Biden took a bold gamble with Venezuela’s Maduro. Will it pay off?

The lead-up to the July 28 election has not been promising. The authoritarian socialist state has barred the country’s most popular politician from running, blocked E.U. monitors from observing the vote and harassed opposition candidates and their supporters.

Still, the opposition and its U.S. backers are hopeful of an overwhelming victory for Edmundo González, currently enjoying a double-digit lead in the polls, that could force Maduro to negotiate a peaceful transition.

“A year ago the naysayers would have said none of this is going to happen, the opposition will never unite, the regime will never allow an election,” said a senior U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under rules set by the administration. “The fact that we’ve come this far I think is a significant statement that the effort was worth it.”

With the vote looming, U.S. and Venezuelan authorities have revived talks. U.S. diplomats are working to protect the election, and some of Maduro’s leftist allies are pushing him to accept the results.

Negotiations have never been more urgent. If Donald Trump is elected president, this rare opportunity for engagement will probably end. During Trump’s first term as president, the United States recognized opposition leader Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s rightful leader, Maduro severed diplomatic relations and Washington increased sanctions.

For Biden, success would be a rare foreign policy victory to take into his own reelection battle. It could allow some of the more than 7 million Venezuelans who have fled Maduro’s autocratic rule — hundreds of thousands of them for the United States — to return home. It could pull Venezuela away from friends Russia, China and Iran. And it could give the United States greater access to a crucial source of oil.

The opposition is hopeful that a strong showing will force Maduro to the table.

“We are confident that our margin of victory will be so overwhelming that it will open a new political reality in the country and that will open spaces for negotiation,” González, the opposition candidate, told The Washington Post.

“Maybe it’s wishful thinking,” the 74-year-old former diplomat said. But that’s the only kind, he said, in which he’s willing to engage.

Maduro has ruled Venezuela since the death of his mentor Hugo Chávez, the founder of Venezuela’s socialist state, in 2013. By the time the Biden administration took office, he had survived the collapse of Venezuela’s economy, the exodus of millions, street protests, a shadow government, an uprising aimed at his ouster, a U.S. indictment for alleged narcoterrorism, an armed coup attempt. U.S. sanctions had deepened the country’s economic crisis but failed to push Maduro out.

So last year, the administration tried a new approach: a deal. In closed-door talks in Qatar, U.S. negotiators agreed to suspend crippling sanctions on Venezuela’s state-run oil and gas industry in exchange for Maduro’s promise to hold a competitive, internationally monitored presidential election this year.

But the administration’s offer was even broader and bolder than initially revealed, according to a draft document obtained by The Post. If Maduro complied with all its terms, the United States would lift virtually all of the economic and financial sanctions imposed by the Trump administration.

The Qatar talks led to a breakthrough agreement between the Maduro government and the opposition, in which Maduro pledged to allow parties to run the candidates of their choice, invite international observers and set a date for the election.

Then, in January, Venezuela’s supreme court, controlled by Maduro, ruled that María Corina Machado, his strongest challenger, was ineligible to run. The 56-year-old former National Assembly member had won an opposition primary election with more than 92 percent of the vote.

U.S. officials made clear to Maduro’s negotiators that if Machado were barred from the election, the proposal offered in Qatar would be dead. In April, the oil sanctions were reinstated.

Bill Brownfield, a former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela, said the U.S. deal was “looser than it should have been.”

“Maduro got, front-ended, all of the benefits he was supposed to get in exchange for promises to comply with in the future,” Brownfield said. “He didn’t comply, but he got the stuff he really wanted.”

The opposition was largely left out of the Qatar negotiations. Machado refused to endorse the deal without seeing the details. But despite being sidelined, Brownfield said, she “has figured out how to use [the deal] to maximum effect.” She remains the face of the opposition and draws crowds at rallies throughout the country.

David Smilde, a sociologist at Tulane University who follows Venezuela, sees this as the great success of the Biden outreach: It lured the opposition back into electoral politics.

“The opposition is finally doing what people said for years,” he said. “You play the game, even if the game is not fair.”

For a time, Maduro appeared ready to follow the example of Daniel Ortega. The Nicaraguan dictator has shut down independent and foreign organizations, jailed or exiled virtually all political opponents and refused to allow presidential elections.

But Maduro, in contrast, has agreed to compete against an opposition candidate in a vote with at least some international observers. The European Union isn’t coming, but the Atlanta-based Carter Center plans to. A U.N. panel of experts will also attend, to prepare a confidential report for Secretary General António Guterres.

Carolina Jiménez Sandoval, president of the Washington Office on Latin America, sees progress: “Even in Venezuela’s terrible repression,” she said, “there are cracks.”

What will happen if Maduro loses the vote? Leaders across the hemisphere, including some with friendly relations with Maduro, are urging the sides to prepare for a peaceful transfer of power. Gustavo Petro, the first leftist president of Colombia, has reached out to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a fellow leftist, to lead talks.

Petro spoke with Maduro and some members of the opposition this year about granting the losing side some type of immunity from prosecution, according to a senior Brazilian foreign affairs official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private talks. The proposal could be put to voters in a referendum on the day of the election.

If both sides supported the approach, Lula told Petro, he would too, according to the official. But both rejected it. Colombian Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo said he’s keeping diplomatic channels open.

The economist Victor Álvarez, a former Chávez supporter, has circulated a proposal in which Maduro could be made a lifetime member of the National Assembly, which would give him parliamentary immunity.

Tamara Taraciuk Broner, who directs a rule-of-law program at the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue, is researching possible legal incentives — such as reduced sentences — that U.S. officials could offer Maduro allies implicated in drug trafficking, money laundering and corruption.

“It’s a dirty conversation,” she said. “But there’s not going to be a clean way out of this mess.”

Opposition leader Henrique Capriles, who narrowly lost the 2013 presidential election to Maduro, sees a role for Washington.

To give up power, Capriles said, Maduro will need to feel confident that his exit from the presidency won’t lead to prison. “The United States will have to step in.”

Andrés Izarra, a former minister under Chávez, said a transition will be possible only if Maduro’s hand is forced, or if military leaders are persuaded to negotiate an exit.

“The price to leave Miraflores” — the presidential palace in Caracas — “is way too high,” Izarra said.

González says he is willing to negotiate a transfer of power with Maduro. If he wins the vote, he says, he won’t persecute adversaries. He would give Maduro’s party a place in the National Assembly.

“We hope the government has the political maturity to accept that it lost the election and that a new government will take power,” González said. “If the magnitude of the defeat is as convincing as we aspire it to be, he will have no other choice.”

Marina Dias contributed to this report. Schmidt reported from Bogotá, Colombia, and DeYoung reported from Washington.