John Bolton's Dream of Bombing Iran Came True. So Why Isn't He Happy? | The 1600

0:00John Bolton:Today, a bonus episode featuring my exclusive interview with Ambassador John Bolton. Bolton has been cheerleading in Iran war for decades, longer than some of us have even been alive. He finally got his wish. So why isn't he happy? That conversation right now.

0:14The 1600 Host:This country was stone cold dead.

0:17John Bolton:Good morning from Newsweek headquarters at the top of the World Trade Center in New York City. I am Carlo Versano and this is The 1600. So we're continuing our special coverage of the war with Iran, which is now, as we're recording this on Monday morning, in its 10th day. The last couple of interviews we've had, the last couple of guests we've had on the show were people very much like me in their skepticism, if not outright hostility towards Trump's war in Iran right now. And indeed, this thing is not particularly popular. There's been a number of polls over the last week, and it shows that the war is polling roughly between negative 10 and negative 18.

0:52John Bolton:So it's about as underwater as the president is. There's some polls that are outliers. The Fox poll from Thursday or Friday had it at about even. But again, that's the outlier. It's not popular, needless to say. But there are some people in the D.C. establishment and elsewhere who have been actively trying to neutralize the Iranian menace, the Iranian threat for decades. And it's not just in the D.C. establishment. There's some Republicans who have been hoping for something like this for a long time. And I have one of them here with me today. John Bolton was the ambassador to the United Nations under the George W.

1:27John Bolton:Bush administration, and he was the national security advisor to President Trump in his first term before he was fired. Bolton has gone on to become one of the president's fiercest critics, although not on this. So without further ado, Ambassador Bolton, thanks so much for joining us today.

1:43The 1600 Host:Thanks for having me.

1:45John Bolton:So I want to take you back 11 years almost exactly to get going here. This is before you joined the Trump administration. Actually, it's before there even was a Trump administration. So this is March 2015. He was the host of The Apprentice at that moment. He hadn't even started his run yet. And you wrote this op-ed in the New York Times. It was headlined, To Stop Iran's Bomb, Bomb Iran. And this was in the middle of the negotiations during the Obama years for the nuclear deal. So here we are a decade later, a decade and change later. The nuclear deal is long gone, and we're bombing Iran. So my question to you, sir, is, are you happy?

2:21The 1600 Host:Well, I'm not happy with the way Trump's going about it. Look, I think there's a very compelling case based on vital U.S. security interests to make sure that both Iran's quest for nuclear weapons doesn't succeed and its own state terrorism and support for terrorism around the world doesn't succeed. I think Trump would have been very well advised to prepare the American public with this very powerful case in advance of actually attacking. That's what people normally do, maybe with an address from the Oval Office sitting behind the Resolute desk at 9 p.m. Eastern time to say, my fellow Americans, I have something serious to talk to you about.

3:04The 1600 Host:Trump hasn't done that. And I think the polls you mentioned reflect that. And that will cause him trouble, and it will mean it's going to be harder to continue the military success that at least in the first eight or so days we've been having. He also, it's a corollary to that, failed to lay the groundwork with Congress, and I think we saw evidence of that last week. In neither case does it mean you have to reveal the details of the operation or the timing or anything else. This is the case on political grounds he didn't make, and I'd say the same thing with respect to consultation with our allies, and you've seen evidence of that.

3:41The 1600 Host:The most important thing I'm worried he hasn't done is coordinate effectively with the Iranian opposition, who will carry a major part of the burden inside Iran in actually overthrowing the regime. They need assistance, very extensive. The regime has never been in a weaker position, but the opposition's not well-coordinated. We could help with a lot of that. Again, we should have been doing it, commencing that activity long ago, So not too late, but we don't have forever.

4:10John Bolton:Ambassador, I want to ask you a little bit about sort of the strategy, what went wrong, what could still go right. But before we get there, you know, I wasn't trying to be glib in my last question. You have been nothing if not consistent in your views about American intervention with respect to Iran for decades. I respect that. I find that to be I disagree with you, but I find it to be much more. I appreciate it more than some of these MAGA people who were talking about, you know, Trump, no new wars, the peace president. And now they're sort of trying to justify this after the fact. And I also understand this is personal to you, right?

4:41John Bolton:I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but the Biden administration actually charged a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard with trying to assassinate you. That's that's correct, right? Right. That's correct. So so you're supporting a war against the country that tried to kill you. Meanwhile, the same administration that's conducting this war under a president who you despise for good reason is also prosecuting you, right? You're under indictment for one of these fake, you know, mishandling of classified information quests that Trump is on. So my question, I guess, is I don't even know if it's a question.

