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Tareck El Aissami… Venezuela’s Next President?

Tarek El Aissami. (Getty Images)
Tarek El Aissami. (Getty Images)
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Tareck El Aissami… Venezuela’s Next President?

Tarek El Aissami. (Getty Images)
Tarek El Aissami. (Getty Images)

Perhaps “state of doubt” could be the term that most accurately describes the current situation in Venezuela, this Latin American country that used to be one of the richest in the world due to is massive oil reserves. Now, the country is suffering from a major economic and political crisis, whose outcome is difficult to predict.

Up until 1999, Venezuela had been ruled by the right and centrist wings, but that year, the system was toppled by late leader Hugo Chavez, who brought about a new “21st century socialism.” The system was kept in place by his successor Nicolas Maduro, who is now facing one of the worst economic and social crises in the modern history of South America.

Many have turned to the Venezuelan president’s second in command, Tareck El Aissami.

Many see the Syrian native as Maduro’s potential successor, describing him as the strong “man in the shadows”, who has found himself in the spotlight.

Socialist Maduro is facing daily opposition protests by the citizens against his government. The leader has however sought to escape his current problems with the formation earlier this week of the Constituent Assembly that has the power to rewrite the constitution. Clearly, Maduro is seeking to weaken the opposition-controlled parliament through the formation of this assembly. The parliament is controlled by the liberal right opposition that is backed by some neighboring countries, and more importantly, the United States and European Union.

The outlook for Venezuela seems complicated as the economic crisis has led to a major shortage in food and medicine and amid a political crisis that observers believe will take a long time to be resolved. At a time when the leftist government is keen to tighten its grip on power, it seems that negotiations between it and the opposition will not be possible at this moment given the rising death toll in the protests that have raged for months. The opposition itself seems divided over a number of issues, but they are united over their desire to overthrow Maduro.

Options for change

Despite all this, many observers believe that the options for change in Venezuela lie either through a real negotiation process that would lead to a middle ground that appeases the government or opposition. This could take the form of the establishment of a transitional government or an overhaul of the cabinet and system of governance.

The armed forces, however, are a central component of any possible change in the country, noted experts. Chavez, who led the 1999 socialist revolt, was an army officer. Today, many active and retired officers hold government positions.

Vice President and Interior Minister Aissami is one of the non-military “graduates of the Chavez school”, who can replace Maduro.

As commander of the defense and security council of Venezuela, Aissami is responsible for national defense and the strategy of maintaining internal security in the face of protests and disturbances. He is in fact the second man in the pyramid of power in the South American country.

Despite this, analysts and researchers in the US and Colombia, Venezuela’s “right-wing” neighbor, have not ceased their campaign of accusing him of all sorts of charges, ranging from money-laundering to corruption to supporting terrorism. These are all claims that Aissami has denied and which he considers to be an integral part of the political war that Washington is waging against the leftist system in Caracas.

Profile

Tareck Zeidan El Aissami was born on November 12, 1974 in El Vigía, Mérida in western Venezuela. He is the son of a Druze immigrant family that came from Syria’s Sweida region. He was born to Zeidan “Carlos” Amin El Aissami and a mother from the Lebanese Maddah family. He grew up among five children, is now married and has two children of his own.

During his youth, Aissami became a member of the local Arab Baath socialist party in Venezuela. He was a supporter of Chavez during his failed coup in February 1992.

He is also a direct blood relative of Shibli Aissami, general aide of the popular command of the Iraqi branch of the Baath Party.

The Aissami family originally hails from the town of Amtan in the southern Syrian district of Sweida and the town of Hasbaya in southeast Lebanon. Aissam is the name of a small village that lies on the eastern foothills of Jabal al-Sheikh (Mount Hermon) in western Syria.

His mother’s Maddah family hails from the town of Maymas in Hasbaya in southeast Lebanon.

Radical student activity

Tareck El Aissami attended the University of the Andes (ULA) in Mérida where he studied law and criminology. While still a student, he met Adan Chavez, former minister of education (from 2007-2008) and the older brother of the future President Hugo Chavez. Influenced by the older Chavez, he soon became close to him and became active in leftist student groups that are inspired by revolutionary movements. Aissami soon joined the Utopia leftist student movement and eventually was elected head of the university’s student union.

A few days after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Tareck and his father Zeidan attended a press conference by the Iraqi ambassador to Venezuela to voice their solidarity with the Iraqi people. That year marked the beginning of Tareck El Aissami’s relationship with Hugo Chavez. During his post graduate studies, Aissami, began supporting Chavez's Fifth Republic Movement. He continued to bolster his ties with Chavez following his graduation and many of the friends he made during his university years went on to assume government positions under the late leader’s rule.

