An Iran Hawk’s Take on the Cease-Fire

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FP Live Introduction

0:30Hi, I'm Ravi Agrawal, Foreign Policy's Editor-in-Chief. This is FP Live.

0:40So we've got an additional episode for you this week. I'm recording this on Thursday, the 9th of April. There's been a lot of criticism of the Trump administration for embarking on a war in Iran without congressional approval and for bombing it without international permission. But there's also criticism from a completely different constituency. The group that says Trump didn't go far enough. That he should have stuck it out and ensured regime change, no matter the cost.

1:11That is the perspective we're going to air out on the show today. First, a quick read on where things are at. As many predicted, the ceasefire in the Middle East is proving to be very fragile. As of this recording, there has been disagreement over Lebanon. Iran claimed it was included in the ceasefire. The White House disagreed. Israel was bombing it anyway. And then the European Union came out and said Lebanon should indeed be included in the ceasefire. And now it seems Israel might be open to talks with Beirut, which will likely be about disarming Hezbollah.

1:48Meanwhile, we're all looking ahead to the weekend when U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance will lead a delegation to Islamabad for a meeting with Iranian officials. Pakistan has emerged as a key player for now, but it's worth noting that this is a country that does not recognize the state of Israel. Islamabad has been particularly canny at forging a relationship with Trump in his second term, as FPs reported.

Strait of Hormuz Concerns

2:15One big area of concern for not just the parties in this conflict, but the whole world, is what happens to the Strait of Hormuz. Only five vessels traveled through it on Wednesday, which is a slower rate than the previous five days. Hundreds of tankers are waiting to return. The reality is that things are still too unstable to truly commit. There are security concerns and sky-high insurance costs. The longer this goes on, the greater the chance oil prices will spike once more.

2:49What is clear is that high energy costs impact the whole world, but they impact Asia most of all, which consumes 40% of the world's oil and is home to the world's fastest-growing economies, so it's going to need more and more oil. One more reason to hope progress is made in Islamabad this weekend.

Interview with John Bolton

3:10Okay, on to our interview. A few days before the Middle East ceasefire was announced, there was an interesting op-ed in the New York Times titled, Finish the Job, How Trump Can Still Win War in Iran. Of course, Trump chose the opposite path, which was to seek an exit ramp. I wanted to air out the case for why that was wrong. My guest is a longtime Iran hawk, and the author of that op-ed I mentioned, John Bolton. Bolton served in the first Trump administration as national security advisor.

3:43He was ambassador to the UN from 2005 to 2006. Today, he's an outspoken critic of the president.

Case for Regime Change

3:52Let's dive in.

3:55Ambassador Bolton, welcome to FP Live. Well, glad to be with you. Thanks for having me. So, you think it was wrong of Trump to de-escalate this week. Explain that. Well, I think it was wrong if his objective is regime change. I honestly don't know what his objective really is. It seems to keep shifting. But I think given the closure of the Strait of Hormuz by the regime, by its threats, really, more than anything else, and by intimidating shipping and insurance,

4:27they've established something that is really, in my mind, a threat, in many respects, equivalent to the nuclear threat they were developing, the terrorist threat they've nurtured over decades, really a direct threat at the world economy. And to walk away with that scenario still unresolved, I think, sets a dangerous precedent. I think our military was working on clearing the strait. I'm not suggesting it's an easy job. I'm a little surprised it took them this long. We know from Trump's own words he didn't think it would happen.

4:58I don't understand how he could think that. But it's obviously something that needs to be resolved. It has been unacceptable to the United States since Franklin Roosevelt and the king of Saudi Arabia met during World War II to have any country, whether it's an outsider like the Soviet Union or a Gulf country like Saddam Hussein's Iraq, to have domination over the total oil production of the Gulf region. I think that has to remain our objective. And it's obviously jeopardized now by what the regime in Tehran is doing.

