On 28 July 2026, the Venezuelan foreign ministry summoned the Iranian ambassador to Caracas and handed him a note of protest, denouncing "contemptuous and inappropriate" statements against the country’s institutions and authorities. The ministry’s statement, published on social media, did not specify the remarks but demanded an end to any allusions or comparisons that harm Venezuela’s dignity and sovereignty.

When questioned by AFP, Venezuelan officials declined to elaborate, but a video circulating online showed Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi telling an audience that Iran was "not Venezuela" in the context of direct negotiations with the United States. The remark was widely perceived in Caracas as a reference to the US military operation on 3 January 2026 that captured former president Nicolás Maduro and placed the country under de facto American supervision.

The incident risks cooling a decades-old alliance forged under Hugo Chávez’s anti-imperialist foreign policy. Since 1999, Tehran and Caracas have signed agreements in energy, mining, health and education, with Iran supplying 1.5 million barrels of gasoline in 2020 and over two million polio and hepatitis vaccines in May 2025 to circumvent US sanctions. However, since Maduro’s detention, interim President Delcy Rodríguez has restored diplomatic ties with Washington and begun governing under tightened American oversight. Observers cited by French media see the protest as a sign of Caracas’s greater circumspection regarding any parallel that could be seen as institutional fragility, while others view it as a largely protocol-driven response unlikely to fundamentally rupture the alliance.

Iran’s foreign ministry has yet to issue an official comment on the summons or the protest note. Under the terms of a US-supervised transition, negotiations to form a new Venezuelan government are scheduled to begin on 1 August. The state of bilateral relations now awaits Tehran’s next move.