A Promise of Justice for the Nations the Empire Destroyed

There is a silence that follows the bombs. It is not the silence of peace. It is the silence of mass graves being covered over, of oil contracts being signed behind closed doors, of international lawyers looking the other way because the criminals wield veto power. I am running for President of the United States to break that silence.

Over the past month, I have taken an unprecedented step as a candidate. I have written directly to the people and governments of two sovereign nations, Venezuela and Iran, that have recently endured the full, unvarnished fury of U.S. military aggression. I have sent them formal open letters that name what happened to them: war crimes. Not “mistakes,” not “collateral damage,” not “overreach.” War crimes, as defined by the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. And I have given them my solemn word: if the United Nations refuses to act, my administration will.

Read the two formal announcements here: Venezuela open letter announcement and Iran open letter announcement.

I am publishing this message today because the American people need to understand exactly what is being done in their name, and the courageous people of nations we have devastated need to know that someone in the United States is ready to hold the guilty to account, even if the guilty sit in the White House.

What We Have Uncovered and Documented

In my letters to Venezuela and Iran, I detailed the specific acts that meet the legal threshold for war crimes. These include:

• The Crime of Aggression: Full-scale military invasions launched without United Nations Security Council authorization, in violation of the UN Charter’s absolute prohibition on the use of force.
• Willful Killing of Civilians: Indiscriminate aerial bombardment of densely populated urban areas, including marketplaces and residential neighborhoods, with no legitimate military objective.
• Unlawful Deportation of Protected Heads of State: The capture and secret rendition of President Nicolás Maduro and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in direct violation of their absolute personal immunity under international law.
• Pillage of Natural Resources: The coerced transfer of sovereign oil and gas fields to U.S. corporations under the threat of permanent economic destruction, transforming military conquest into naked theft.
• Starvation as a Method of Warfare: The deliberate intensification of sanctions after the invasions to block food and medicine, designed to break the will of entire populations.
• Manufactured Pretexts for War: Mounting evidence that chemical and radiological “incidents” used to justify both operations were false flag provocations, with forensic traces pointing back to U.S. stockpiles.

These are not political talking points. These are indictable offenses that would land any leader in the dock at The Hague, if the system of international justice were not currently held hostage by the very powers who need it the most.

Why This Campaign of Letters Matters Now

I have urged the governments of Venezuela and Iran to act immediately. They must preserve every shred of evidence, flight manifests, satellite intercepts, corporate charters, financial records, before it is buried or destroyed. They must document every U.S. corporation that touched their soil under the new, coerced concessionary regimes, and every intermediary government that facilitated the pillage. And they must submit formal referrals to the International Criminal Court and the United Nations Human Rights Council, demanding an immediate and unimpeded investigation.

Why do this now, while I am still only a candidate and the current administration still wields the instruments of war? Because evidence rots. Witnesses die. Shell companies dissolve. The architects of these crimes are already scrubbing the records. If the international community is ever to hold a genuine tribunal, the preservation work must begin today, not the day after an election.

The 2029 Pledge: No One Is Above the Law

Let me be absolutely clear about what I have promised. If the United Nations and the International Criminal Court fail to act, if they bow to the same geopolitical pressures that have protected war criminals for decades, then in my first week in office in January 2029, I will sign an Executive Order creating a Task Force on Resource Capture and Sovereign Crimes. This task force will have full subpoena power and an uncompromising mandate:

• To identify every person involved in the coercion, theft, and pillage of Venezuela’s and Iran’s natural wealth, U.S. officials, corporate executives, mercenaries, and foreign accomplices.
• To trace and publish the complete chain of command that authorized the unlawful capture of President Maduro and Supreme Leader Khamenei, and to pursue all legal avenues for their safe return to their people.
• To honor the will of the Venezuelan and Iranian people regarding the release and unconditional pardon of their leaders.
• To enforce every lawful warrant without exception. If the International Criminal Court or the United Nations issues a warrant for war crimes, my administration will recognize it and permit extradition from U.S. soil. If the legitimate governments of Venezuela or Iran issue their own warrants, the Task Force will investigate thoroughly. And if the investigation confirms the findings, I will authorize the extradition of every party involved, up to and including a former President of the United States.

No office. No title. No claim of sovereign immunity. The law must apply equally, or it means nothing at all.

The Same Justice Will Be Sought for Iraq and Libya

Venezuela and Iran are only the latest in a long and bloody line of nations shattered by the American war machine. The same pattern of aggression, resource capture, and manufactured pretext has been perfected over decades. That is why I am also announcing today that the same pledge of full accountability extends to the people of Iraq and Libya.

The invasion of Iraq in 2003, carried out under a cloud of fabricated intelligence about weapons of mass destruction, left hundreds of thousands dead, an entire region destabilized, and the nation’s oil wealth opened to foreign corporations. The destruction of Libya in 2011, launched under the guise of a humanitarian no-fly zone, turned a functioning state into a failed one, riddled with open slave markets and rival militias, while oil production fell under the control of external powers.

The crimes committed against these nations are no less severe. The war crime of aggression was committed. Civilians were willfully killed. Resources were looted. And the international community has been complicit in its silence. To the people of Iraq and Libya: begin your preservation now. Collect the evidence, the contracts, the communications, the satellite imagery. Your day in court will come. A Cordova administration will not look away from what was done to you. The Task Force’s mandate will be broad enough to cover the systematic destruction of your nations, and the same standard of extradition, up to and including former U.S. presidents, applies to those who orchestrated your suffering.

Breaking the Cycle of Imperial Devastation

There is a reason the national security establishment of both parties fears this candidacy. They know that a single genuine prosecution of war crimes at the top of the American chain of command could unravel the entire imperial project. They know that if the United States is ever forced to apply its own stated rules to itself, the game is over.

That is exactly the point. Our nation has spent trillions of dollars and sacrificed untold human lives abroad, not to spread democracy, but to consolidate a global system in which a handful of corporations and political dynasties extract wealth from the rest of the world by force. Every war of the last quarter-century has been a transfer of sovereignty from ordinary people to the boardrooms of a few connected firms. The classification of these acts as war crimes is not a political slogan; it is the only shield the weak have ever had against the strong, and the only language that transcends the brute arithmetic of power.

I am not naive about the forces arrayed against this mission. The same machinery that scorched the earth in Fallujah, that shattered Tripoli, and that now tightens its grip over Caracas and Tehran, will fight ferociously to protect itself. But the arc of justice does not bend on its own. It requires people of conscience to grab hold of it and pull with everything they have.

To the people of Venezuela, Iran, Iraq, and Libya: do not let the world forget. Do not let the evidence vanish. Collect it. Protect it. Send it to The Hague. And if the gatekeepers of international justice refuse to open the door, know that in 2029, a very different United States government will arrive, not with bunker-buster bombs, but with subpoenas, forensic audits, and the full constitutional force of a presidency that understands that justice must finally begin at home.

To the American people: this is your country too. You have been lied into war after war, while the true beneficiaries grew fat on the suffering of millions. We have a chance to do something no generation before us has done, to hold our own leaders accountable under the same laws they claim to enforce on others. That is what this campaign is about. That is what these letters are about. And that is the promise I will keep, come what may.

Vincent Cordova is a candidate for President of the United States in the 2028 election, running on a platform of sovereign justice, economic independence, and international law without double standards. For more information, visit www.vincentcordova.com.