John Bolton: The U.S. Can’t Stop This War Now

That's the music for your own.

“You know, I think if I were in Tehran watching this performance, including him saying, he granted the 10-day extension on the deadline because the Tehran regime asked for it.”

The mediators are saying, according to the Wall Street Journal, that the Iranians did not ask for from gave it to them. That's the sign of weakness. Welcome back to the Tehran Palmary Show. You heard him, Trump's concessions are a sign of weakness. That's according to his former national security advisor, John Bolton, a hawk among hawks. And someone who says the U.S. can't afford to stop this war.

And that's coming as most Americans wanted to end. A new Fox News poll shows 64% disapprove of Trump's handling of Iran. And his overall disapproval rating has climbed to 59% the highest of both terms that's even during COVID.

“But Bolton Warren stopping now could make Iran more dangerous than ever.”

In this interview, he weighs in on his successor, Marco Rubio. He states whether Iran's nuclear program was actually an imminent threat. He lays out what the U.S. has gotten wrong so far and why he believes ending the war now would be a historic mistake. Take a listen here.

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Of course. So you obviously were in the first Trump administration and you what have been one of the most consistent advocates for a hard line approach toward Iran, including preemptive strikes. So what's Trump getting wrong this time? Well, it's not entirely clear what his objectives are. So it makes it difficult to judge what he's getting right and getting wrong.

I thought at the beginning that based on things he was saying, things he had said as far back as the brutally repressed demonstrations in Iran back in December and January that the objective was regime change. Because what he was saying was we don't want to have to go back and do this every couple of years, meaning dealing with the nuclear program, ballistic missile program, Iran's terrorist threat around the world. Well, the only real way to ensure you don't have to go back and do it every couple of years is change of regime.

We've tried for three decades plus of negotiation to change the regime's behavior as have others and it's always failed.

But after the attack began, it became very unclear exactly what his objective was. He still sometimes talks like it's regime change.

“And we now see reporting that both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are saying to him, "You can't stop now. You have to change the regime, which I think is a legitimate argument."”

So if that were the objective and I think it should be the objective, there are a lot of things that weren't done in preparation for such an effort. Like making what I think is the very compelling case to the American people that regime change is necessary to explain to them not the details of the operation or the timing, but the political logic, why it's in our national self interest to get a new regime in Iran. Carlier to that is you have to persuade Congress, which he didn't spend any time doing.

And closely related is you shouldn't form your allies, not just the NATO, but in the Gulf and the Asian Pacific area, which are the principal purchasers of Iran in oil. And he didn't do that either. And probably worse the ball, there's no evidence that he's done much to consult with or assist the opposition inside Iran.

That's where the heavy lifting on regime change is going to have to occur, and they could use a lot of help, which I don't think they're getting.

“Have we caused enormous damage to much of Iran's revolutionary guard, it's nuclear and ballistic missile programs? Yes, we have, and that's all to the good.”

But as they say in the Middle East, if we don't change the regime, we're just mowing along and we'll have to come back and mow it again, which as I say at the beginning, Trump said he didn't want to do. You know, President Trump has said that he had technically changed the regime because he's killed a number of people, and there is a new iotola obviously. He is the son of the former iotola, and some say he is a more radical, more effective leader.

Why do you think President Trump never took the time to actually sell the war? Because that's essentially what you're saying.

Well, I really don't understand why. If I might just say it clearly, the regime is not changed. We're not dealing with one person or even a limited number of persons. We're talking about an entire constitutional structure that has governed Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. And I call it the Veliadi Faki, the rule of the jurist, meaning the iotolas. And they're governed by a very radical ideology that's instilled in the revolutionary guard and in the civilian structure of the government. And until that is eliminated, you're going to have basically the same regime.

I don't, I don't know why Trump didn't try to persuade the public. I will say in the first term he said publicly that regime change was not our policy. So it represented a shift by him was it caused by the demonstrations in December and January and they're very, very brutal repression. Or was it something else? I really don't know. I suppose I was surprised as surprised as the next person when he started out.