Aissami kicked off his rapid political rise after the success of Chavez’s 1999 and 2013 “revolt”. He was elected to parliament in 2005 and in 2007 was appointed deputy interior minister for citizen security.

His major political leap however took place in 2008 when Chavez appointed him interior and defense minister. He retained these two portfolios even after being elected governor of the state of Aragua in 2012.

After Chavez’s death and Maduro’s ascension to power in 2013, Aissami remained a key figure in political life and he was chosen as vice president in January 2017.

A Colombian academic pointed out that the constitution does not grant the president of Venezuela power over security agencies. Aissami is in fact the real head of national security and defense through his command of the defense and security council.

Accusations and denial

Along with his rise in the political ranks, western intelligence, political and economic circles were attempting to charge Aissami with all sorts of accusations. Director of the Center for a Secure Free Society and security and terrorism expert Joseph Humire accused Aissami and First Lady Cilia Flores of running a major criminal organization in the Venezuelan government.

Aissami’s appointment as vice president was considered “very controversial” on the local and international scenes due to his alleged connections to drug trafficking and terrorism, said Humire. Aissami’s role in drug trafficking came to the forefront in 2010 after the arrest of Walid Maklad, a major drug trafficker. The Venezuelan of Syrian origins was arrested in Colombia.

Maklad alleged at the time that the Venezuelan government also had ties with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), organized crime and drugs smuggling operations.

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Features

Russia, China Unlikely to Back Iran Against US Military Threats

A man stands by the wreckage of a burnt bus bearing a banner (unseen) that reads "This was one of Tehran’s new buses that was paid for with the money of the people’s taxes,” in Tehran's Sadeghieh Square on January 15, 2026. (AFP)
A man stands by the wreckage of a burnt bus bearing a banner (unseen) that reads "This was one of Tehran’s new buses that was paid for with the money of the people’s taxes,” in Tehran's Sadeghieh Square on January 15, 2026. (AFP)
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Russia, China Unlikely to Back Iran Against US Military Threats

A man stands by the wreckage of a burnt bus bearing a banner (unseen) that reads "This was one of Tehran’s new buses that was paid for with the money of the people’s taxes,” in Tehran's Sadeghieh Square on January 15, 2026. (AFP)
A man stands by the wreckage of a burnt bus bearing a banner (unseen) that reads "This was one of Tehran’s new buses that was paid for with the money of the people’s taxes,” in Tehran's Sadeghieh Square on January 15, 2026. (AFP)

While Russia and China are ready to back protest-rocked Iran under threat by US President Donald Trump, that support would diminish in the face of US military action, experts told AFP.

Iran is a significant ally to the two nuclear powers, providing drones to Russia and oil to China. But analysts told AFP the two superpowers would only offer diplomatic and economic aid to Tehran, to avoid a showdown with Washington.

"China and Russia don't want to go head-to-head with the US over Iran," said Ellie Geranmayeh, a senior policy expert for the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank.

Tehran, despite its best efforts over decades, has failed to establish a formal alliance with Moscow and Beijing, she noted.

If the United States carried out strikes on Iran, "both the Chinese and the Russians will prioritize their bilateral relationship with Washington", Geranmayeh said.

China has to maintain a "delicate" rapprochement with the Trump administration, she argued, while Russia wants to keep the United States involved in talks on ending the war in Ukraine.

"They both have much higher priorities than Iran."

- Ukraine before Iran -

Despite their close ties, "Russia-Iranian treaties don't include military support" -- only political, diplomatic and economic aid, Russian analyst Sergei Markov told AFP.

Alexander Gabuev, director of Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said Moscow would do whatever it could "to keep the regime afloat".

But "Russia's options are very limited," he added.

Faced with its own economic crisis, "Russia cannot become a giant market for Iranian products" nor can it provide "a lavish loan", Gabuev said.

Nikita Smagin, a specialist in Russia-Iran relations, said that in the event of US strikes, Russia could do "almost nothing".

"They don't want to risk military confrontation with other great powers like the US -- but at the same time, they're ready to send weaponry to Iran," he said.

"Using Iran as a bargaining asset is a normal thing for Russia," Smagin said of the longer-term strategy, at a time when Moscow is also negotiating with Washington on Ukraine.

Markov agreed. "The Ukrainian crisis is much more important for Russia than the Iranian crisis," he argued.

- Chinese restraint -

China is also ready to help Tehran "economically, technologically, militarily and politically" as it confronts non-military US actions such as trade pressure and cyberattacks, Hua Po, a Beijing-based independent political observer, told AFP.

If the United States launched strikes, China "would strengthen its economic ties with Iran and help it militarize in order to contribute to bogging the United States down in a war in the Middle East," he added.

Until now, China has been cautious and expressed itself "with restraint", weighing the stakes of oil and regional stability, said Iran-China relations researcher Theo Nencini of Sciences Po Grenoble.

