It started quietly. U.S. Navy ships rotated through the Caribbean. Covert CIA teams slipped into Venezuela. Surveillance drones watched from far above. All of it built toward one night in January 2026 when every piece came together. By the time the helicopters lifted off, the mission to capture Nicolás Maduro was already moving.

This was Operation Absolute Resolve. It was one of the largest and most methodical U.S. special operations missions in Latin America in years. The goal was simple and direct... arrest Maduro alive and crack open the network that had protected him.

Who Maduro Is and How He Held Power

After Hugo Chávez died in 2013, Nicolás Maduro stepped into the presidency. He inherited a collapsing economy and a loyal security state. Under his rule, Venezuela became a mix of authoritarian control, economic free fall, and deep corruption.

In 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted him on narcoterrorism, cocaine trafficking, and related charges. Washington put a 15 million dollar reward on his capture. Maduro dismissed it as a political stunt.

In July 2024, he again claimed victory in a presidential election that the opposition and international observers called fraudulent. Opposition candidate Edmundo González was widely believed to be the real winner. After that, Maduro was president in practice but stripped of legitimacy abroad.

How the Operation Took Shape

August 2025: U.S. forces began a buildup in the southern Caribbean under an anti‑drug cover story. Inside Venezuela, CIA officers and assets started tracking Maduro’s pattern of life in detail... his travel routes, sleeping locations, eating habits, and even the routines of his pets.

Meanwhile: Venezuelan oil tankers were repeatedly seized under accusations of trafficking and sanctions violations. Each seizure raised the pressure on Caracas.

September 2025: U.S. Southern Command struck 35 vessels in the Caribbean that were believed to be tied to Venezuelan drug and smuggling networks. The strikes killed 114 people. White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles later described these actions as pressure designed to make Maduro “cry uncle.”

Around the same period, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado met U.S. officials in Miami and offered a clear incentive. If Maduro were removed, she promised to open Venezuelan oil and gas reserves to American companies.

November 2025: Quiet talks between Trump officials and Maduro’s government explored possible deals over oil access and sanctions relief. Nothing stuck. The USS Gerald R. Ford carrier group arrived in the region, a steel reminder of how serious Washington had become.

Early December 2025: U.S. forces were fully positioned but waited for the right trigger. Delta Force built and trained on an exact mockup of Maduro’s heavily fortified safe house. The structure was designed like a fortress, with steel doors so thick that blowtorches featured in rehearsals. At the same time, U.S. Coast Guard specialized units seized additional Venezuelan oil tankers in coordination with the Pentagon. Trump ramped up his rhetoric and argued publicly that Venezuela’s oil reserves had been “stolen” from the United States.

Mid December 2025: CIA covert operations inside Venezuela intensified. Maduro rejected a U.S. offer of safe exile in Turkey. The U.S. struck a remote northern port used by the gang Tren de Aragua for smuggling. Washington also signed an agreement with Trinidad and Tobago that quietly gave U.S. forces access to airfields for staging.

Before December 25, 2025: Trump gave his initial approval for Operation Absolute Resolve in a core team meeting that included Rubio, Hegseth, Ratcliffe, and Miller. Military and intelligence planners recommended waiting for better weather.

Around December 27, 2025: Trump called Maduro directly and warned him. “You got to surrender,” he said. Maduro reportedly considered it but ultimately refused.

Countdown to the Launch

By January 1 and 2, 2026, the intelligence picture was complete. The CIA, NSA, and NGA finalized months of analysis on Maduro’s daily habits and movements. A joint force of more than 15,000 troops sat on high alert. That force included Delta Force operators, FBI Hostage Rescue Team personnel, DEA agents, special operations aviation, and supporting units.

January 2, 2026, daytime: Vice President JD Vance met Trump at his West Palm Beach golf club to discuss the impending strikes. Vance left early so his movements would not alert any Venezuelan surveillance that tracked unusual motorcades. Later that day, Trump publicly announced that U.S. military strikes inside Venezuela were imminent.

January 2, 2026, evening: Weather over Caracas finally shifted. Wind dropped, clouds cleared, and a full moon lit the city. Commanders judged that this was the optimal window for visibility and for reducing civilian casualties. The final core team meetings confirmed that everyone was ready.

