[News] John Bolton Wants to Bomb Iran — and He May Get What He Wants

Tue Jan 15 11:56:15 EST 2019

https://theintercept.com/2019/01/15/john-bolton-wants-to-bomb-iran-and-he-may-get-what-he-wants/ 

  John Bolton Wants to Bomb Iran — and He May Get What He Wants

Mehdi Hasan - January 15, 2019
------------------------------------------------------------------------

_You underestimate John_ Bolton at your peril.

Remember when he was passed over for the job of secretary of state 
because, we were told, Donald Trump didn’t like his “brush-like mustache 
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/donald-trump-is-holding-a-government-casting-call-hes-seeking-the-look/2016/12/21/703ae8a4-c795-11e6-bf4b-2c064d32a4bf_story.html?utm_term=.5e15d073f880>“? 
How we laughed. Yet less than 18 months later, after regular appearances 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/22/business/media/john-bolton-trump-fox-news.html> 
on the Fox News casting couch, he was appointed 
<https://twitter.com/AmbJohnBolton/status/977009884595093504?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E977009884595093504&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fnews%2F2018%2F03%2F22%2Ftrump-ousts-mcmaster-makes-bolton-national-security-adviser%2F> 
national security adviser, with an office around the corner from the 
president’s.

Remember when Defense Secretary James Mattis met with the new national 
security adviser on the steps of the Pentagon and joked 
<https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2018/03/29/bolton-mattis-meeting-devil-incarnate-sot-wolf.cnn> 
that he was the “devil incarnate”? Mattis is gone 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/20/us/politics/jim-mattis-defense-secretary-trump.html>. 
Bolton is still standing.

Remember when White House chief of staff John Kelly got into a “heated, 
profanity-laced shouting match 
<https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/412100-kelly-and-bolton-get-in-profanity-laced-shouting-match-report>” with 
Bolton, over immigration, right outside the Oval Office? Kelly is gone 
<https://www.vox.com/2018/12/8/17117790/john-kelly-fired-resigned-trump>. 
Bolton is still standing.

Remember when Trump announced 
<https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1075528854402256896?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1075528854402256896&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fthehill.com%2Fhomenews%2Fadministration%2F422179-trump-defends-syria-withdrawal-invokes-memory-of-fallen-soldiers> 
that the 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria were “all coming back, and they’re 
coming back now,” only a few weeks after Bolton had said 
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/bolton-us-forces-will-stay-in-syria-until-iran-and-its-proxies-depart/2018/09/24/be389eb8-c020-11e8-92f2-ac26fda68341_story.html?utm_term=.19bcf30e00d9> 
they would be staying until all Iranian troops and proxies left the 
country? We were told that Bolton had been ignored, overruled, sidelined 
even. Not quite. Earlier this month, on a visit to Israel, the national 
security adviser confirmed 
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/bolton-promises-no-troop-withdrawal-from-syria-until-isis-contained-kurds-safety-guaranteed/2019/01/06/ee219bba-11c5-11e9-b6ad-9cfd62dbb0a8_story.html?utm_term=.5edd1a124192> 
that there was no timetable for pulling out the troops and it all would 
depend on the Turkish government guaranteeing the safety of U.S.-backed 
Kurdish fighters. “John Bolton puts brakes on Trump withdrawal from 
Syria,” read a headline 
<https://www.ft.com/content/f199a438-11d2-11e9-a581-4ff78404524e> in the 
Financial Times.

Trump’s national security adviser is a hard man to keep down.

_In 2003, Bolton_ got the war he wanted with Iraq. As an influential, 
high-profile and hawkish member of the Bush administration, Bolton put 
pressure <https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/10/27/the-stovepipe> 
on intelligence analysts, threatened 
<https://theintercept.com/2018/03/29/john-bolton-trump-bush-bustani-kids-opcw/> 
international officials, and told bare-faced lies 
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2002/11_november/20/ws_johnbolton.shtml> 
about weapons of mass destruction. He has never regretted 
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/feb/26/iraq-war-was-justified> 
his support for the illegal and catastrophic invasion of Iraq, which 
killed hundreds of thousands 
<https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/15/iraq-death-toll_n_4102855.html> 
of people.

Now he wants a war with Iran. So say State Department and Pentagon 
officials, according to the Wall Street Journal 
<https://www.wsj.com/articles/white-house-sought-options-to-strike-iran-11547375404>, 
who were “rattled” by his request to the Pentagon “to provide the White 
House with military options to strike Iran last year.” The New York 
Times 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/13/us/politics/bolton-iran-pentagon.html> 
also reported that “senior Pentagon officials are voicing deepening 
fears” that Bolton “could precipitate a conflict with Iran.”