5:30And so just to be clear here, you are still advocating for regime change in Iran. And, you know, over the last couple of weeks, one of the main critiques of the Trump administration was, A, I mean, it shouldn't have gone in in the first place. But now that it's gone in, one of the parameters through which you can say, well, this didn't quite go to plan, is that the regime is still intact. And therefore, it can rebuild. Well, I think that's right. I mean, I think Trump made a number of mistakes before beginning hostilities. He didn't make what I think is a very compelling case to the American people

6:04that regime change is the only way to protect ourselves and our friends and allies in the region, especially from Iran's menace. If you don't prepare your own people for why you're about to use military force, it's just a mistake in politics 101. Corollary to that is he didn't prepare Congress. A kind of international corollary is he didn't brief any of the allies. It's not that he didn't just brief NATO. He didn't brief the Gulf allies. He didn't brief our allies in the Pacific, like Japan and South Korea, Taiwan,

6:36and others that get a lot of their oil from the Gulf. He didn't brief anybody. And we're paying some of the price for that now. And most important, he didn't prepare the opponents of the regime inside. He didn't work with them. He didn't assist them. This all could have started after the 12-day war, as they call it, last year, the campaign against Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile program. You know, if you had a functioning NSC process, that could have been an exercise the NSC could have engaged in to say, OK, what have we learned from that episode of mowing the lawn,

7:07as the Israelis call it? And are we ready for something more than that? As far as I can tell, none of that happened. I have to say, I find that term mowing the lawn very distasteful. I know you're not using it here, but whoever does, I think it sort of demeans the people we're talking about. But Ambassador, I want to interrogate the idea of regime change. And I know you've been a proponent of this for many years now. And part of the issue here is that from everything we know about the Islamic Republic,

7:38the regime has many contingencies for key positions, and that's why the regime is still intact right now. The military controls some 40% of the economy, so incentives to defect from the IRGC or the besiege are extremely low. This is now a military clerical regime. And I'm just curious how you imagine, theoretically even, that the hundreds of thousands of people in the IRGC and besiege and the ground forces combined, how many people would America have to kill

8:09to quote-unquote finish the job, as you've been putting it? Well, I think much of what you said demonstrates why regime change is the only alternative if we ever want to see more benign behavior from some government in Iran. And I do think we've damaged the government very severely. And that's one of the consequences of the use of military force that I don't think Trump has thought through how to exploit. Clearly, we've killed hundreds of leaders at the very top of the regime. We have provoked a premature succession crisis

8:40by killing the former supreme leader. I think many observers of Iran would say that when he finally died of natural causes, he was 86 or more and not in great health, there was going to be a succession crisis. He's only the second supreme leader. They've had one succession. So by definition, a succession is a time of potential crisis where all kinds of factors come into play. But Ambassador, if I may, I agree with everything you're saying here. I think what I'm trying to challenge is the very idea that regime change

9:12wouldn't necessarily backfire and that it's almost impossible to even envision for starters. So why advocate for it? Well, the corollary is that what we've done is move up regime change in ways they weren't prepared for. And by all evidence, indeed, the Times of London reported earlier this week that the successor supreme leader, Mojtaba Hominay, appears to be in a coma, being treated for severe wounds, which means there is no supreme leader in effect,

9:42if that's true. And I think what's happening now is that fissures and splits are developing in what's left of the top of the regime and that things are beginning to come apart. This is where... But I would have to, just to push back there a little bit, the evidence suggests otherwise they've emerged from this conflict with control of the Strait of Hormuz. They've shown remarkable coordination in, for example, attacking universities if theirs are attacked. The tit-for-tat nature of the way in which they've approached this war so far

10:15suggests that command and control is way more intact than the other side would have us believe. The regime largely seems intact. And even if something happens to Mojtaba Hominay, all they have to do is install another supreme leader. I mean, it kind of proves the point that even with, as you've been saying, if Hominay is in a coma, they're still operating. I think what you're saying proves the exact opposite. They made a point near the beginning of saying they had delegated authority in the Revolutionary Guard to commanders in the 31 provinces,

