The plan's credibility will rest on details that have not yet been published.
The United States has urged Venezuela to work through a phased programme of economic recovery and political reconciliation before holding democratic elections, according to Al Jazeera. Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed the gradual plan with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Oliver Blanco on Monday. Neither spoke to the media afterwards; the State Department said in a readout that Washington had reaffirmed President Donald Trump's three-phase plan for Venezuela: stabilisation, economic recovery and political reconciliation, and democratic transition.
The meeting comes nearly a year after US forces abducted former President Nicolas Maduro from Caracas and brought him to the United States to face drug trafficking and other charges, the report says. Interim President Delcy Rodriguez, who served as Maduro's vice president, took over after his abduction. The sequencing matters: Washington is asking Caracas to deliver stability and recovery before the vote, which places the timetable largely in the hands of the interim government rather than the opposition.
Last week, opposition leader Maria Corina Machado returned to the country, thanking Trump and Rubio for their support. Machado, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who gifted her medal to Trump in 2025, said she had come to organise a movement in preparation for elections. According to Al Jazeera, she said Rubio had set out a sequence of events aimed at a democratic transition that makes clear presidential elections will be held in 2027. Rodriguez has assured the nation that elections will be held "with the world as witness", but has not specified a date. Machado said she had received no message from the interim president or from Washington about a possible meeting.
Oil runs alongside the political track. In September the Trump administration said it had struck a deal giving Washington a stake in about one-fifth of Venezuela's oil resources, through a joint venture with North American Blue Energy Partners, owned by Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt and described as the country's second-largest private oil operator behind Chevron. Under the arrangement, Caracas is granting 100-year rights over 17 oilfields with proven reserves of 65 billion barrels; the Pentagon would hold a 35 percent stake in NABEP, and the US would be guaranteed the right to buy 20 percent of output at cost, according to the administration.
Machado appeared sceptical of that agreement after her return, saying it does not reflect the levels of transparency Venezuelan society wants. Her position sets up a tension at the heart of the transition: Washington is extracting energy concessions from the government she intends to replace, and the terms of that bargain may become an election issue in their own right.
Much remains unconfirmed. The readout gives no dates, no benchmarks and no mechanism for verifying each phase, and it is not clear what, if anything, was conceded on either side on Monday. Whether the 2027 election date is fixed, who would be permitted to contest it, and how the oil venture's terms would survive a change of government are all unresolved. The plan's credibility will rest on details that have not yet been published.
