Like Modi, Reliance is Happy to Go Along With Trump's Venezuela Aggression; Risk of Mass Atrocities in India, US Holocaust Museum Warns; GOI Denies Seeking Phone Source Code
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January 12, 2026
Siddharth Varadarajan
Donald Trump threatened that the US would “run” Venezuela following the stunning kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and he has now posted a fake image of a Wikipedia page labeling himself as the “Acting President of Venezuela”. In reality, Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s Vice President and oil minister, was sworn in as Venezuela’s interim President last week. Rodríguez has decried the abduction of Maduro and his wife and insisted Venezuela will ever be any country’s colony again. Trump has said he is willing to work with Rodríguez, albeit threatening that she would “pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro” if she does not kowtow to US demands. So far, Rodriguez is showing no signs of doing that.
Speaking of kowtowing, Reliance Industries’ reported interest in Venezuelan crude – contingent on US regulatory clearance – underscores how Washington continues to shape global energy flows, including India’s. By seeking permission to buy oil effectively taken over by the US, the country’s largest conglomerate is implicitly acknowledging America’s de facto control over Venezuelan assets, notes columnist Brahma Chellaney.
For India, the implications go beyond commercial logic. Reliance’s Jamnagar refinery is designed for heavy crude, but swapping Russian oil for US-sanctioned Venezuelan barrels signals that India’s energy choices remain vulnerable to geopolitical pressure. After stepping away from Iranian and Venezuelan oil during Trump 1.0 and facing scrutiny over Russian imports in 2.0, this move risks reinforcing the perception that New Delhi’s oil basket can still be influenced – if not dictated – from Washington.
In an unusually grand ceremonial debut at Roosevelt House in New Delhi, America’s new ambassador to India, Sergio Gor, made no firm commitment to a presidential visit this year and urged progress on stalled trade negotiations, saying he hoped Trump would travel to New Delhi “in the next year or two” while insisting both sides were “determined to get there” on a deal. The vague timeline raises question marks on expectations that India would host a Quad