10:46following pre-planned scenarios of what would happen if they were attacked and if the central nodes of command and control were eliminated. And I think that's what they're following now. I think that the evidence is that the damage is so substantial that they're running on muscle memory. And I don't think it's tit-for-tat, as you just said. I was told by someone formerly high up in the Israeli military, still, I think, knowledgeable,

11:17several weeks ago now, so it may not be entirely accurate, but I suspect that it is, that if you looked at the total tonnage of weaponry dropped by Israel and the United States on Iran, compared to the total tonnage of weaponry Iran has dropped on everybody else, that ratio is 300 to 1. But you know, Ambassador, some of this... Let me finish. Let me finish a thought here occasionally. The idea is that as the instruments of Iranian state power are systematically destroyed, and I do think we've got a ways to go

11:49before accomplishing that, these fissures and splits inside the regime continue to grow. And it's not just the opponents of the regime, who are very widespread, all across the country, I think constituting an overwhelming majority of the population, but it's people in the regime itself who begin to look around and say, you know, this ship is going down and maybe I don't want to go down with it. Now, if Trump had prepared more in advance by working with the opposition, by providing them with resources,

12:21money, telecommunications, weapons, whatever, I think we could be in a lot better position than we are. It's not too late, but I don't have any confidence at this point, given the erratic course of things to this stage in the White House, that we're going to see a sustained effort. I don't know what comes next at this point. You know, just to go back to your point about the difference in tonnage, about how much Israel and the United States have struck Iran versus the other way around. I mean, one sort of comparison here could be made with Afghanistan

12:51in that obviously, the Taliban was hit far more than the other way around, but as they often used to say, you might have the watches we have the time, and it very much seems like this Iranian regime has set out to say, look, all we need to win is to survive. And they're also just acutely aware that to dramatically hurt global commerce, all they need is for one drone to go through or even just stopping ships from going through for a lack of confidence.

13:21You know, why is it that you and so many others have felt for quite a long time that all these costs, the immense global ripple effects that have come from this war and that would come from any war to try and enact regime change in Iran? Why do you think it's worth it? Because I don't think having religious fanatics controlling nuclear weapons is something that we should accept. And I believe in a... But I just have to say that... I've just finished the sentence here. I mean, really,

13:52you want to ask me a question or you want to talk? If you want to talk, go ahead, it's your show. That's true. But would it be okay then for... Pakistan has nuclear weapons, Israel has nuclear weapons, that is okay? I find the proliferation of nuclear weapons generally be gravely concerning. I'm more concerned about nuclear weapons in some hands than others. I am not concerned about nuclear weapons in the hands of Great Britain. But I am exceedingly concerned about nuclear weapons in the hands of a medieval, feudal group of religious fanatics

14:22backed by a militarized, autocratic system. And I think Iran's behavior has shown repeatedly over time that that threat will grow as it approaches the significant nuclear capability. And I don't think it's entirely a risk of Iran's own indigenous capability. I do think that the relationships with North Korea, which have existed for many years on both the nuclear side and the ballistic missile side, mean that there's a risk that much of the Iranian program,

14:53or at least its availability, is under a mountain somewhere in North Korea. So that the potential of Iran getting a nuclear weapon quickly when it needed one is very real.

15:05I have a great question from one of our subscribers. His name is Michael Patterson. I'm going to quote him here. And he says, the type of action, ambassador, that you seek right now and in the past as well would take tremendous American political resolve. He goes on to say, we are a democracy. America has no such resolve. How do you execute your strategy for regime change without the backing of the American electorate? Well, I think you need to prepare the people.

