Delcy Rodriguez, who was sworn in as president after Maduro's capture, is facing a challenging dynamic of trying to keep a government thrown into disarray unified while also delivering on American requests.
But how much wiggle room Rodriguez will have to navigate with other influential pro-Maduro figures in the government that may try push the country into a different direction remains to be seen.
"What's the timeline on it? Are they giving her weeks? Months? A year? How patient will they be with her? How forthcoming will she be with the administration?" said Javed Ali, a former counterterrorism official in federal government and associate professor of practice at the University of Michigan. "I have to imagine the White House is thinking through all the options that are on the table, and the last one I would think they want to do is to do a replay of Iraq in 2003."
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