The Operation: Step by Step

1:01 a.m. EST, January 3 (2:01 a.m. local time):

Real time support:

Exfiltration:

3:29 a.m. EST, January 3, 2026 (4:29 a.m. local):

The Night Stalkers and Fire Support:

At the center of the aviation element was the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne), better known as the Night Stalkers. This is the U.S. Army’s premier special operations helicopter unit, based at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. They specialize in high risk, low level, night time missions using advanced night vision systems and precision flying. Their motto is simple... “Night Stalkers Don’t Quit.”

The unit has been involved in many of the most famous U.S. missions, including the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden and the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu, along with countless operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. For Operation Absolute Resolve, they played a central role in both insertion and extraction.

The Night Stalkers had trained for months near Venezuela before the raid. Assets were staged around the Caribbean, including CV‑22 Osprey tilt‑rotor aircraft and Army Rangers set up as a quick reaction force.

Eyewitness videos captured the Night Stalkers flying just above the rooftops on the outskirts of Caracas, dropping flares and maneuvering sharply to neutralize threats from anti aircraft weapons. The entire aviation portion has already been described inside the special operations community as a textbook example of high risk, joint special operations execution

Oil, Money, and How the World Shifted

With Maduro and Flores on the USS Iwo Jima and the operation confirmed as a success, attention turned to the one resource that had always made Venezuela strategic... oil.

The Kobeissi Letter framed the stakes in numbers:

“Venezuela currently has 303 billion barrels of crude oil reserves, which Trump says the U.S. now controls. Oil prices are trading at around 57 dollars a barrel, making Venezuela’s total reserves worth 17.3 trillion dollars. Even if the U.S. sells this oil for half of the market rate, that is still 8.7 trillion dollars. In other words, in 12 hours, the U.S. has gained control of oil reserves worth more than the entire GDP of all countries in the world, aside from the U.S. and China. That is four times larger than the GDP of Japan. Most people do not realize how much the world just changed.”

Crude at that point was trading near 57 dollars a barrel, down sharply from around 83 dollars in July 2024. Traders and analysts now had to process not only a regime change in Caracas, but also the fact that the country with the largest proven crude reserves on earth was suddenly under U.S. control and direction.

A Final Note on How It Started

In the days after the raid, another detail surfaced in media chatter. Reports suggested that one of the final straws inside Trump’s circle was not only the legal case or the oil calculus, but something more visual. Maduro had appeared on television dancing to a remix of his own speech, joking about “no crazy war” as things started to heat up… According to those rumors, that image of a laughing, dancing Maduro in the face of U.S. pressure helped convince some in Trump’s team that it was time to act.

Maduro had spent years surviving sanctions, indictments, and diplomatic isolation. In the end, his downfall came in a few short hours... under a full moon, with helicopters skimming over the Caribbean, Night Stalkers in the sky, and a joint force walking him out of his own house in handcuffs…Just as Trump had warned.

Iran enters day nine of protests, and for the first time in years Israel’s intelligence community is openly calling what is happening inside the country a serious and credible threat to the regime itself. Iran is now trapped in a twin crisis: an economy in freefall at home and growing military pressure from the United States and Israel abroad, with senior officials describing the system as operating in pure survival mode, without a clear exit from either front.

How the protests began and spread

The current wave of unrest has been ongoing for roughly eight days as of January 4, 2026. It began with strikes by merchants in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar after the rial plunged to historic lows and inflation accelerated sharply. What started as focused economic anger over a collapsing currency and rising prices quickly spilled out of the bazaar and into the streets of multiple cities across the country.

These demonstrations are still smaller than the 2019 fuel protests or the 2022 Mahsa Amini uprising, but they have nonetheless deeply alarmed Iran’s leadership. The regime has responded with heavy security deployments and repeated clashes with protesters. Reports now confirm protests in at least 108 towns and cities, signaling a depth and spread that security officials cannot easily dismiss.

At least 41 people have been killed during the protests, according to reports from the ground, underscoring both the intensity of the confrontation and the willingness of security forces to use deadly force.