15:35You have to make the case, as I said before, why regime change in Iran is in our interest and the interest of our friends and allies around the world. I think Trump obviously has not made that case and it could be a crippling mistake. If you had to make the case in 30 seconds, what would it be? The nature of this regime, what it has said from its very inception, from its very first moments when one of its initial actions was taking our diplomats hostage, from its attacks on America

16:07and American positions, blowing up our embassy in Lebanon in the summer of 1983, attacking the marine barracks in Lebanon in the fall of 1983, and on and on and on. Shows that it really is a threat based on an ideological basis and that when they say death to America and death to Israel, you should take it seriously. I think the Gulf Arabs share the same geostrategic view of the threat of Iran and given 47 years of trying to change their behavior

16:38unsuccessfully, the inescapable conclusion is that peace and security in the Middle East will never happen and broader chances for peace and security won't happen as long as this regime remains in power.

16:51There's an argument to be made that everything you're saying could also be counterproductive. So, for example, with the 12-day war last June, one of the takeaways for the Iranian regime was that they needed to be more hardline, that maybe Khamenei, the previous one, the previous supreme leader, was too hesitant, that he wasn't decisive enough, and that's kind of what led to their weaponizing energy with the Strait of Hormuz. And so, isn't there a sense that even getting involved

17:21for America is counterproductive? Now, again, I think you've got it exactly backward. What we've seen building up, and really, while America and the Arab world slept, they had been fortifying the islands in the southern end of the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. They've been building up the capability through drones and fast boats, not just the Mein Lang buying anti-ship missiles from China. There was a Reuters story just days before the military action began.

17:52They'd signed a new contract with China to buy anti-ship weapons, all of which was being put in place very slowly and systematically to allow them to try and close the Strait of Hormuz. And so, the question is, come the day when they got nuclear weapons capability, would they be easier to deal with or harder to deal with? When you were in the Trump administration, the Trump administration pulled out of the JCPOA, that's the nuclear agreement, and there's a criticism

18:24that were we still in that nuclear agreement, we wouldn't be in this moment now, which I think we're both agreeing is not a good moment. This current outcome where the regime is still intact but is actually emboldened more hardline and very vengeful. Do you, at this point, maybe regret that America pulled out of the JCPOA? No, it was a wretched treaty and I think it was paving the way for Iran to get nuclear weapons much more quickly. You know, one of the fundamental

18:54precepts of that treaty was that Iran hadn't had a nuclear weapons program before. We know that's not true. Another fundamental precept was that we would know everything about their nuclear activity which is saying that we have confidence that our intelligence will always be 100% accurate. We know that's not true either and when you combine it with the uncertainty about exactly what Iran was doing on the nuclear side, what it may have been doing under a mountain in North Korea and given its behavior over the years, I think it was

19:26the illusion of safety which in many respects is more dangerous for a country to base its foreign policy on illusion than facing up to the reality. But they wouldn't have produced 440 kilograms of highly enriched uranium under the inspections regime and now we have the problem of all of that uranium there. That's simply not true. The arrangements were utterly inadequate. The idea that you could base any kind of verification regime just on the IAEA

19:56when they were denied access to key locations on Iranian military bases where the real work of the nuclear program was underway. You know, the IAEA is a great agency. I'm a supporter of it but it's not an espionage agency. It is allowed to see what it's allowed to see and that can be important but that's all other than what it gets from its member governments and as I say, if you're prepared to argue that American intelligence is 100% accurate then fine.

20:27I'm not prepared to argue on that basis. And we'll be back in a minute with more of Foreign Policy Live. Remember, you can catch these conversations live and on video on foreignpolicy.com. Subscribers get to send us questions in advance in addition to a range of other benefits including our magazine. Sign up. Adobe Firefly is the all-in-one creative studio

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War Crimes and International Law

21:28You've been saying that Trump didn't make the case for war, and, you know, one of, per international law, you do need to make the case either at the Security Council or somewhere else. But there's also the fact that the United States has now openly threatened war crimes on Iran. It has hit hospitals and schools many thousands of civilians have been killed. And it's fair to say that all of this has led to a pretty significant loss of soft power, a reputational hit for the United States.