"China is benefiting from a weakened Iran, which allows it to secure low-cost oil... and to acquire a sizeable geopolitical partner," he said.

However, he added: "I find it hard to see them engaging in a showdown with the Americans over Iran."

Beijing would likely issue condemnations, but not retaliate, he said.

Hua said the Iran crisis was unlikely to have an impact on China-US relations overall.

"The Iranian question isn't at the heart of relations between the two countries," he argued.

"Neither will sever ties with the other over Iran."

Features

Beirut’s Commodore Hotel, a Haven for Journalists During Lebanon’s Civil War, Shuts Down

People stand outside the closed Commodore hotel, in Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP)
People stand outside the closed Commodore hotel, in Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP)
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Beirut’s Commodore Hotel, a Haven for Journalists During Lebanon’s Civil War, Shuts Down

People stand outside the closed Commodore hotel, in Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP)
People stand outside the closed Commodore hotel, in Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP)

During Lebanon’s civil war, the Commodore Hotel in western Beirut's Hamra district became iconic among the foreign press corps.

For many, it served as an unofficial newsroom where they could file dispatches even when communications systems were down elsewhere. Armed guards at the door provided some sense of protection as sniper fights and shelling were turning the cosmopolitan city to rubble.

The hotel even had its own much-loved mascot: a cheeky parrot.

The Commodore endured for decades after the 15-year civil war ended in 1990 — until this week, when it closed for good.

The main gate of the nine-story hotel with more than 200 rooms was shuttered Monday. Officials at the Commodore refused to speak to the media about the decision to close.

Although the country’s economy is beginning to recover from a protracted financial crisis that began in 2019, tensions in the region and the aftermath of the Israel-Hezbollah war that was halted by a tenuous ceasefire in November 2024 are keeping many tourists away. Lengthy daily electricity cuts force businesses to rely on expensive private generators.

The Commodore is not the first of the crisis-battered country’s once-bustling hotels to shut down in recent years.

But for journalists who lived, worked and filed their dispatches there, its demise hits particularly hard.

“The Commodore was a hub of information — various guerrilla leaders, diplomats, spies and of course scores of journalists circled the cafes and lounges,” said Tim Llewellyn, a former BBC Middle East correspondent who covered the civil war. “On one occasion (late Palestinian leader) Yasser Arafat himself dropped in to sip coffee with” with the hotel manager's father, he recalled.

A line to the outside world

At the height of the civil war, when telecommunications were dysfunctional and much of Beirut was cut off from the outside world, it was at the Commodore where journalists found land lines and Telex machines that always worked to send reports to their media organizations around the globe.

Across the front office desk in the wide lobby of the Commodore, there were two teleprinters that carried reports of The Associated Press and Reuters news agencies.

“The Commodore had a certain seedy charm. The rooms were basic, the mattresses lumpy and the meal fare wasn’t spectacular,” said Robert H. Reid, the AP’s former Middle East regional editor, who was among the AP journalists who covered the war. The hotel was across the street from the international agency’s Middle East head office at the time.

“The friendly staff and the camaraderie among the journalist-guests made the Commodore seem more like a social club where you could unwind after a day in one of the world’s most dangerous cities,” Reid said.

Llewellyn remembers that the hotel manager at the time, Yusuf Nazzal, told him in the late 1970s “that it was I who had given him the idea” to open such a hotel in a war zone.

Llewellyn said that during a long chat with Nazzal on a near-empty Middle East Airlines Jumbo flight from London to Beirut in the fall of 1975, he told him that there should be a hotel that would make sure journalists had good communications, “a street-wise and well-connected staff running the desks, the phones, the teletypes.”

During Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon and a nearly three-month siege of West Beirut by Israeli troops, journalists used the roof of the hotel to film fighter jets striking the city.

The parrot

One of the best-known characters at the Commodore was Coco the parrot, who was always in a cage near the bar. Patrons were often startled by what they thought was the whiz of an incoming shell, only to discover that it was Coco who made the sound.

AP’s chief Middle East correspondent Terry Anderson was a regular at the hotel before he was kidnapped in Beirut in 1985 and held for seven years, becoming one of the longest-held American hostages in history.

Videos of Anderson released by his kidnappers later showed him wearing a white T-shirt with the words “Hotel Commodore Lebanon.”

With the kidnapping of Anderson and other Western journalists, many foreign media workers left the predominantly-Muslim western part of Beirut, and after that the hotel lost its status as a safe haven for foreign journalists.

Ahmad Shbaro, who worked at different departments of the hotel until 1988, said the main reason behind the Commodore’s success was the presence of armed guards that made journalists feel secure in the middle of Beirut’s chaos as well as functioning telecommunications.

He added that the hotel also offered financial facilities for journalists who ran out of money. They would borrow money from Nazzal and their companies could pay him back by depositing money in his bank account in London.

