Ex-Venezuelan diplomat 'never' considered being president but will launch campaign this month

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — A few weeks ago, Edmundo González Urrutia was just another grandfather visiting his daughter and grandchildren, who live abroad, enjoying two months of family time in retirement. But the leisurely pace - and the anonymity - will have to wait as he now campaigns to become Venezuela’s next president.

President is not a title González ever sought. “Never,” he emphatically told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday at his apartment in his country’s capital, Caracas.

In the whirlwind world of Venezuelan politics, the former ambassador is now crucial to efforts to oust President Nicolás Maduro as the main opposition faction's presidential candidate.

“I have never held an elected position. I have never participated in partisan politics of positions of elected office,” he said. “I accepted it with enormous responsibility and as a contribution on my part to the democratization of the country, to the process of trying to seek the understanding, reconciliation, of Venezuelans.”

González became the opposition Unitary Platform's candidate last month after former lawmaker María Corina Machado, who easily won the group’s presidential primary last year, and her handpicked alternative were banned from registering. The coalition’s leaders selected him 15 days after he returned from vacation, and he accepted under a few conditions, including that his wife be convinced of the decision.

The July 28 election will have 10 candidates, but apart from the Unitary Platform, none are expected to pose a threat to Maduro’s power base. Maduro officially launched his candidacy in March for a third term that would last until 2031.

Machado has been campaigning for more than a year, including after Venezuela’s ruling party-loyal top court affirmed an administrative decision blocking her candidacy. She recently began instructing supporters gathered by the thousands at rallies to vote for González, but he is yet to appear before crowds. He said he plans to kick off his campaign later this month and explained that Machado and other opposition leaders will continue to host events around the country.

“The important thing about this is the enthusiasm with which it is happening,” he said of people’s support, which comes after years of calls from the opposition for election boycotts and a sense of general apathy from voters who were repeatedly disappointed by the faction’s earlier promises of change. “Those feelings of joy – of a democratic party at its core – are awakening.”

Asked what role Machado would have in his government should he win, González said it was “premature to think what position she is going to take." What matters at the moment, he said, is that Machado and the Unitary Platform are “rowing in the same direction.”

Machado is not a member of the platform, but she was allowed to participate in its Oct. 22 primary, which she won with more than 90% of support.

Even among Venezuela’s opposition, few have heard of the 74-year-old former diplomat. González began his professional career as an aide to Venezuela’s ambassador in the U.S. He had postings in Belgium and El Salvador and served as Caracas’ ambassador to Algeria.

His last post was as Venezuela’s ambassador to Argentina during the first years of Hugo Chávez’s presidency. More recently, he worked as an international relations consultant, writing about recent political developments in Argentina as well as authoring a historical work on Venezuela’s foreign minister during World War II.

His years in El Salvador and Algeria coincided with periods of armed conflicts in both countries. For a time, his whereabouts were tracked by locals in El Salvador, and he would get calls at home meant to intimidate him, with the callers saying they were aware that González had just gotten home.

Although those countries’ conditions were entirely different from Venezuela’s current political situation, they have prepared González for the unique stress that can come with being a candidate or political leader in the South American country, where real and perceived government adversaries, including campaign staffers of Machado, have been detained, threatened and charged ahead of the election.

Maduro's government has cracked down on the opposition despite promises to pave the way to fair elections in exchange for relief from economic sanctions imposed by the United States last decade as democratic and human rights conditions deteriorated in Venezuela. The recent moves prompted the Biden administration to re-impose crushing oil sanctions last month.

“They are situations that teach one to live in stressful situations, in dangerous situations, in risky situations, in situations where personal insecurity is evident,” he said of his experiences in El Salvador and Algeria. “So yes, in that sense they are experiences that help you manage, function, in an environment that is complicated and difficult.”

Venezuelan presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia of the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD), the alliance that brings together the main parties and leaders of the opposition, during an interview at his home in Caracas, Venezuela, Thursday, May 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

Venezuelan presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia of the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD), the alliance that brings together the main parties and leaders of the opposition, speaks during an interview at his home in Caracas, Venezuela, Thursday, May 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

Venezuelan presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia of the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD), the alliance that brings together the main parties and leaders of the opposition, poses for a photo during an interview at his home in Caracas, Venezuela, Thursday, May 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

Venezuelan presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia of the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD), the alliance that brings together the main parties and leaders of the opposition, pauses during an interview at his home in Caracas, Venezuela, Thursday, May 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

Venezuelan presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia of the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD), the alliance that brings together the main parties and leaders of the opposition, speaks during an interview at his home in Caracas, Venezuela, Thursday, May 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

JERUSALEM (AP) — The helicopter crash in which Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the country’s foreign minister and other officials were killed is likely to reverberate across the Middle East, where Iran’s influence runs wide and deep.

That's because Iran has spent decades supporting armed groups and militants in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and the Palestinian territories, allowing it to project power and potentially deter attacks from the United States or Israel, the sworn enemies of its 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Tensions have never been higher than they were last month, when Iran under Raisi and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei launched hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles at Israel in response to an airstrike on an Iranian Consulate in Syria that killed two Iranian generals and five officers.

Israel, with the help of the United States, Britain, Jordan and others, intercepted nearly all the projectiles. In response, Israel apparently launched its own strike against an air defense radar system in the Iranian city of Isfahan, causing no casualties but sending an unmistakable message.

The sides have waged a shadow war of covert operations and cyberattacks for years, but the exchange of fire in April was their first direct military confrontation.