“Yeah, I do wonder though, say he had sold the war. Do you think it's the right time to strike?”

You know, a lot of people have made that argument that, oh, Iran is weak right now with the uprisings. Maybe their nuclear program is weakened from that 12 day war where we apparently completely obliterated all of their, you know, nuclear facilities that was in June and apparently. Obviously, we didn't get to all of the, the facilities. Why would he say that we'd completely obliterated all the nuclear facilities and the uranium enrichment in Iran and now we're back in a war less than a year later.

Because Trump's always a winner. You know, the world's divided in the winners and losers. He's a winner. Everybody else is a loser unless your last name happens to be Trump.

You're going to get that in the family. It's, he's just, he just doesn't restrain himself. And obviously, we didn't obliterate the nuclear program. I think we did substantial damage in the 12 day war last year. I think that would be accurate. But the point is that with the regime still in place, what it did after the end of the 12 day war was begin to do excavations at other sites, one called pickaxe mountain near the Natan site. And with the obvious intent of reviving the nuclear program. So I mean, you can, you can bomb it once every 12 months.

And, and maybe you can keep the law on mode. But you can never be sure they haven't simply moved key aspects of it someplace else. You know, they, they have learned a lot from the North Koreans. I think commos learned a lot from the North Koreans, which is do everything that sensitive under a mountain somewhere.

“And so that's what the photo, the nuclear site, the photo was, and I think that's what pickaxe mountain near Natan's was intended to do.”

And unless you're convinced that your intelligence is 100% perfect in a timely fashion.

You're, you're, you're in a situation where their nuclear program could get critical and we wouldn't know about it in time.

When you, when you make enormous efforts to change regime behavior in a hostile regime and it doesn't work. You, you can keep doing it, but, but that's not going to work any better. The only answer is not to change the regime's behavior, but to change the regime. But we've been dealing with this regime in Tehran for 47 years. I mean, I think that's a pretty reasonable time to say their ideology has not, notified their fanaticism has not decreased. They're not going to change their behavior. So we either accept the continuing risk or we make a decision that we should change the regime. Now, as to the exact timing.

Look, I think the demonstrations at the beginning of the year showed very strongly that this regime is really about at his weakest since any time since 1979 when it took power, the regime's very unpopular.

You know, that's why they pay presidents the big bucks. But if, if the question is, should regime change be the policy of the United States with respect to Iran?

My answer is yes, absolutely. Whether we're doing that right now, I can't tell. Okay, so these are the timing was right. The plans were not laid out.

“Were there ever realistic objectives for a short limited conflict or was that always a fantasy?”

Well, I think the idea of attacking the revolutionary guard and other instruments of Iranian state power that threatened farmers like Israel, like the Gulf Arabs, like us on the one hand and threatened its own people on the other hand makes a lot of sense.

I think these attacks are not only doing considerable damage to what we're attacking, but they are themselves destabilizing the regime.

Most people, for example, said that when the Iatola, how many died at some point in the near future is 86 and not in good health, there would be a succession crisis.

“Because after all, he's only the second supreme leader, which means they've had one succession process since the Revolution of 1979.”

And it would have been difficult and contested and very divisive. That might have been an opportune moment too.

Well, we've accelerated the succession crisis by killing the supreme leader. They say that they've made his son the supreme leader. We don't know the condition of the son. He may be in a comatose state and from the minute he was elected, which actually made it easy to elect him because they could give the impression of continuity. And yet still have discussions ruled by committee, perhaps behind the scenes. And from the day they announced he was supreme leader, there's still no sign of life that he's actually alive or able to carry out the functions of supreme leader.

This is to me, this all signals that we are destabilizing the regime at the top. And as it comes apart, as it fragments competition among members of the regime for position for authority, for money, begin to heat up. This is how a destabilized regime eventually collapses. If the opposition is pushing, not just by going out to the streets, especially not now on risking being massacred again, but by working with other figures in the regime who say, you know, this ship may be going down and I don't think I want to go down with it.

