A Venezuelan naval vessel was spotted on 8 May sailing toward Guyana’s territorial waters, equipped with stealth technology and anti-ship missiles from China and Iran, according to The Spectator.
The Venezuela-Guyana conflict is ostensibly about a century-old border dispute of the territory of the Esequibo − two-thirds of Guyana’s mass.
The conflict is actually about maritime dominion in the Atlantic. Venezuela neither has the means nor the motivation to recover the territory.
It is suggested that Iran, Russia and China are encouraging Venezuela to start the first inter-state war in Latin America since 1941.
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy armaments have already been supplied to Venezuela in large quantities for over a decade.
Armaments include long-range drones, smart bombs, cruise missiles, rockets, and combat boats. These systems are meant for asymmetric amphibious assaults, similar to those used by the Houthi rebels in Yemen in the Red Sea.
The Iran-sponsored Houthi attack is a template that Iran is taking into the Caribbean. It is aimed at the United States, with the Venezuela-Guyana conflict as the catalyst.
In 2020 the International Court of Justice accepted the Esequibo case under its jurisdiction and began the proceedings to arbitrate the border dispute. Venezuela’s Maduro regime does not recognise the ICJ’s authority. It has delayed ‘Guayana-Esequiba’ as Venezuela’s twenty-fourth state and its casus belli for Venezuela’s war.
The Guyanese GDP has grown at more than 30 percent per year from a recent offshore oil discovery. The 11 billion barrels of light crude discovered in 2015 are the source of Guyana’s recent economic boom.
If Venezuela and Iran could disrupt commercial shipping in the maritime corridor between the Atlantic and the Caribbean Sea, Guyana’s boom could go bust. Guyana does not have the military means to deter Venezuela.
The South Atlantic is known for transatlantic criminal and terrorist networks – Hezbollah operates from Brazil to Guinea Bissau.
[Image: SurinameCentral, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=131336995]