A structurally broken economy

Inside Tehran, officials describe the economy as structurally broken. Sanctions continue to choke off revenue, while the costs of regional conflicts and the 2025 war with Israel, including U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, have drained state capacity. Long standing failures such as water shortages, pollution, and chronic power outages are feeding into broader public frustration.

Privately, senior figures acknowledge that there is no realistic plan to stabilize the economy in the near term. The system is effectively trapped: cutting back on regional projects risks signaling weakness, but maintaining them accelerates economic collapse and fuels more domestic anger.

All of this is unfolding just as external pressure intensifies. Israeli and U.S. officials continue to signal that military options remain on the table over Iran’s nuclear program and regional activities. Yet Iran’s leadership has shown little appetite for concessions, convinced that compromise right now would be read as weakness at precisely the moment it feels most vulnerable at home.

In parallel, international messaging has shifted to a more direct tone. Donald Trump has warned publicly that the United States is ready to intervene if Iranian authorities harm or kill protesters, while Israel has openly expressed solidarity with the demonstrators, portraying them as a genuine popular movement against repression.

The recent U.S. operation to capture Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, one of Iran’s closest allies, has only sharpened these fears. After U.S. forces seized Maduro, Trump announced that Washington would temporarily run Venezuela, and U.S. officials issued blunt warnings to other governments. In Tehran, the message was unmistakable: regimes that believe they are untouchable can, in fact, be targeted.

Against that backdrop, the U.S. State Department’s Persian‑language account drove the point home with a simple message:

“President Trump is a man of action.

If you didn’t know, now you know.”

Regime fear and contingency planning

On the Iranian side, new intelligence reporting suggests the leadership is visibly rattled. An assessment cited by The Times says Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has prepared a contingency plan to leave Tehran, potentially heading to Moscow, if unrest spreads nationwide and if security forces begin to defy orders.

According to that report, the plan is restricted to a tight inner circle, with assets already positioned abroad, and modeled in part on Bashar al‑Assad’s established refuge in Russia. It reflects concern over Khamenei’s health, his isolation during recent protests, and the risk that mounting economic strain and public anger could fracture loyalty within the security apparatus.

At the same time, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have launched a missile and air defense drill, with air defense fire reported in multiple cities including Tehran and Shiraz. This serves as both a readiness test and a signal, underscoring that even as the regime confronts unrest at home, it is preparing for the possibility of confrontation from abroad.

Yesterday (January 4), Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened extended security consultations through the evening, with discussions focused on Iran. For Israel, the latest intelligence assessment is clear: these protests represent a serious and credible threat to the Iranian regime, not just another passing wave of unrest.

Streets on edge, violence rising, and a possible regime Last Stand:

On the ground, the protests are showing no sign of slowing down. In fact, they are growing. The levels of violence in the streets are also increasing, with civilians being killed and others seen roaming with guns and tanks of gasoline, which they are using to set Islamic regime police on fire. Many of these weapons were taken off guards during the past few days of demonstrations, an indicator that parts of the crowd are now armed with captured state hardware.

There are also counter protests in favor of the Islamic regime, but footage from those gatherings appears to show primarily older participants who look tired and unenergetic. In the long run, these staged displays of support look inconsequential compared to the breadth and intensity of the anti‑regime mobilization.

Given the reports about Khamenei’s potential plan to flee to Russia, it is obvious that he is very scared, and it does not take a genius to see that these protests are a very serious and credible threat, exactly as Israel’s intelligence assessment describes. If this really is the beginning of the end for the regime, it is almost certain that it will try to lash out at least one last time. That could mean attacks on Israel, U.S. assets, or both, as a final show of defiance before losing its grip. Iran is also very nervous that Israel might take advantage of the protests, adding to the unrest. Things could get crazy real fast.

Keep in mind that until we begin to see defections from the Iranian army, the Iranian army still has control. When that does happen, that would mark a serious change, and things will likely begin to spiral much faster from there.

Now that the U.S. has captured Maduro in Venezuela, all of America’s enemies have a fresh example that they are not to be trifled with, which only adds to the fear inside Tehran. For the Islamic Republic, the walls are closing in from both the street and the outside world, and day nine of the protests looks less like a passing incident and more like the opening phase of a genuine regime crisis.