And you get as a result perhaps a collapse of the regime and an interim military government, not the revolutionary guard, but the regular military, the conventional forces that that that allow the people of Iran some kind of space to have a constitutional, consultative process and decide what kind of government they wanted in the future. As I said that he likes the speaker of the parliament in Iran, why do you think he's selected that person? I simply don't understand, this guy's hard line is most of the people we've killed.

They've just installed a new secretary of the Supreme National Security Council who have anything by reports from his past activities is harder, harder line than Ali Lairajani who was just killed. I don't understand why he thinks Delsey Rodriguez is such a plight of a figure in Venezuela, because I don't think when you're dealing with ideologues and the people in Iran are harder, fix more fixed in their ideology than the chavistas in Venezuela. But it doesn't turn on a single person's decision. This is a deep state. People like to talk about the deep state in the United States. Let me tell you, Iran is run by a deep state and that means you can you can cut off the top, which is the right thing to do, but you need to cut off a lot more.

President Trump declared mission accomplished earlier in your view what has actually been accomplished.

“Well, I think we've inflicted severe damage on many, many aspects of the nuclear program, the ballistic missile and drone programs, the Navy, the revolutionary guard Navy, which is the Israel just finished off their commander.”

I think we've weakened the revolutionary guard. I think we've weakened the decision militia. I think a lot of damages have been done. I would not underestimate how devastating the campaign has been, but there's also clearly a lot more to do. And the more we do, I think, the more the instability we're introducing into the system. Their reports, for example, in the Middle Eastern press, that as we destroy one missile launcher after another missile launcher crews are beginning to say, they don't want to go out and launch missiles because if we are able to destroy the launcher, it's quite likely we're destroying the launcher crew as well.

And as that gets more widely known inside the country, I think people begin to get encouraged that taking down the regime becomes possible. I don't think this happens in a day.

You know, we're on just about to finish the fourth week of this war, as I said before, the regime has been in power 47 years, 47 years. And we're talking about, are we done yet after four weeks?

“Of course, we're not done yet. And you know, if you're going to embark on a policy regime change, you have to have patience and persistence.”

And if you don't, if you're not willing to, and you get out before you're finished, you risk having a wounded beast left in Tehran, that once it's able to start selling oil again, freely, we'll get the revenue to rebuild the. The nuclear weapons program, rebuild the missile program, rebuild the drone program, rebuild its ties to terrorist groups, and rebuild its capacity to repress its own citizens. So in some finite period of time, will we write back where we are today? Can the US realistically pull out at this point?

So because of the closure of the straight of form moves and you know, they have the regime has added the economic consequences of closing the straight to its other two great threats, the nuclear threat and the terrorist threat, you can really say the closing the straight is a threat of that level head of the Abu Dhabi National oil company, which is. United Arab Emirates gets most of its oil set a couple days ago, a tech in Texas, that closing the straight of form moves is a terrorist act. And for the Gulf Arabs, the oil producing states of the Arabian side of the Gulf, it's absolutely right, it's harmed their economies and it's harming the rest of the world.

I think that the government, the government of the I told us that's prepared to close the straight today will will be nicer to the rest of the world after it gets its nuclear program revived after it gets its ballistic missile program revived or do you think it'll be even harder to deal with than it was before I think the answer is very clear. Well, President Trump said that don't worry, will will protect the UAE and Saudis and Gulf states, we have military aircraft that moves at 2,000 miles per hour.

That's the latest to said overnight. Well, I think I think the Gulf states believe they could also play K to Ron. I think they really are quite surprised that Iran is attacking them. I don't think they should have been surprised and there were plenty of level-headed people among those governments that realized it showed we and they should have done more on defenses. We could have probably done more to prepare our bases in the region and our service members against these attacks.

“But now, according to the Wall Street Journal, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia has told Trump, you have to finish the regime off.”

You can't stop now. The Ambassador to Washington from the United Arab Emirates use a fellow Toby wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. He didn't use the word regime change, but if you read the whole op-ed, that's exactly what he's talking about.

