TEHRAN — The twin earthquakes that struck north-central coastal Venezuela on June 24, registering magnitudes of 7.2 and 7.5, brought immense destruction to Caracas and La Guaira. With the death toll nearing 1000 as of writing this article, Western media frames the catastrophe as an isolated natural event met by American charity.

However, the harrowing reality on the ground tells a much darker story. That thousands of victims have remained trapped for days, while families helplessly listened to their loved ones perish, is the result of a man-made blockade.

Enforced vulnerability and sanctions

For years, unilateral U.S. sanctions systematically starved Venezuela of the financial resources and industrial procurement necessary to maintain its civil defense infrastructure.

These restrictions blocked heavy machinery, hydraulic equipment, and vital spare parts.

When the ground shook, local municipal teams were left structurally paralyzed. While regional neighbors such as Colombia and Mexico scrambled to send immediate assistance, the critical first hours were lost to an engineered technological poverty.

Now, the very architects of this deprivation present themselves as benevolent saviors. Although Colombian President Gustavo Petro explicitly urged Washington to lift the blockade to maximize recovery capacity, the U.S. Treasury merely issued a restrictive, temporary waiver known as General License No. 60.

Arriving nearly 48 hours late, this narrow mechanism keeps all frozen Venezuelan assets locked while offering a superficial public relations window.

The situation is bleak. The economic arsonists arrive with a garden hose, demanding absolute gratitude for relieving a fraction of the misery they carefully manufactured while they continue positioning themselves to plunder the very resources that made Venezuela a target in the first place.

Military footprints under charitable veneer

This highly publicized humanitarian pivot must not be viewed separately from the lawless aggression that reshaped the country earlier this year.

On January 3, U.S. forces illegally abducted President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, plunging Caracas into turmoil.

Since this overt exercise in forced political engineering, Washington has sought ways to firmly entrench its military presence and validate an interim political structure. The earthquake may have provided a perfect pretext.

The deployment of Southern Command assets, including the USS Fort Lauderdale, C-17 airlifts, and teams under Kevin J. Jarrard from the U.S. Marine Corps, serves a dual purpose.

Under the guise of search and rescue, Washington is putting boots on the ground, establishing logistical perimeters around critical Caribbean ports and mapping internal infrastructure.

Additionally, the promotional videos released by SOUTHCOM represent a soft-power campaign to normalize a military occupation, transforming an act of imperial intrusion into an essential stabilization project.

Israeli incursion and ‘a good crisis’

Equally troubling is the announced arrival of Israeli aid delegations in Venezuela. Since Hugo Chávez severed diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv in 2009 in protest of Israel’s assault on Gaza, Venezuela has remained one of the few countries in the region to maintain a clear political distance from Israel and its regional agenda.

That longstanding barrier is now being quietly dismantled amid the chaos of a national tragedy. Israeli and Zionist aid organizations, including IsraAID, Natan, ZAKA, and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, have announced plans to deploy personnel to Venezuela.

Israel has likewise confirmed that it is assessing the situation and preparing an official aid mission. Notably, some organizations are mobilizing from neighboring Colombia, where they already maintain an operational presence close to Venezuela’s borders.

In the aftermath of a disaster, doors that would normally remain closed can suddenly be opened, granting outsiders access to local authorities, critical infrastructure, communications networks, and sensitive geographic information.

Thus, the influx of Israeli personnel raises the prospect of a long-term political, intelligence, and strategic presence established under the cover of emergency relief.

The rubble will eventually be cleared, but the networks, relationships, and footholds established in the aftermath could remain long after the emergency has passed.

While Venezuelans dig through rubble and mourn their dead, Washington and Tel Aviv are using the pretext of humanitarianism to advance objectives that extend well beyond disaster response.

Beneath their rhetoric lies a familiar logic, elucidated in a quote attributed to Winston Churchill and infamously repeated by the ultra-Zionist former White House chief of staff and presidential hopeful Rahm Emanuel in 2008: “Never let a good crisis go to waste.”