US aid ‘smokescreen’ for regime change in Venezuela: Analyst

The United States is using humanitarian aid as a cover to bring down Venezuela’s legal government and break the country’s will to stay independent, says an American political analyst.

Keith Preston, director of Attackthesystem.com, said Washington wanted a puppet regime that could allow it to take over Venezuela’s oil resources.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Saturday that the US "will take action" in support of anti-government protesters amid clashes between them and Venezuelan police.

Venezuela’s opposition leader and self-proclaimed president, Juan Guaido, has vowed that humanitarian aid would enter the crisis-hit South American country in open defiance of President Nicolas Maduro, who has stated that the aid is a US plot to disguise an intervention in Venezuela.

Violence has broke out in Venezuela’s border city of San Antonia de Tachira on Friday, after trucks and protesters attempted to break through the barricaded Simon Bolivar bridge to bring humanitarian aid into the country.

“What is happening in Venezuela is that the United States is trying to sponsor what is commonly called a regime change,” Preston told Press TV on Sunday. “They are trying to overthrow the government of Nicolas Maduro and they are trying to install a government that will simply be a puppet of the United States.”

Taking control Venezuela’s vast oil reserves and defeating the country’s resolve to follow an “independent course” were the two objectives behind Washington’s push to topple Maduro, Preston said.

PressTV-US to 'take action' amid anti-govt. protests in Venezuela

Secretary of State Pompeo says the US “will take action” amid clashes between Venezuelan police and anti-government protesters.

According to the analyst, Washington was concerned about the example Caracas was setting for other countries that had joined the so-called “Pink Tide” in the region, a movement that revolves around independence from the US and its allies.

Preston also cast doubt over America’s real intentions behind providing Venezuelans with what it insisted was “humanitarian aid.”

“As far as the humanitarian aid issue, the Americans could care less about providing humanitarian aid,” he said, noting that if Washington was really concerned they should have focused instead on Yemen, Palestine and Bangladesh, where millions of people were in dire need of humanitarian aid.

“So the humanitarian aid rhetoric is simply a smokescreen,” he said. “This is simply an effort to create a regime change operation similar to these color coded revolutions that the Americans have sponsored in various countries in recent years,” Preston added.

PressTV-'Dangerous provocation': US arms Venezuela putschists

Russia warns the US against using "humanitarian aid" as a cover for arming Venezuela's opposition and launching military invasion against the country.

Russia warned Friday that the US was using humanitarian aid to instigate a “dangerous provocation” in Venezuela by arming the country's opposition while moving its own forces closer to Venezuelan borders in preparation for a military invasion.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Washington and its allies were planning to supply Venezuela's self-proclaimed president, Juan Guaido, and his supporters with a wide range of weapons as they challenge the legal government of President Nicolas Maduro.

Guaido, who has already welcomed US threats of potential military intervention in his country, has set a Saturday deadline for the government to let in the alleged US “aid” supplies.

Maduro has said that US President Donald Trump wants to facilitate regime change in Venezuela under the cover of manufacturing a humanitarian crisis there. On Thursday, he ordered Venezuela's border with Brazil to be shut and threatened to also close the border with Colombia as well.

“The Americans have a very very lengthy history of organizing and sponsoring coups against Latin American governments. So this is just another chapter in that story that extends back for decades,” Preston concluded.

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