Venezuela’s socialist regime, a longtime ally of Iran’s Islamic regime, on Tuesday protested the “derogatory and inappropriate expressions” recently espoused by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi regarding Venezuela.
According to several international outlets, a video clip circulating on social media taken from an interview Foreign Minister Araghchi recently held with Iran’s state-run Mehr News Agency shows the foreign minister affirm that his country “isn’t Venezuela” when it comes to negotiating with the United States.
“This isn’t Venezuela, where they take one person and everyone else gets scared and backs down,” Araghchi said, according to a clip published by the Venezuelan outlet El Diario on Wednesday morning.
The comments reportedly expressed by Araghchi appear to compare the United States’ January 3 arrest of socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro in Caracas with the ongoing conflict against the Islamic Iranian regime.
On its official social media accounts, the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry informed that it summoned Iranian Ambassador Ali Chegini to hand over a protest note over the “derogatory and inappropriate statements about Venezuela’s institutions and authorities.”
The ministry noted that it demanded the “cessation of all allusion or comparison that undermines the dignity, sovereignty, institutional framework, or good name of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.”
The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry did not publicly specify which “derogatory and inappropriate” statements it was referring to.
“The Venezuelan government reiterates its position regarding the bases of relations between all countries: mutual respect, sovereign equality, non-interference in internal affairs, and the other principles of International Law that have historically guided the relations between the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the Ministry wrote.
The Iranian Embassy in Caracas acknowledged the meeting between Ambassador Chegeni and Venezuelan Foreign Ministry officials in a Spanish-language statement published on social media.
According to the Iranian embassy, Chegeni provided “relevant clarifications to address the perceptions” stemming from the Iranian Foreign Minister’s statements.
In a separate statement, the Iranian embassy claimed that Araghchi’s comments circulating on social media were “incomplete and out of context.” The Iranian diplomatic mission further claimed that the “fragmentation” of the Minister’s statements and the “distortion” of his original meaning allegedly seek to “to foster misunderstandings and alter the historical course of relations between the two countries.”
“The Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran reaffirms that the Iranian Foreign Minister’s words in no way imply a lack of respect or a negative judgment toward the worthy and illustrious people of Venezuela, its authorities, its legitimate institutions, or its national sovereignty,” the text read in part.
The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry’s note of protest marks a significant departure from the Venezuelan socialist regime’s traditionally friendly relations with the Iranian regime.
The Venezuelan regime, now under “acting President” Delcy Rodríguez, appears to have changed its relationship with Iran following Maduro’s arrest. In March, the Venezuelan regime published a statement condemning the start of the United States and Israel’s military strikes against the Iranian regime. The statement, however, was rapidly deleted and removed from the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry with no public explanation whatsoever.
In contrast, in 2025, during the rule of Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan regime was among the first of Iran’s allies to condemn Israel after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched a series of strikes against Iran’s nuclear and missile facilities that year. The Maduro regime reportedly held rallies in favor of the Iranian regime at the time that counted with the participation of key socialist regime figures.
According to Al Jazeera, Interior Minister and long-suspected drug lord Diosdado Cabello participated alongside Ambassador Ali Chegini in one such pro-Iran rally held in June 2025.
Upon taking office in 1999, late dictator Hugo Chávez carried out extensive efforts to deepen his socialist regime’s ties with Iran — finding mutual ground with Iran’s rulers over both regimes’ shared anti-U.S. and anti-Israel stances. Following Chávez’s death, Nicolás Maduro maintained and further deepened the socialist regime’s ties with Iran from 2013 onwards — going as far as to publicly mourn the death of Iran’s head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force Qasem Soleimani in 2020.
Over the course of his rule, and particularly during the last six years, Maduro became highly dependent on Iranian help to offset some of the consequences of the collapse of socialism in Venezuela and help “repair” Venezuela’s derelict oil industry.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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