The ongoing war between Israel and Hamas has drawn in other Iranian allies, with each attack and counterattack threatening to set off a wider war.

It's a combustible mix that could be ignited by unexpected events, such as Sunday's deadly crash.

Israel has long viewed Iran as its greatest threat because of Tehran's controversial nuclear program, its ballistic missiles and its support for armed groups sworn to Israel's destruction.

Iran views itself as the chief patron of Palestinian resistance to Israeli rule, and top officials for years have called for Israel to be wiped off the map.

Raisi, who was a hard-liner viewed as a protégé and possible successor of Khamenei, chastised Israel last month, saying “the Zionist Israeli regime has been committing oppression against the people of Palestine for 75 years.”

“First of all we have to expel the usurpers, secondly we should make them pay the cost for all the damages they have created, and thirdly, we have to bring to justice the oppressor and usurper," he said.

Israel is believed to have carried out numerous attacks over the years targeting senior Iranian military officials and nuclear scientists.

There is no evidence Israel was involved in Sunday's helicopter crash, and Israeli officials have not commented on the incident.

Arab countries on the Persian Gulf have also long viewed Iran with suspicion, a key factor in the decision of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to normalize relations with Israel in 2020, and of Saudi Arabia to consider such a move.

Iran has provided financial and other support over the years to the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which led the Oct. 7 attack into Israel that triggered the Gaza war, and the smaller but more radical Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which took part in it. But there is no evidence that Iran was directly involved in the attack.

Since the start of the war, Iran's leaders have expressed solidarity with the Palestinians. Their allies in the region have gone much further.

Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group, Iran's most militarily advanced proxy, has waged a low-intensity conflict with Israel since the start of the Gaza war. The two sides have traded strikes on a near-daily basis along the Israel-Lebanon border, forcing tens of thousands of people on both sides to flee.

So far, however, the conflict has not boiled over into a full-blown war that would be disastrous for both countries.

Iran-backed militias in Syria and Iraq launched repeated attacks on U.S. bases in the opening months of the war but pulled back after U.S. retaliatory strikes for a drone attack that killed three American soldiers in January.

Yemen's Houthi rebels, another ally of Iran, have repeatedly targeted international shipping in what they portray as a blockade of Israel. Those strikes, which often target ships with no apparent links to Israel, have also drawn U.S.-led retaliation.

Iran's influence extends beyond the Middle East and its rivalry with Israel.

Israel and Western countries have long suspected Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons in the guise of a peaceful atomic program in what they see as a threat to non-proliferation everywhere.

Then-President Donald Trump's withdrawal from a landmark nuclear pact between Iran and world powers in 2018, and his imposition of crushing sanctions, led Iran to gradually abandon all the limits placed on its program by the deal.

These days, Iran is enriching uranium to up to 60% purity — near weapons-grade levels of 90%. Surveillance cameras installed by the U.N. nuclear agency have been disrupted, and Iran has barred some of the agency's most experienced inspectors. Iran has always insisted its nuclear program is for purely peaceful purposes, but the United States and others believe it had an active nuclear weapons program until 2003.

Israel is widely believed to be the only nuclear-armed power in the Middle East but has never acknowledged having such weapons.

Iran has also emerged as a key ally of Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, and is widely accused of supplying exploding drones that have wreaked havoc on Ukraine's cities. Raisi himself denied the allegations last fall in an interview with The Associated Press, saying Iran had not supplied such weapons since the outbreak of hostilities in February 2022.

Iranian officials have made contradictory comments about the drones, while U.S. and European officials say the sheer number being used in the war in Ukraine shows that the flow of such weapons has intensified since the war began.

In this photo provided by Moj News Agency, rescue teams' vehicles are seen near the site of the incident of the helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in Varzaghan in northwestern Iran, Sunday, May 19, 2024. A helicopter carrying President Raisi, the country's foreign minister and other officials apparently crashed in the mountainous northwest reaches of Iran on Sunday, sparking a massive rescue operation in a fog-shrouded forest as the public was urged to pray. (Azin Haghighi/Moj News Agency via AP)

An Iranian woman prays for President Ebrahim Raisi in a ceremony at Vali-e-Asr square in downtown Tehran, Iran, Sunday, May 19, 2024. A helicopter carrying President Raisi, the country's foreign minister and other officials apparently crashed in the mountainous northwest reaches of Iran on Sunday, sparking a massive rescue operation in a fog-shrouded forest as the public was urged to pray. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

People pray for President Ebrahim Raisi in a ceremony at Vali-e-Asr square in downtown Tehran, Iran, Sunday, May 19, 2024. A helicopter carrying President Raisi, the country's foreign minister and other officials apparently crashed in the mountainous northwest reaches of Iran on Sunday, sparking a massive rescue operation in a fog-shrouded forest as the public was urged to pray. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

FILE - People gather around a component from an intercepted ballistic missile that fell near the Dead Sea in Israel, Saturday, April 20, 2024. The apparent crash of a helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the country's foreign minister and other top officials is likely to reverberate across the Middle East. Tensions have soared since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, and Israel and Iran directly traded fire for the first time ever in April. (AP Photo/Itamar Grinberg, File)

FILE - Iranian worshippers chant slogans during an anti-Israeli gathering after Friday prayers in Tehran, Iran, Friday, April 19, 2024. The apparent crash of a helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the country's foreign minister and other top officials is likely to reverberate across the Middle East. Tensions have soared since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, and Israel and Iran directly traded fire for the first time ever in April. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)