5:15John Bolton:That's a remarkable position to be in, isn't it?

5:18The 1600 Host:Well, I've said from time to time the only question is who gets me first, the Iranians or Trump?

5:23John Bolton:OK, well, let's hope let's hope neither if that's all right. So let me ask you this. If you were still advising the president, what would you be telling him today? What what should the strategy be here now 10 days in?

5:33The 1600 Host:Well, I think part of the problem is I'm not sure Trump really understands what regime change is. He has this idea of what he calls the Venezuela model. But Venezuela isn't Iraq. And by the way, Venezuela isn't Venezuela either. He has not accomplished regime change in Venezuela. And that could still go badly wrong. I think certainly in all the political issues that I mentioned before, he's got to correct very quickly. Oil prices have gone up, not unexpectedly. He was told all this back in 2018 and 2019, so it shouldn't come as a surprise. but I think this is, for whatever reason, he doesn't seem to have appreciated it.

6:12The 1600 Host:I think that bearing in mind what we're trying to do is destabilize the regime at the top so that the fragmentation, disagreement within the regime can be exploited by the opposition and by figures in the regime, perhaps generals in the regular army, not the Revolutionary Guard, but the regular army, who would in effect come over to the side of the opposition. That's what we need to be thinking about. And it's not at all clear to me that Trump is. He doesn't do grand strategy. He doesn't even do policy the way we normally understand it. So I'm not sure exactly what his thought process is because we know the normal National Security Council process is all but nonexistent in this second term.

6:53John Bolton:So, again, I know you're a civilian like I am at this point. Have you seen any signs of what you're suggesting could happen, actually happening in terms of the opposition? I mean, we haven't seen big protests in the streets. I understand it would be very difficult to do it under such a bombardment. They did just name the new Ayatollah, same as the old Ayatollah. It's just his son who's, from my understanding, even more of a hardline religious fanatic than he is. Are there any signs that you're seeing out there that this could actually still happen, that we could actually affect regime change? Or are they just dug in?

7:27The 1600 Host:Well, I don't think we would see it publicly anyway. What I'm worried about is I'm not hearing from people who know Iran well that there are indications people are doing what they need to be doing, that there has to be behind-closed-doors conversations, in effect, to weaken the regime. And, look, the regime is unpopular across the board. The economy in Iran is in the tank. The young people can't stand it. The women have rejected it ever since the killing of Masyamini almost three years ago for refusing to wear the hijab. The ethnic groups are very dissatisfied. If there were a propitious moment to have regime change in Iran, this would be it if you worked with all those factors.

8:08The 1600 Host:And that, I'm afraid, is not happening.

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8:43John Bolton:I mean, it certainly does feel like they had an opportunity here with the regime being as weak as it was. and given what we had done to their missile defenses during Midnight Hammer last year. I guess the question is the same question that you have, which is sort of what comes now. I'm curious about the Gulf a little bit. So we saw a desalinization plant in Bahrain was hit by the Iranians over the weekend. They said that we hit one of their desal plants. I don't know how accurate that is. Meanwhile, but our assets in the Gulf, our allies in the Gulf, are taking this on the chin in a way that we are not And in a way that, at least according to the reporting, this White House did not expect.

9:22John Bolton:And this is a reciprocal relationship we have with these GCC countries, right? So I guess my question to you is we didn't defend them. We didn't prepare them for this. And they're taking hits to their infrastructure as well as our bases on their land. What is this going to do for our relationship with those countries?

9:40The 1600 Host:Well, we have given them substantial air defenses before. And I think even before the attack, we were beefing them up. Look, I think the Iranian attacks on the Gulf countries, the Saudis, the Emiratis, and the other four, the attacks on Azerbaijan and Turkey, are catastrophic mistakes by the Iranians. Catastrophic. They're hitting clearly civilian targets, not just infrastructure like desalination. They're firing at hotels. So this is a cold calculation on the part of the Iranians. And I think the result among the Gulf Arabs is they're now moving to our side. Look, they want regime change in Iran.

10:18The 1600 Host:That, to me, is very clear. They're like all the rest of us. They just would like to have it with a lot of fuss and bother, and that's not possible. But at this point, with the Iranians targeting civilian assets in their country, they have no choice but to respond. And I think that just further isolates Iran and makes it more likely that a few people in the regime wake up and say, you know, maybe this ship is going down and maybe I don't want to go down with it.

