US President Donald Trump took control of Venezuela’s energy sector after a military operation there in which the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife were captured, brought to the United States and imprisoned. Since then, the Trump administration has raised more than $13 billion by selling that country’s oil in the first six months of this year, according to a report by the British outlet Financial Express. The administration has disclosed nothing about where, or on what, that huge sum has been spent. Having established control over Venezuela’s oil, Trump has now set his sights on Libya’s. Through his representatives and his daughter Tiffany’s father-in-law, he has moved to establish American businessmen’s authority over the country’s oil wealth by brokering an understanding among the top figures of three political camps, including the two rival governments ruling eastern and western Libya.
Behind Trump’s renewed interest in Libya lies the country’s oil. Until now his direct involvement in Libyan affairs had been very limited. The main reason he is suddenly pushing the process forward is a calculation: if Libya’s daily oil output is doubled to 3 million barrels by 2030, it will be profitable for US energy companies including ConocoPhillips and Chevron, which have already signed agreements over Libyan oil.
In line with this plan, Libya’s three main political factions signed a power-sharing agreement on June 18. The deal lays out a roadmap for presidential and parliamentary elections before February 17, 2027. It is the first agreement of its kind in conflict-torn Libya in 18 years. Its framework is based on the $30 billion “unified state budget” adopted last April — the first unified budget drawn up in Libya with US support in more than a decade.
Massad Boulos, President Trump’s senior adviser on Arab and African affairs and the father-in-law of his daughter Tiffany, played the leading role behind the signing of the agreement. A secret meeting was held in Rome in September 2025 before the deal was signed, and Boulos has been the central figure in the process ever since. Ordinary Libyans have already grown skeptical about the deal’s success, because no representatives of the country’s civil society, tribal groups, various militias, or women and young people were included in that Rome meeting.
Boulos is not a career diplomat; he is a Lebanese-American businessman. Libyans’ comment is that his main qualification is being Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law. Trump’s interest in Libya is essentially about its oil. His calculation recalls his old remarks at the time of NATO’s intervention in Libya, when he argued that, in exchange for ousting Gaddafi, the United States should receive half the revenue from Libya’s oil sales.
Libya holds the largest proven oil reserves on the African continent. But because of the ongoing conflict and division, this oil wealth cannot be used in a unified way for the national interest. If the national oil company, the National Oil Corporation, is unified and protected from party or factional interference, daily output could exceed 1.5 million barrels and state revenue could rise by 20 to 30 percent.
But with the government backed by warlord General Haftar in the east and the Tripoli-based, UN-supported Government of National Unity (GNU) in the west both holding power, this oil wealth is being carved up and plundered. Abdullah Ezzedine, a political analyst for the GNU, told The New Arab that if the two governments merged, costs would be halved and the economy would rebound. Political analyst Mohammed al-Fitouri said: “Libya has become a place where every city has turned into a state of its own.” In his view, a unified constitutional framework is the only path to a national election that would produce a legitimate and lasting authority.
The rival eastern and western governments had also agreed to compromise in the national interest to draw up a unified budget. In a military exercise called “Flintlock 2026,” held jointly with US Africa Command in the Libyan city of Sirte, forces from both sides took part under a single command for the first time. But the core problem lies within the framework of the new deal itself.
At the secret meeting mediated by Boulos in Rome in September 2025, Saddam Haftar — deputy commander of Khalifa Haftar’s forces and his son — and Ibrahim Dbeibeh, the nephew and adviser of GNU Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, sat down for face-to-face talks for the first time. The meeting’s proposal called for a new “presidential council” with executive powers led by Saddam Haftar, along with a unified government led by Dbeibeh and a division of military command between the two families along geographic lines.
The initiative is essentially being pursued by forging a power-sharing understanding among the parties in the strongest positions. So even if the deal is implemented, it will not solve Libya’s fundamental problems. Libyan analyst Abdulsalam al-Rajhi said the agreement is built not on any institutional framework but around specific individuals.
A deal among the powerful, and Libya’s oil
Hanin Bushushe, a member of the UN-backed reconciliation and human-rights “structured dialogue” process, said any initiative aimed at unifying executive power should not be judged solely by the political understanding among powerful groups, but by its impact on ordinary Libyans. She told The New Arab: “Unification can only be meaningful when it is part of a comprehensive process built on legitimacy, transparency and accountability. If it is confined to merely changing names or redistributing posts without addressing the root causes of the crisis, the problems will remain.”
According to political critics, any political settlement reached outside the UN-established process would weaken the legitimacy of the UN-led process. The new deal prioritizes bargaining among powerful groups over a broader national consensus.
Russia views the new deal with suspicion and sees the “Boulos initiative” as an attempt to sideline the Berlin process. Algeria and Tunisia, meanwhile, have repeatedly said that any solution in Libya must rest on the country’s own ownership and leadership.
What happens next
The June 18 agreement is the most concrete step toward Libyan unity in recent years. A coordinated budget has taken real shape. A joint military exercise has been held. An election roadmap exists on paper. But whether these efforts ultimately hold depends on one thing: will the deal remain merely an understanding between the Haftar and Dbeibeh families, or will ordinary Libyans outside these two families feel it is their own? Since Gaddafi’s ouster and death in 2011 with direct Western support, Libya’s history suggests the right answer is not easy to find.
A three-way understanding aimed only at securing US oil-trade goals — without addressing the core weaknesses of Libya’s institutional structure — mirrors US conduct in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. In those countries, initial agreements collapsed soon after Washington declared success. The same may happen in Libya. Already, various quarters in the country are forcefully saying that a deal among a few families is no deal for the Libyan people.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report