So, our Arab friends are basically saying that as bad as this current situation is, as much as they'd like to get more oil out, they think that we're simply kicking the can down the road

if the regime and Tehran stays in place when hostilities stop. Okay, how long do you think that this conflict will last? Well, I don't think we know. And, you know, Trump said at the beginning you thought four to six weeks, I thought that was optimistic.

“The question is if, if, and our underlying if, you decide you want regime change and Iran, then you have to decide how committed you are to it.”

And if you're committed to it, you shouldn't put a deadline on it.

You know, in Afghanistan, the Taliban always used to say about the Americans, you have the watches we have the time.

Right. They're always obsessed with, is it over yet? Is it over yet? Well, okay, it's, it's four weeks, it's not over yet. But we have near complete dominance of the air over Iran. We have not stopped their, their missile launching and drone launching capabilities, but we're very close to that point, I think. We, we need to get the straight open. And then I think it's the timing is really at our discretion. We can keep blasting away at these targets. We should work more with the opposition. I want to come back to that because I think that could prove the biggest mistake of the campaign so far that we haven't done enough to aid the opposition to provide resources, telecommunication money weapons if they want it to help build their structures to.

Yeah, and what do you think the next few weeks look like?

“Well, I think that's entirely within Donald Trump's discretion. And I think he, he is doing some things to keep the military option not only open but expanding, bringing additional forces in.”

The regional forces into the region ground forces that may be to go after a car island that may be to go after the assets of the nuclear program at the key nuclear sites, the enriched uranium, the centrifuges and other materials could have something to do with the straight of foremost. I'm nervous about it, although I think those objectives certainly stopping the export of Iranian oil is legitimate objective. I'm worried we haven't thought them all through adequately if they were objectives on March the first.

You would think we would have deployed the forces before March the first instead of bringing them in now.

So I don't know what the, I don't know what the real mission potentially these forces is it may be a bluff with Trump you never know, but I think it's realistic to think that the continued destruction of the security aspect of the regime. The revolutionary guard in all its forms remains the principle thing that needs to be destroyed and to give people inside Iran some confidence that their own people won't massacre them if they take steps to overthrow the regime.

“I think everyone around President Trump, including Pete Hegseth, JD Vance and others are being blamed for the Iran operation, but not Marco Rubio who is the national security advisor your old position.”

Well, I don't know it's it's it's Rubio I think is seen by some people as preferable to vance because vance I think really is a committed isolationist. I think that distinguishes him from Trump who doesn't have a philosophy.

I think that is vance as you overall. I don't think it's Rubio's view based on things he did during his career in the Senate.

But but up until this point neither Rubio nor vance have really spoken out much about the war and really it's Trump who is who is doing most of the defending and late as I indicated he should have started this well before the war. But it could be that people think Rubio is the one giving him the best advice may be urging him to continue I don't know whether that's true or not, but I think that may be what people hope. How would you grade him? Great Rubio. Well, I think he's probably done as well as could be expected under the circumstances knowing something about the circumstances myself, but it's it must be a great strain on him to to have to defend some of Trump's policies unless he's changed his views from what he was when he was a senator.

But he would have been the one who was involved in laying the groundwork for this as well, but didn't seem like there was much groundwork that was laid unless I think that's right. No, and I think that's a general fault of the White House, the administration as a whole. I mean, it's just basic national security policy. Make sure your political base at home is in good shape. You do whatever you can with Congress. Well, if there's some people in Congress that aren't going to agree with Trump no matter what he does, but but you certainly are building support among the Republican party members and and perhaps others.

Notifying the allies trying to bring them on board instead of attacking NATO as Trump has done to the past four weeks working with the Gulf Arab countries working with the countries in the Pacific and as I've said probably excessively for your show working with the opposition. I don't understand why that wasn't done. Yeah, I think a lot of Americans are struggling with the basic question of whether there was an imminent threat because we have been hearing for so long that Iran is six weeks away from a nuclear weapon for years.

And neither of the administration nor intelligence officials have clearly articulated an eminent threat. I mean certainly tells the gap or did not do that during her hearing or Dan Ratcliffe shouldn't the threshold for military action be higher. Well, I don't think we need to wait until the threat is imminent and based on what I know I don't don't think there was an imminent threat. I said before when people asked me how soon could Iran get nuclear weapons the real answer 72 hours they send a wire transfer to the central bank of North Korean Pyeongyang and the North Koreans low nuclear devices on to a cargo plane and they show up and take it wrong.

