After retiring from the U.S. oil giant, Ali Moshiri warned the Trump administration it would face a morass if it tried to replace Maduro with the democratic opposition
Updated March 15, 2026 at 10:03 am ET
In the months before President Trump moved to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the Central Intelligence Agency turned to an old friend for advice on who should replace the autocratic leftist.
Former Chevron executive Ali Moshiri told the agency that if the U.S. government tried to oust the entire Maduro regime and install the democratic opposition led by María Corina Machado it would have another quagmire like Iraq on its hands, according to people familiar with the matter.
She didn’t have the support of the country’s security services or control of its oil infrastructure, Moshiri argued.
His recommendation: Stick for now with another autocratic leftist, Maduro’s longtime deputy and economic manager Delcy Rodríguez. The option was later presented to Trump in a secret CIA assessment.
Hours after American commandos dragged Maduro out of his fortified compound, Trump echoed the sentiment. It would be “very tough” for Machado to take over, he said. “She doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country.”
Moshiri’s hidden hand in Washington spycraft, revealed here for the first time, offers a window into how Trump embraced the energy industry’s unsentimental playbook for dealing with autocratic regimes. And it marks a dramatic turnaround for Chevron’s prospects in Venezuela, where the company’s decision to stay invested during decades of political upheaval now leaves it with a strategic advantage as the oil begins to gush again.