Shbaro remembers a terrifying day in the late 1970s when the area of the hotel was heavily shelled and two rooms at the Commodore were hit.

“The hotel was full and all of us, staffers and journalists, spent the night at Le Casbah,” a famous nightclub in the basement of the building, he said.

In quieter times, journalists used to spend the night partying by the pool.

“It was a lifeline for the international media in West Beirut, where journalists filed, ate, slept, and hid from air raids, shelling, and other violence,” said former AP correspondent Scheherezade Faramarzi.

“It gained both fame and notoriety,” she said, speaking from the Mediterranean island of Cyprus.

The hotel was built in 1943 and kept functioning until 1987 when it was heavily damaged in fighting between Shiite and Druze militiamen at the time. The old Commodore building was later demolished and a new structure was build with an annex and officially opened again for the public in 1996.

But Coco the parrot was no longer at the bar. The bird went missing during the 1987 fighting. Shbaro said it is believed he was taken by one of the gunmen who stormed the hotel.

Features

Key Details of Greenland’s Rich but Largely Untapped Mineral Resources

Houses covered by snow are seen on the coast of a sea inlet of Nuuk, Greenland, on Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP)
Houses covered by snow are seen on the coast of a sea inlet of Nuuk, Greenland, on Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP)
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Key Details of Greenland’s Rich but Largely Untapped Mineral Resources

Houses covered by snow are seen on the coast of a sea inlet of Nuuk, Greenland, on Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP)
Houses covered by snow are seen on the coast of a sea inlet of Nuuk, Greenland, on Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP)

The Danish and Greenlandic foreign ministers will meet US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday after President Donald Trump recently
stepped up threats to take over Greenland.

The autonomous territory of Denmark could be useful for the ​United States because of its strategic location and rich mineral resources. A 2023 survey showed that 25 of 34 minerals deemed "critical raw materials" by the European Commission were found in Greenland.

The extraction of oil and natural gas is banned in Greenland for environmental reasons, while development of its mining sector has been snarled in red tape and opposition from indigenous people.

Below are details of Greenland's main mineral deposits, based on data from its Mineral Resources Authority:

RARE EARTHS
Three of Greenland's biggest deposits are located in the southern province of Gardar.

Companies ‌seeking to ‌develop rare-earth mines are Critical Metals Corp, which bought the ‌Tanbreez ⁠deposit, ​Energy Transition Minerals, ‌whose Kuannersuit project is stalled amid legal disputes, and Neo Performance Materials.

Rare-earth elements are key to permanent magnets used in electric vehicles (EV) and wind turbines.

GRAPHITE
Occurrences of graphite and graphite schist are reported from many localities on the island.
GreenRoc has applied for an exploitation license to develop the Amitsoq graphite project.
Natural graphite is mostly used in EV batteries and steelmaking.

COPPER
According to the Mineral Resources Authority, most copper deposits have drawn only limited exploration campaigns.

Especially interesting are the underexplored areas ⁠in the northeast and center-east of Greenland, it said.

London-listed 80 Mile is seeking to develop the Disko-Nuussuaq deposit, which has ‌copper, nickel, platinum and cobalt.

NICKEL
Traces of nickel accumulations are numerous, ‍according to the Mineral Resources Authority.

Major miner ‍Anglo American was granted an exploration license in western Greenland in 2019 and has ‍been looking for nickel deposits, among others.

ZINC
Zinc is mostly found in the north in a geologic formation that stretches more than 2,500 km (1,550 miles).

Companies have sought to develop the Citronen Fjord zinc and lead project, which had been billed as one of the world's largest undeveloped zinc resources.

GOLD
The most prospective ​areas for gold potential are situated around the Sermiligaarsuk fjord in the country's south.

Amaroq Minerals launched a gold mine last year in Mt Nalunaq in ⁠the Kujalleq Municipality.

DIAMONDS
While most small diamonds and the largest stones are found in the island's west, their presence in other regions may also be significant.

IRON ORE
Deposits are located at Isua in southern West Greenland, at Itilliarsuk in central West Greenland, and in North West Greenland along the Lauge Koch Kyst.

TITANIUM-VANADIUM
Known deposits of titanium and vanadium are in the southwest, the east and south.

Titanium is used for commercial, medical and industrial purposes, while vanadium is mainly used to produce specialty steel alloys. The most important industrial vanadium compound, vanadium pentoxide, is used as a catalyst for the production of sulfuric acid.

TUNGSTEN
Used for several industrial applications, tungsten is mostly found in the central-east and northeast of the country, with assessed deposits in the south and west.

URANIUM
In 2021, ‌the then-ruling left-wing Inuit Ataqatigiit party banned uranium mining, effectively halting development of the Kuannersuit rare-earths project, which has uranium as a byproduct.