A confrontation between the United States and Venezuela would be sold as a hemispheric morality play: sanctions, sovereignty, oil, and the familiar promise that pressure will eventually produce reform. For the Middle East and North Africa, however, it would register less as theatre and more as a balance-sheet event. In today’s system, crises are not contained geographically. They propagate through prices, insurance premia, compliance rules, and political attention spans. Caracas may be in the Caribbean, but its tremors would travel quickly to Riyadh, Cairo, Doha, and Tel Aviv.

Oil remains the most obvious transmission channel, though not for the reasons often assumed. Venezuela no longer supplies the world; it supplies uncertainty. Any tightening of sanctions or naval brinkmanship would remove marginal barrels and, more importantly, inject volatility into already fragile markets. Prices would rise less on lost supply than on risk perception. Gulf exporters would enjoy an immediate fiscal uplift—healthier budgets, stronger current accounts, sovereign funds once again flush with optionality. Yet this windfall would arrive with conditions attached. Higher prices reliably revive Western pressure on OPEC , reanimate price-cap fantasies, and justify strategic reserve releases. MENA producers gain revenue today while inviting tighter political constraints tomorrow.

For energy importers across the region—Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia—the effect would be punishing. Energy-driven inflation bleeds directly into food prices, subsidy bills, and........

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