“That's how they get nuclear weapons quickly.”

I don't know that they've done that, but that possibility exists to this very day.

And since if we've learned anything in the past 25 years that as good as it may be, our intelligence is not perfect. I think you're entitled to protect innocent civilians from nuclear devastation by taking preventive action.

“That is exactly what we said in George W Bush's national security strategy early in his administration and I think that's the right approach. I think that justifies the military action here whether the threat was imminent or not.”

Well, George W Bush's administration went into Iraq and Afghanistan on bat in tell of weapons of mass destruction.

Well, they went in on several bases, but let me give you one that's applicable here. Many democratic critics of the attacks on. Iran have said, you know, look, we can destroy their nuclear weapons facilities. We can destroy the centrifuges. We can we can close the tunnels. We can do a lot of damage, but we cannot destroy the knowledge of how to build nuclear weapons, which Iranian scientists and technicians have. So they say, so all this bombing is fruitless. That's their argument. They are correct that the knowledge of how to build nuclear weapons is key.

And that puts this regime in exactly the same position of Sodom Hussein before George W Bush attacked his regime and brought it down. Sodom Hussein had kept together 3,000 nuclear scientists and technicians.

He called him his nuclear Mujahideen.

These were the people who had the intellectual capability to rebuild Iraq's nuclear weapons program. Sodom's plan was when he got out of UN sanctions, when he got rid of UN weapons inspectors, the nuclear Mujahideen could go back to work. That is precisely what justifies regime change. It did for Sodom, and it does for the Iranians.

“So Trump says he's holding off on further strikes because of talks. Who do you think he's actually talking to?”

I don't think he's talking to anybody. I think it's pretty clear intermediate areas. This is not unusual in diplomacy. I'm not saying it's a fake. It happens frequently. But we're passing messages to the intermediaries. They're sending them to Iran. The Iranians are sending messages back to them and then sending of us. Okay. That could lead to a negotiation. But there are no negotiations. I don't think there's any serious negotiation. I don't think there's really a chance.

There's a resolution here by negotiation because the eye atollers are not going to negotiate their own surrender. Congress is now moving toward a boat on authorizing the war. Do you think lawmakers should have weighed in earlier? I think the war powers act as a feckless mechanism to use. I also think it's unconstitutional. But Congress has.

And yet doesn't seem to want to use the most powerful weapon of all, and that's the appropriations process.

“That's what the framers thought Congress, with Congress's most important power, the power of the person. If they don't like this war.”

They should pass a bill or amend another bill with wording that says something like no funds appropriated under any statute shall be used for the war in Iran except the withdraw our forces. And see if they can get a majority. Yeah. Our final question. Do you think this strategy is strengthening or weakening the U.S. globally? Well, I think the objective is correct, but I don't think we're strengthening ourselves. If we can't get our allies on board.

If they don't, if we don't get more of the allies on board. And if we don't have a clear goal that we're trying to reach. If the goal is regime change, then let's try and reach it and not try and look for a way out because the stock market's jewelry. If you weren't willing to take these risks, you shouldn't have gotten into it in the beginning. Well, that's called prior planning of which there's evidence we did precious little. Yeah, so do you think President Trump is sending a message to the world that if our gas prices hit five dollars and we're out as the easiest way.

Yeah, no, I think if I were if I were in Tehran watching this performance, including him saying. He granted the 10 day extension on the deadline because the the Tehran regime asked for it. The mediators are saying, according to the Wall Street Journal, that the Iranians did not ask for Trump gave it to them. It's just a sign of wage. Hmm. On that note, thank you Ambassador Bolton for your time. I see you are on CNN. You're everywhere.

I appreciate you fitting in the show and would love to have you back on. Hopefully, though, we'll be some sort of resolution the next time we check in with you. Well, thank you very much for having me. Thanks.

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