Chapter 1: Who is Ambassador John Bolton and what are his views on Iran?
So for 20 years, there's basically been one guy who was always known as the Iran war guy in Republican politics. For years, even decades, Ambassador John Bolton has argued that America needs to push for regime change in Iran and take an active military role in making it happen.
But now that Trump is doing just that, Ambassador Bolton says he's actually going about it all wrong and making a big mistake. So how did Trump lose the Republican Party's biggest Iran war hawk? Let's find out. Ambassador Bolton, thank you so much for joining us.
Well, thanks for having me.
Glad to be here. Ambassador, I would love for you to just run through your credentials for a second. We're going to be talking about, obviously, the growing war in Iran, but I wanted for you to give our audience just a sense of how closely you've been tied to this for a while.
Well, I've had the privilege to serve in a number of senior U.S. government officials going back to the Reagan and first Bush administration, second Bush administration. I was undersecretary of state for arms control and international security. Then I was U.S. ambassador to the U.N. And I served in the first Trump term as a national security advisor for 17 months.
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Chapter 2: Why does John Bolton criticize Trump's approach to Iran?
I was his longest serving national security advisor.
Yeah, and obviously that's the part that we really want to focus on. I think you've become known as one of the most prominent American advocates for military action in Iran over a set of decades. And this war is, in a sense, something that you've argued for long through your career.
But in recent weeks, you've emerged as one of the sharpest critics of the Trump administration's actions and how it's conducting this war. I wanted you to walk me through your critiques. Where do you think they went wrong from the perspective of someone who wanted to see this happen?
Well, what I support is a policy of regime change in Iran. And I've held that view for many years because I don't think there's any chance the current regime will change its behavior on two critical fronts. It's not going to give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons, which threaten Israel, the United States, really the whole world.
And it's not going to give up on its pursuit of terrorism, its support of terrorist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Shia militia in Iran. Iraq and conducting terrorist operations around the world. I think we've got decades of evidence that their behavior is not going to change.
When you're confronted with that kind of threat, danger, and behavior isn't going to change, the alternative is change the regime. I think the regime is in its weakest position since any time after it took power in 1979. The economy is a mess. The young people, they can see they can have a different kind of life. Two-thirds of the population is under 30.
The women are enormously dissatisfied since the death of Masi Amini. Ethnic groups are dissatisfied. So to me, conditions are ripe for regime change as a policy to succeed. And the question is, what role can the United States play? And here, I think Trump has badly misplayed his hand from the beginning, unfortunately. Tell me how.
Trump initially did nothing to prepare the American public for the steps necessary to affect regime change. Normally, when a president is going to take a dramatic action like Trump has, you explain that to the American people. You make the case. why it's in our national interest to seek regime change, to avoid the threat of nuclear weapons, to avoid the continuing threat of terrorism.
You don't have to say anything about what your specific plan is. You don't have to talk about timing. But you have to be respectful of our citizens and make the case to them that this is in their interest. I think he could have done it.
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Chapter 3: What is Bolton's perspective on regime change in Iran?
Yeah, that's the question I was going to ask you from a sense of someone who, again, wanted to see some of this happen, but necessarily does not seem that the Trump administration maybe shares your conviction to see this all the way through. There's a sense that they want to make this around four to six weeks, not necessarily the timeline that a full regime change could take.
Is it your position that if they are willing to kind of see that all the way through, they shouldn't have started this in the first place?
Right. Four to six weeks might have been a good estimate of the Pentagon's initial campaign, but the military action alone was never going to cause regime change, or at least it would have been a lucky event had it done so. This has to come from inside Iran. It's the people, the opposition, the ethnic groups, the young people, the women that have to figure out how to actually accomplish it.
It's clear they were badly intimidated in January when the regime killed 30,000 or 40,000 protesters, literally machine gunned them in the streets of Iran simply for protesting against the regime. That needed to be taken into account. That's why contact with the opposition, disorganized though it is,
but contact with figures inside Iran who could say, we know how to get things moving again at the right time. We know how to help cause dissent at the top of the regime.
We know who to look for who might defect, a regular army general, for example, not Revolutionary Guard, but others who could, by increasing the tensions and disagreements within the regime, cause it to fracture and thereby collapse.
More from John Bolton in a minute.
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We're back. It's Today Explained Saturday, and I'm with Ambassador John Bolton. I'm going to ask about a couple of recent developments. Trump announced that he, you know, over the weekend that he was going to pause strikes on Iranian power plants for five days, claiming that the U.S. and Iran had had very productive conversations.
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Chapter 4: How has Trump's administration's actions affected U.S. relations with allies?
Has any of the last three weeks shaken any of your convictions? I mean, you have been someone who has obviously advocated for regime change in Iran, but we have not seen the uprising from Iranian people that maybe some folks wanted or expected. What if regime change simply is impossible or is not kind of the desire of Iranians? Is there any moment that could prove that to you?
Well, I don't think... People who know the situation inside Iran really thought that the people would go out in the streets for weeks for a long time after the attacks began because they had been in the streets basically in an economic protest in December and January. And that had ended with people being machine gunned.
Chapter 5: What mistakes did Trump make regarding preparation for military action in Iran?
And that has an intimidating effect, as you can imagine. And I think... It is the case that Trump and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs have all been saying to Iranians, stay indoors during this bombing campaign. What they should be doing is working on pulling the regime apart at the top, working on senior regime officials who may be thinking, you know, this government is going down.
I don't want to go down with the ship. And there's an appropriate time to come out in the streets. And what you're looking for is a time when much, if not all, of the military isn't about to say, we're not going to fire on our fellow Iranians. We're just not going to do it. Which is why I think the attacks on the Revolutionary Guard and the besieging militia inside Iran are so important.
And I think just looking at targets over the past several days, it's pretty clear that the structures of the IRGC and the Besiege really are still heavily targeted. And there are a lot of targets there. So there's more work to be done to weaken that capacity of the regime to harm its own citizens.
You warned France 24 that Trump could, quote, be ready to stop the war at almost any moment. That sounds like him fighting an off-ramp, declaring success. Do we know what that would look like?
Well, for Trump, it almost doesn't matter. He's capable of declaring victory contrary to reality. I think he's got a real problem now, as does the rest of the world, with this closure of the Strait of Hormuz. I think it is practically, as a practical matter, impossible for him to declare victory when it's so obvious that this – threat to our economy and the global economy is still in place.
I suspect that's one reason why these talks suddenly materialized and why he did make that announcement two hours before the market opened on Monday morning.
I had heard some questions that maybe the U.S. was going to focus its next offensive campaign on securing the Strait of Hormuz to try to seize it independently. I mean, is that a possibility?
Well, I have heard that idea before, that one thing you want to do is take the position. This is a very narrow straight, as everybody knows, 21 miles at its narrowest. And it's surrounded by high ground on both sides.
So if it were feasible, and I don't know the answer to this, but if it were feasible to control the heights on much of the Iranian side to eliminate people firing shoulder-held missiles, rockets and short-range missiles, then that would make sense.
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