Is Venezuela Preparing for War?
21st May 2024
Seems like.
Earlier this month, two American supersonic fighter jets flew over Georgetown, the capital city of Guyana. The US show of force is not only for the attention of Venezuela’s socialist regime who has been escalating toward a military conflict with its smaller neighbor since at least September 2023 when Nicolás Maduro returned from Beijing. The message of sending two F/A-18 Super Hornets flying from a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier sailing in the Caribbean Sea is also for the Islamic Republic of Iran.
At first glance, the Venezuela-Guyana conflict is about a century-old border dispute of a dense territory called the Esequibo that makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s land mass but only 15 percent of its population. But the conflict is much more than that and has less to do with Guyana’s land border and more to do with the maritime domain.
An Iranian warship, a merchant ship converted to a military vessel for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy called the Shahid Mahdavi crossed the equator into the Southern Hemisphere for the first time on May 4. Its mission is secret and destination unknown. Three years ago, two other warships from Iran’s conventional navy followed a similar route when they sailed around the Cape of Good Hope and crossed into the South Atlantic with a reported destination of Venezuela. Back then, the warships changed course and proceeded around West Africa en route to St. Petersburg.