Title: JOHN KIRIAKOU: Venezuela Wasn't About Oil - It Was About the
Show: Unfiltered With S.A.M.
Date: 2026-01-26
URL: https://youtu.be/Y-T1JZ3Tj7s
Duration: 7:00

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[00:00] Joining me today to help unpack what's unfolding across several geopolitical hot zones, bringing his trademark uh candor and straight talk to the conversation is author, whistleblower, former assistant to the CIA deputy director, John Kiryaku. Welcome back, John. Thank you so much, Suzy. It's good to see you. Same here. John, I wanted to get right into things because a lot of things are happening at the same time at different parts of the globe. So let's start off with Venezuela. Following the capture of Maduro, Trump has openly floated

[00:31] the what do you say the the possibility of US intervention in all these other um jurisdictions, Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, Iran, and most importantly um Greenland. In that context, I mean I feel that we're witnessing a historic pivot in how diplomacy and foreign policy Jon are conducted. one that no longer um fits Realpolitik or any established school of thought, but instead reflects a blunt might is right logic and the open return of a colonial empire.

[01:05] I I couldn't agree with you more. Um boy, there are so many different facets to this to this issue. I'm hearing a lot in Washington, well, it was about the oil. It's all about the oil. It's always about the oil. I don't think this is about the oil. I think that and well, you know what? Let me tell you why I don't think it's about the oil. Because Venezuela has some of the dirtiest oil in the world. It's it's very heavy. It's the highest sulfur content of any oil in the world. And so

[01:40] it has to be it has to be injected with with chemicals in order to make it viable. And it most of it can't be used for gasoline. You have to use it for home heating oil because it's so heavy. Uh for many many years, for decades, the only place where Venezuela could refine that oil was in Texas. Because in Houston, we have specialized refineries that can handle high sulfur content oil. It's similar to the oil in northwestern Canada. We don't really need that oil. We're

[02:14] sitting on an ocean of oil uh in in terms of um shale oil, fracking oil here in the United States, an ocean of it. We don't need it. It was more about the dollar than about the oil. In 2019 2018, Kuwait sold a shipment of oil to China and they took payment in Yuan. This was the very first time that a major oil deal was brokered, not using the dollar. The United States recognized that as a

[02:51] long-term threat to the American economy. And so what better way to ensure that the petro-dollar continues to be the currency used in international oil transactions than to overthrow the government that was leading the charge to use the Yuan, to use a basket of currencies, to use the Euro or to promote the creation of a unified bricks currency. So I think this was more about the dollar. Now

[03:26] Nicholas Maduro, I don't believe for one minute that Nicholas Maduro was running a terrorist state. I don't believe for a minute that Nicholas Maduro was a "narco terrorist". If you want to really hit narotism, attack Mexico. That's where the cartels are. It's it's the Mexican cartels working with the Chinese to flood the United States with fentinyl, for example. It's not uh Venezuela. I read something in the Washington Post just yesterday or the day before accusing

[04:00] Venezuela of being a base for Hezbollah and the Iranian government. Well, you know what? I wrote an article about that for the for the Los Angeles Times. Do you know what that base is? It's a bicycle factory. Yeah, it's a bicycle factory. But then the argument today is, well, they could turn that into a factory for tanks if they wanted to. Yeah, but they haven't. And the Iranians have been there for 20 years. So what now? Today, you're going to decide that this is somehow a threat to the United States, that there's a bicycle factory in Venezuela. So really, I think that Maduro was

[04:37] easy to overthrow. Um, I think that um that this this kidnapping of Maduro has sent shock waves uh all around the world. I think that the US calculated correctly that the Chinese wouldn't say anything, that the Russians wouldn't say anything, that the Indians wouldn't say anything. And at the same time, we just cut off Cuba's sole source of oil. And I wouldn't be surprised now if Cuba falls in the next 6 months. This is something that the United States has sought for the last

[05:12] 65 years. So I think there are a lot of aspects to this. Now you raised Greenland, too. I have um I have a friend uh in the White House with whom I had coffee yesterday and I said, "Come on, man. What is this with Greenland? We look like fools." And he said, "They're serious about Greenland. They're not going to attack it, but they certainly want to buy it". I said, "But the the king of

[05:43] Denmark and the prime minister of Denmark have both said that Greenland is not for sale." And he said, "Well, look at it this way." He said, "What the U.S. position is going to be in the coming months is that the treaty that we signed with Denmark in whenever it was 1951 or 1953, giving us essentially unfettered rights to have bases in Greenland and, you know, take uh rare earth metals from Greenland, whatever. We're going to rely on that with the argument that Greenland

[06:18] is de-facto ours anyway. So just take this money for it and we're going to keep it". I said, "Well, that's a violation of international law." And I said, "One of the things I think the the White House is underestimating is the unity of the European Union on this issue. Just day before yesterday, every member country in the European Union signed a document pledging support for Denmark. I think that if the United States were to either forcibly take Greenland or to coerce

[06:54] Denmark into giving up Greenland, it would be the end of NATO. And what would what we would see in NATO's place would be a unified military of the European Union, which is what they're striving to do through the SAFE u uh doctrine. That's exactly right. Already it's already um started being implemented. Very interesting. Very interesting the information you just shared.
