Venezuela:

US Coup Will Go Nowhere

TEHRAN (defapress)- US Vice President Mike Pence has once again made clear that the Trump administration is firmly on the side of the coup plotters in Venezuela as violent clashes between the elected government and US-backed opposition forces led by Juan Guaido continue to escalate.

News ID: 77167

Date: 02 May 2019 - 14:14

This support for the ongoing coup attempt in Venezuela should stun no one. This comes as Guaido keeps calling for a military coup against the government of President Nicolas Maduro that so far has gone nowhere. The US Vice President's statement of support for the coup plot has also been echoed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton - who else?

It seems the regime-change cult was well prepared for this worsening crisis in its backyard. One day before Guaido's ceremony, on January 22, Vice President Mike Pence used a video address to directly urge Venezuelans to go to the streets to show support for the self-proclaimed president: “We stand with you, and we will stay with you until democracy is restored and you reclaim your birthright of Libertad,” Pence said in his speech.

Both Pence and Pompeo say the US supports the Venezuelan people. In reality, however, they refuse to acknowledge that Maduro was elected by the Venezuelan people.

In American democracy, the ballot is said to be the best place to express people's wishes and hopes. The Venezuelan opposition won a victory in the National Assembly on December 6, 2015. But the opposition boycotted the presidential election on May 20, 2018. Who was to blame for the boycott?

In retrospect, people can easily conclude that the US and the Venezuelan opposition orchestrated the whole drama so that, they wish, Maduro's presidential victory could be annulled, paving the way for Guaido's swearing-in.

One of the basic principles of the United Nations Charter and international law is non-interference in other nations' domestic affairs. In the age of globalization, as the world has become a global village, non-interference has become all the more important and relevant, while this international principle has lost its meaning to the US and its allies like Saudi Arabia and Israel more than ever.

That is to say, Venezuela's affairs must be and can only be dealt with by the Venezuelan people.

Following the clashes between supporters of Guaido and Venezuelan government security forces, the Iranian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that “violence” could not be a solution to political disagreements in Venezuela.

Spokesman Seyyed Abbas Mousavi said the Islamic Republic is closely following the developments in the South American country, stressing that “chaos and violence can, by no means, be a solution to political differences” in the country.

Whether or not the US will overthrow the Venezuelan government with military force is anybody's guess. But people in Venezuela and elsewhere will not forget that the US militarily intervened with the domestic affairs of the Dominican Republic in 1965, Grenada in 1983, and Panama in 1989.

Luckily, this time, all the Latin American countries are opposed to US invasion against Venezuela despite the fact that some of them support Guaido and the opposition.

Needless to say, people have elected Chavez and Maduro in the last two decades to show their choice, leaving the US and its allies no pretext to intervene in Venezuela's internal affairs. Intervention in other countries' internal affairs has long been a norm of conduct for the US and its allies all throughout the last several decades, an illegal move that has been happening in flagrant violation of the UN and its charter. Hence, the US is showing no different policy nowadays, but these are the other world powers that are at the focus of the world public opinion since they seem to be duty-bound to deter Washington's continued disrespect for the international community as the UN is too weak to counter the US bullying and aggressions and given its veto-weilding power at the council.

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