TEHRAN – For years, many have argued that the Nobel Peace Prize has become a tool of Western states, used to promote opposition figures capable of replacing governments at odds with the West.

That’s why when the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Venezuela's opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, following similar awards to Iranian, Russian, and Belarusian opposition figures in previous years, it did not come as a big surprise. “A good day for Fascism, a good day for Zionism, a bad day for Peace,” wrote Mick Wallace, a former member of the European Parliament, on X in response to the EU president’s congratulatory message to Machado.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee stated that Machado received the prize for "fighting dictatorship." By "dictatorship," it meant to the democratically-elected government of Nicolás Maduro, which maintains close ties with traditional U.S. adversaries such as Iran, China, and Russia.

After winning the award, Machado took to X to dedicate the prize to President Donald Trump. "I dedicate the prize to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause!" she wrote in English.

Trump has sought the Nobel spotlight since his first term. In the past few months, he has repeatedly said that he deserves the award, claiming to have ended several wars during his second term. However, most of his proclamations about ending wars, such as the Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict or the Pakistan-India dispute, have been either ignored or frowned upon by the respective countries.

While Trump was Machado’s rival in the Nobel bid, he is an important asset when it comes to her dreams of overthrowing the Venezuelan government and taking over. She spoke to Trump on the phone after dedicating her award to him. “The person who actually got the Nobel Prize called today, called me and said, ‘I’m accepting this in honor of you, because you really deserved it,’” Trump said in remarks delivered Friday evening. 

There are reports that the Trump administration is preparing for a full or partial military invasion of Venezuela. 

A 'peace' advocate that wants her people dead, and befriends war criminals

Machado has publicly endorsed Trump’s plan for a military invasion of Venezuela and supported recent killing of Venezuelans by U.S. naval forces in the Caribbean. It turns out that the Venezuelan opposition figure has also wrote to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a convicted war criminal, asking him to help invade her country. Apparently seeking to leverage Netanyahu’s influence, given the Israeli lobby’s power in the White House, she pledged to cut ties with Iran (which has cultivated a close relationship with Venezuela in recent years) and relocate Venezuela's embassy to occupied al-Quds upon replacing Maduro. In her bid to appease Israelis, she has backed the genocide in Gaza as well. 

Though many did presume Machado's Nobel Prize was simply a reward for opposing a government disliked by the West after the win was announced, her subsequent engagements and resurfaced views still made quite a buzz on social media. "How exactly does the Nobel committee define peace?" one X user questioned, with their post garnering over 220,000 views and tens of thousands of likes.

While the award of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize to a supporter of genocide and advocate of harm to her people has prompted widespread disbelief in the past 48 hours, such views are in fact consistently found among opposition figures honored with the prize.

For instance, the 2023 winner, Narges Mohammadi, has long defended crippling sanctions against Iran and refused to condemn the US-Israeli attacks that killed over 1,000 Iranians in June. Similarly, Shirin Ebadi, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 for her efforts for “democracy” and “human rights,” is another Iranian laureate who has backed anti-Iran sanctions and military action against her nation, much like Machado.