity to place threats well within range of the United States and its interests. Maduro will be eager to receive whatever financial and military assets he can from wherever he can while the country nears economic collapse with world-record inflation at 564.7% per year. The question that remains to be answered is whether there are any limits to Maduro’s pursuit of self-preservation. Is a man capable of declaring Christmas in October to defend his popularity also capable of importing nuclear weapons to defend his regime?
China, Iran, and Russia have already established a historical precedent of providing Venezuela with capital and material to threaten U.S. regional hegemony. In 2015, Venezuela launched an Earth-imaging satellite with a Chinese Long March 2D rocket. Made by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology, the rocket is also used by the Chang Guang Satellite Technology Company to launch the same Earth-imaging satellites that provided targeting data to the Houthis. Russia supplied Venezuela’s Su-30MK2 fighter jets and was quick to aid Maduro during the 2019 crisis, while state-backed Chinese defense firm Norinco outfitted the regime’s police force with military-grade riot gear. After the tear gas cleared, Chinese technology firms like the state-owned China National Electronics Import & Export Corporation imported internet censorship, digital surveillance, and cyber warfare systems to solidify Maduro’s dictatorship. Iran delivered Pekyaap II Zolfaghar-class fast attack crafts to Puerto Cabello in 2021. A year later Maduro paraded Iranian Shaheed UAVs in near-exact matches to drone variants the Houthis paraded in Sanaa. In July the state-controlled Russian arms firm Rosoboronexport broke ground on a munitions factory in Venezuela in an ongoing attempt to avoid arms exports sanctions. China purchases 95% of Venezuela’s oil exports, valuated in excess of $3.65 billion annually, and state-controlled Russian oil firm Rosneft invested $9 billion in Venezuelan development projects.
The United States Must Counter the Means of its Adversaries’ Strategy: Illicit Trade
China, Iran, and Russia’s Red Sea strategy relies on illicit trade. To counter illicit trade is to counter the means by which China, Iran, and Russia execute this strategy. Ongoing strikes against Tren de Aragua vessels not only impede cocaine smugglers but dismantle and threaten an entire industry that will be mobilized against the United States.
Makeshift submarines, modified pleasure boats, and refitted aircraft optimized for drug trafficking will just as easily transport weapons or be employed as the launch platforms for the weapons themselves. These assets are already influenced and potentially commanded by Venezuela’s senior military officers. According to the Treasury Department, the Cartel de los Soles, or “Cartel of the Suns,” is comprised of uniformed Venezuelan military and intelligence officials who provide logistical support to Tren de Aragua and the Sinaloa Cartel’s trafficking operations. The “Suns” portion of the group’s name is a reference to the sun insignia often found on Venezuelan military uniforms.
While the U.S. Navy has already demonstrated its superior firepower against these threats, most recently against even a makeshift submarine, the operational risks increase significantly if the threats are militarized. The U.S. Navy must develop new tactics and adapt existing procedures to counter these dual-use threats.
The dual-use capabilities of these criminal organizations’ maritime assets poses challenges to the U.S. force’s rules of engagement. Great care must be taken to positively identify threats and distinguish them from noncombatants. Success in this regard will be defined by the speed with which the U.S. Navy can identify and engage a threat. It is significantly easier to identify and engage an 844-foot-long warship than it is for the same warship to identify and engage a wooden skiff laden with explosives. Early coordination across intelligence and law enforcement agencies will be essential in assessing these threats.
Interdicting, confiscating, or destroying these dual-use assets must be a core mission of the U.S. Navy in the region. The Amphibious Ready Group is uniquely positioned to support these operations with sea-based rotary and fixed wing aircraft like MV-22 Ospreys, F-35Bs, AH-1 Cobras, and UH-1Y Venoms that can track and target vessels in a larger area at a greater speed than any single Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. The embarked Force Reconnaissance Platoon and 3rd Battalion 6th Marine’s Battalion Landing Team are capable of supporting interdictions at sea. Each of the U.S. assets’ unique capabilities, honed for the most strenuous combat environments, need to be retooled and utilized in novel ways to counter this threat.
Countering illicit trade in the southern Caribbean alone will not suffice. The drug trade’s infrastructure beyond Venezuela are gateways of opportunity for adversary influence. In 2016, Ecuador began a $1.2 billion modernization of its port in Posorja. Today the port is South America’s leading cocaine distribution hub and local annual homicides are up by a factor of thirteen. In January 2024, a submarine carrying $27 million of cocaine was intercepted off the coast of Colombia’s notorious drug port, Buenaventura. These well-funded and often used gateways will be repurposed to introduce arms and other illicit goods from international waters to over-land smuggling networks where U.S. interdiction is complicated by terrain and sovereignty. Last week the Treasury Department sanctioned Gustavo Petro, the President of Columbia, on narcotics related charges not dissimilar from those levied on Maduro, signaling a coordinated policy effort to counter the drug trade’s infrastructure beyond the Caribbean. U.S. and partner warships and aircraft must be properly dispersed not only in the Caribbean, but to South America’s northern pacific coastlines to execute a broader policy to disrupt illicit trade on the periphery of Venezuela’s shores.
If the United States fails to counter illicit trade, China, Iran, and Russia will successfully challenge its regional hegemony. As these countries look to implement their Red Sea strategy in the Caribbean, attempts to import technology, arms, capital, and other dual-use materials to Venezuela or its proxies must be met with action. Washington must continue its clear messaging that its policy is to counter threats to U.S. national security, and U.S. naval forces in the Caribbean must be prepared to enforce this policy by countering illicit trade.
Sean F. Barry is a U.S. Navy Surface Warfare Officer and Integrated Air and Missile Defense Warfare Tactics Instructor serving as Plans and Tactics Officer and Air Defense Officer aboard USS Jack H. Lucas (DDG 125), the first Flight III Arleigh Burke-class Guided Missile Destroyer. He previously deployed to U.S. 5th Fleet and U.S. 6th Fleet in support of operations Prosperity Guardian, Poseidon Archer, and the defense of Israel. He is a graduate of Boston College and enrolled in the Naval War College’s Fleet Seminar Program. He can be followed on LinkedIn.
The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Department of the Navy or Department of Defense.