On June 5, 2025, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar spoke at a post-Cab­i­net brief­ing in re­sponse to state­ments made by the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment and said, “I will speak to the Min­is­ter of De­fence and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to seek ad­vice on pro­tec­tions for our Coast Guard to use dead­ly force on any uniden­ti­fied ves­sel en­ter­ing T&T wa­ters from Venezuela.”

De­spite this, the Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs Sean Sobers met with the Am­bas­sador of Venezuela to T&T af­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s fiery rhetoric and the news­pa­pers re­port­ed that both sides agreed to open diplo­mat­ic chan­nels.

Jour­nal­ist Clint Chan Tack re­port­ed on June 12th that a NAC­TA poll found that there was wide­spread sup­port for the Prime Min­is­ter’s fiery rhetoric.

“NAC­TA said its poll found many of the re­spon­dents de­scrib­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­sponse to the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment’s claims as bril­liant. They say she stands and de­fends her ground. They said the Prime Min­is­ter spoke with a self-as­sured, con­trolled, cool, straight, steady, lev­el head. NAC­TA said the ma­jor­i­ty of the poll’s re­spon­dents found Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s state­ments to be an­a­lyt­i­cal and a demon­stra­tion of her knowl­edge of geopol­i­tics.”

But NAC­TA added that the poll al­so had some re­spon­dents who felt Per­sad-Bisses­sar was clev­er­ly “gallery­ing to the US.”

I agree with the sen­ti­ment that Per­sad-Bisses­sar is “gallery­ing” to the US, as I not­ed in pre­vi­ous columns that the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) has adopt­ed pol­i­cy po­si­tions sim­i­lar to the Re­pub­li­can par­ty of the US. Clos­ing the US bor­der re­mains front and cen­tre of Don­ald Trump’s MA­GA ide­ol­o­gy and such rhetoric from Per­sad-Bisses­sar may be in­tend­ed to make Nicolás Maduro think that the UNC may be a Re­pub­li­can-backed gov­ern­ment.

Look­ing at glob­al trends, bor­der skir­mish­es that fall short of war are fright­en­ing but com­mon­place. On May 28, 2025, a Cam­bo­di­an sol­dier was killed in a clash with Thai­land at a dis­put­ed bor­der cross­ing. In­dia and Pak­istan en­gaged in a bor­der skir­mish this year that saw bomb­ing, ar­tillery fired and air­craft shot down.

Thank­ful­ly, on­ly words were ex­changed be­tween T&T and Venezuela this year.

Venezuela has a his­to­ry of send­ing ships in­to Guyanese wa­ters and ques­tion­ing Guyana’s bor­ders and ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty. On May 26, 2025, France24 news re­port­ed: “Venezuela elect­ed of­fi­cials on Sun­day for the first time for Es­se­qui­bo re­gion, an oil-rich ter­ri­to­ry that Cara­cas claims from neigh­bour­ing Guyana as part of a cen­turies-old dis­pute.”

This is a breach of an or­der grant­ed by the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice and the gen­er­al prin­ci­ples of in­ter­na­tion­al law en­shrined in Ar­ti­cle 2 of the UN char­ter that pre­vents sov­er­eign states from threats or the use of force against the ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty of an­oth­er state.

Iran­ian hy­poth­e­sis

The Mehr news agency, spon­sored by the gov­ern­ment of Iran, cov­ered this mat­ter in an ar­ti­cle en­ti­tled “Ten­sions spi­ral be­tween Venezuela, Trinidad and To­ba­go,” show­ing Iran­ian in­ter­est in the is­sue.

My opin­ion is that the on­ly na­tion that ben­e­fits from Venezuela dis­tract­ing the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion by mak­ing veiled threats is Iran. While Rus­sia and Venezuela have ties, the US would nev­er start a war with Rus­sia due to the threat of mu­tu­al­ly as­sured de­struc­tion by both sides with nu­clear weapons.

Maria Vil­lar­roel, writ­ing for the Latin Times in Jan­u­ary 2025, re­port­ed the po­ten­tial con­struc­tion of an Iran­ian drone fac­to­ry in Venezuela in a bid to in­crease mil­i­tary ties be­tween the na­tions. Iran­ian of­fi­cials and mil­i­tary per­son­nel are al­ready re­sid­ing in Venezuela, pos­si­bly help­ing to train its mil­i­tary who lack the depth of ex­per­tise that Iran has had fight­ing wars.

The need to tie up US naval ships and in­tel­li­gence re­sources to mon­i­tor Venezuela will make Trump think twice about an ex­ten­sive bomb­ing cam­paign against Iran. Iran­ian agents can al­so use Venezuela as a base to strike against US oil in­ter­ests in Guyana by at­tack­ing Exxon­Mo­bil oil rigs.

Per­haps one of the many rea­sons why Trump was hes­i­tant to join Is­rael in strikes on Iran­ian nu­clear fa­cil­i­ties, is the risk of proxy at­tacks against US in­ter­ests in the Caribbean, es­pe­cial­ly Exxon’s oil rigs in Guyanese wa­ters.

Iran’s strate­gic pref­er­ence is to arm proxy groups like the Houthis in Yemen to tie up US re­sources de­fend­ing ship­ping lanes.

If Iran and the US were to wage an all-out war, Iran would seek to close the Strait of Hor­muz, which would block 20 per cent of the world’s oil sup­ply, send­ing en­er­gy prices sky high and caus­ing a glob­al eco­nom­ic re­ces­sion.

Us­ing Venezuela as a base, Iran­ian drones could al­so at­tack Exxon oil rigs as a form of re­tal­i­a­tion against the Unit­ed States. While such a sce­nario seems far-fetched, read­ers should be re­mind­ed that the Caribbean was a the­atre dur­ing World War II. Dur­ing the 1942 Bat­tle of the Caribbean, Ger­man sub­ma­rine U-129, un­der the com­mand of Nicholas As­chmann, sank the tanker Nord­van­gen near Trinidad dur­ing WWII. The Bat­tle of the Caribbean saw Ger­man sub­marines sink 263 ships, ac­cord­ing to the US Naval In­sti­tute.

In this heat­ed geopo­lit­i­cal era, T&T must walk cau­tious­ly to en­sure that its sov­er­eign­ty is re­spect­ed even while the threat of World War III looms omi­nous­ly in the dis­tance.