10:45John Bolton:Well, from your lips, Ambassador, I hope that's what happens here. Sort of a broader question for you, again, just because you've been around in various administrations, including the first Trump administration. Why do you think the second Trump administration has turned out to be so much more hawkish than many of us expected?

11:03The 1600 Host:Well, I'd have to say I'm absolutely astounded by it. And I think beyond my astonishment is what must be going through the melting down minds of J.D. Vance and a lot of the MAGA isolationists. And I think it's one reason why we've only heard sporadically from Vance since the attacks began. This is not the administration they signed up for. Why is Trump more hawkish this time than last time? I mean, your guess is as good as mine. He doesn't, you know, he does neuron flashes. He doesn't do policy A to B to C, you know, the old-fashioned logical way. He just does it. Some people have said they think he's on a roll.

11:42The 1600 Host:He thinks, boy, great success in Venezuela. Let's try Iraq. That's possible. As I say, I don't think we have a great success in Venezuela yet. And look, the way he does things internationally is dangerous. He does not think through the consequences. He doesn't think he needs to know much, and he certainly doesn't know much. And you get the spontaneous decisions that the difference between first and second term is that in this term, his top advisors say, yes, sir, as soon as he says something. Whereas in the first term, not because people wanted to block the president, but because they were trying to help him, they would say, but Mr.

12:17The 1600 Host:President, have you thought of A and B and C? Have you considered this other alternative? People are afraid to say those things in this second term because they're afraid they'll be taken as signs of dissent or disagreement.

12:30John Bolton:Well, and people, voices like you have been, you know, cast aside. There is nobody in this administration, it appears, who can say, Mr. President, to your point, you know, you need to look at this in a different way. So I was just talking to people, again, civilians, people who aren't familiar with this the way that you are, the way even that I am, just asking them questions over the weekend. Everyone to a person said, we are being dog walked by Benjamin Netanyahu. This is Netanyahu's war. These are not anti-Semites, right? These are just regular people and parents I talked to at the park, my friends from growing up.

13:03John Bolton:They're saying, we're fighting Israel's war. What do you say to that? Do you think that's fair?

13:08The 1600 Host:Look, Bibi Netanyahu has had the overthrow of this regime as a top priority longer than I have. And he's thought about it more. He's clearly waited for this. But Trump resisted exactly these kinds of arguments in the first term. I mean, it's not like this came out of the blue and Bibi snuck one by him one day. Trump decided he wanted to do it. Now, if things go south, I will absolutely guarantee you Trump will blame it on Netanyahu, because in Trump's world of winners and losers, he's a winner and not a loser. And therefore, if this action against Iran turns out to be a loser, it's somebody else's fault.

13:44The 1600 Host:That is coming.

13:46John Bolton:I also wonder if he's setting up the Iranian people to be the scapegoats. One of the first things he said after the first wave of attacks was launched was, you know, Iranians, this is your chance to rise up and overthrow your government as though it's that easy. And that just made me think like, oh, he's going to he's going to cut bait and he's going to say, look, we gave him their chance and they didn't they didn't take it. Do you think that's a possibility?

14:06The 1600 Host:Look, I agree with that. I mean, that was a piece of evidence that the work had not been done. The preliminary work had not been done. If he if he knew and understood what had to be done, he wouldn't have said that.

14:15John Bolton:Yeah. Ambassador Bolton, before I let you go, what was the lesson of Iraq in your estimation, having been there for it? And how can we avoid something like that here?

14:26The 1600 Host:Well, I think the military aspect of Iraq was a great success. We overthrew Saddam Hussein. What came next was the mistake, and that was making the U.S. a political actor in the country. The Coalition Provisional Authority, which we ran for about a year, was set up with entirely good intentions on the part of the people in the U.S. government who favored it, but it made the U.S. a political player in Iraq, and we never escaped that. I am not a believer in nation building. My objective is pursuing American national interest. And I do think ultimately the Iranians are going to have to figure out what kind of government that they want for themselves.

15:06John Bolton:What if that government is just the same government?

15:10The 1600 Host:Well, it can't be worse than this government. And if Trump is serious about a four or five week campaign, remembering we're only a little bit more than a weekend, this is just getting started. that it's very hard to see that something like this will emerge because there won't be enough people around who remember what they were doing. It could well be a military government, and I think as an interim outcome, if you had a military that understood its job was to restore order and give the Iranian people the chance to have a consultative process to make a decision what a new government would look like, that'd be fine.

15:42The 1600 Host:If it turned out to be a military government along the lines, let's say, of Egypt for an extended period of time, that'd still be much better than what we have today.