Should we be surprised? In March 2015, Bolton, then a private citizen, 
wrote an op-ed for the New York Times headlined: “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, 
Bomb Iran.” 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/opinion/to-stop-irans-bomb-bomb-iran.html> 
In July 2017, just eight months prior to joining the Trump 
administration, Bolton told 
<https://theintercept.com/2018/03/23/heres-john-bolton-promising-regime-change-iran-end-2018/> 
a gathering of the cultish Iranian exile group 
<https://theintercept.com/2017/07/07/mek-iran-rajavi-cult-saudi-gingrich-terrorists-trump/>, 
the MEK, that “the declared policy of the United States of America 
should be the overthrow of the mullahs’ regime in Tehran” and that 
“before 2019, we here will celebrate in Tehran.”

Despite the leaks to the press over the past few days from “rattled” but 
unnamed officials at the State Department and the Pentagon, Bolton is 
far from being the only person close to Trump who is pushing a 
belligerent line on Iran. He has plenty of allies in the administration. 
As Vox 
<https://www.vox.com/world/2019/1/14/18181962/iran-news-bolton-strike-pentagon-trump-mattis> 
reported on Monday, “Bolton has staffed up the NSC with people who share 
his views. Last week, he hired Richard Goldberg, a noted Iran hawk, to 
run the administration’s pressure campaign against the country.”

Outside of the Bolton-dominated National Security Council, there’s also 
the hawkish Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who once suggested 
<https://www.thenation.com/article/congressional-hawks-gear-kill-talks-bomb-iran/> 
launching “2,000 sorties to destroy the Iranian nuclear capacity.” As I 
noted <https://theintercept.com/2019/01/11/mike-pompeo-speech-cairo/> 
last week, in his recent speech 
<https://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2019/01/288410.htm> on Middle 
East policy in Cairo, Pompeo made more than 20 references to 
“malevolent” and “oppressive” Iran and denounced “Iranian expansion” and 
“regional destruction” while giving Saudi Arabia a big wet kiss. 
“Countries increasingly understand that we must confront the ayatollahs, 
not coddle them,” he declared. Pompeo then told Fox News 
<https://www.foxnews.com/politics/exclusive-pompeo-announces-international-summit-on-iran>, 
before leaving Cairo, that the United States would be hosting an 
international summit on Iran in Poland next month.

So how do these hawks plan to get their war with Tehran? Bolton, in 
particular, seems keen on two lines of attack. The first relates to the 
nuclear issue. “We have little doubt that Iran’s leadership is still 
strategically committed to achieving deliverable nuclear weapons,” the 
national security adviser told 
<https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/06/john-bolton-israel-syria-withdrawal-1083303?_embed=true&maxwidth=622&_format=_frame> 
fellow Iran-hater, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in 
Jerusalem earlier this month. There is, however, not a shred of evidence 
for Bolton’s claim — in fact, the U.S. intelligence community has flatly 
and repeatedly rejected it. “We do not know whether Iran will eventually 
decide to build nuclear weapons,” said Director of National Intelligence 
Dan Coats, in his 2017 “Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US 
Intelligence Community.” 
<https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Testimonies/SSCI%20Unclassified%20SFR%20-%20Final.pdf>

The second line of attack relates to the activities of Tehran-backed 
groups in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. According to the Times 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/13/us/politics/bolton-iran-pentagon.html>, 
Bolton’s request for military options against Iran “came after 
Iranian-backed militants fired three mortars or rockets into an empty 
lot on the grounds of the United States Embassy in Baghdad in 
September.” To be clear: No one was killed or injured in this attack.

Also: How far does this retaliatory logic extend? The United States has 
been accused <https://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0405/p99s01-duts.html> of 
supporting extremist, anti-government groups in Iran, as well as Israeli 
strikes 
<https://www.thenational.ae/world/mena/benjamin-netanyahu-admits-israel-to-blame-for-damascus-strikes-1.812590> 
on Iranian positions in Syria – does this mean the Iranians have a right 
to launch retaliatory air strikes on U.S. soil? Do the Cubans have the 
right to bomb Miami, where a number of U.S.-supported anti-Castro groups 
<https://www.salon.com/2008/01/14/cuba_2/> reside and operate?

Logic, however, has never been Bolton’s strong suit. He is an ideologue. 
“It is a big mistake,” he once declaimed 
<https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/03/21/boltonism>, “for us to 
grant any validity to international law even when it may seem in our 
short-term interest to do so—because, over the long term, the goal of 
those who think that international law really means anything are those 
who want to constrict the United States.”

To hell with international law 
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=w0y2gYoqOnA>. And the 
International Criminal Court 
<https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45474864>. And civilian lives 
<https://theintercept.com/2018/11/19/civilian-casualties-us-war-on-terror/>. 
The bellicose Bolton is going to spend much of 2019 making the case, 
both in public and in private, for war with Iran; a war that would make 
the invasion of Iraq look like a walk in the park. This is what makes 
the mustachioed national security adviser, with an office down the 
hallway from Trump, the most dangerous member of this reckless 
administration.

Devil incarnate? Perhaps that was an understatement.

-- 
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