22:00This may have happened anyway if the United States would have attacked Iran under any circumstances, even the ones that you're describing. How have you grappled with that as you've made this case in public and elsewhere? Well, you've made a lot of statements that I think are factually inaccurate or have implications that are wrong. I think there's an easy case why this is legitimate. It follows from the national security strategy that the George W. Bush administration promulgated that we are entitled to take preventive steps

22:30against threats from weapons of mass destruction like nuclear, chemical, and biological programs. I think that case could be easily made. I think it is absolutely inaccurate to say that the military operations to date have included any war crimes. There have been targets that have been hit, I'm quite sure, unintentionally, that were civilian. I think the U.S. should make reparations for that at an appropriate time, but there is zero evidence

23:01that we have ever targeted anything deliberately that violates the laws of war. And, you know, this idea that that you can make these judgments from 30,000 feet without much evidence I just think is wrong. And I'm prepared to take that argument on in international public opinion. Well, Trump, of course, did threaten to end Iranian civilization. Yeah, yeah. Look, people can criticize Trump all they want on that point. I'm not Donald Trump and I'm not going to defend it.

23:31Fair enough, and you've been public about that. I do want to talk a little bit more about Trump, though. You know him quite well. You've worked for him. And you've been making the case that he hasn't quite handled this right. Do you think it's mostly just that he didn't make the case or that the prosecution of the war hasn't been spot on? And even a week ago, it seemed like you felt that if he doubled down, this could still end up the way you wanted it to, but it hasn't.

24:02Well, the basic problem comes down to what the objective is. And I don't know what his objective is. I thought back in January during the time of the demonstrations before the regime and in showing how it treats its own citizens, it certainly would show how it would treat us, massacred upwards of 40,000 of them, machine gunned them in the streets. Trump said to the demonstrators, his words now, keep protesting, take control of your institutions, help is on its way.

24:34These were comments that basically said this is an opportunity to support regime change. On February the 28th, when he announced the beginning of the attacks, he said in his remarks at Mar-a-Lago that the Iranian people should take advantage of this, it might be their last chance in generations. So I thought that was an indication that he believed in regime change. And we reviewed some of the things that he didn't do that I thought he should have been doing, if that's what the campaign was for.

25:06I've gotten lost in the number of permutations that he and other members of his administration have listed as the goals. We've heard lists of goals for the military, destroy the Navy, that kind of thing. Those are tasks that you can give to the military and they can plan against them. But the larger objective here to me is still very unclear and it may be unclear to Trump himself. He does not do philosophy. He doesn't have a national security grand strategy. He doesn't do policy

25:37the way most of us understand that term. I don't know what motivated him in fact to begin this campaign since when I talked about the objective of regime change in the first term, he didn't buy it. So I was as amazed as anybody else that he seemed to be moving in that direction. You know, on that point, I was really struck by some reporting in the New York Times this week, which took us in the room in February when Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu made the case for attacking Iran and presented a plan, a four-step plan that included

26:09regime change and according to the New York Times and clearly they've had senior officials tell them this or leak to them, but the CIA director heard that and called the regime change element of it farcical. Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, said it was bullshit. If you were there in that room, what would you have said? Well, I wouldn't necessarily have said in February hearing that when the meeting took place and then say, let's start the war on February the 28th. So I think I indicated earlier,

26:39I was very pleased to see Trump make the decision last year to engage and go after the nuclear weapons program. And, you know, by the way, people told us for years, you can't attack the nuclear weapons program. There'll be war in the Middle East. The people of Iran will rally to the regime. Well, we did a pretty good job and we only conducted a one-day war. You could call it a 14-bomb war in effect, but did considerable damage to the nuclear program. No protests in Iran. If anything, the people

27:10took away the impression the regime couldn't defend one of its most important assets and a regime that can't defend the crown jewels ultimately can't defend itself. That was a moment to begin to think more broadly. But I don't buy the argument that somehow Bibi conned Trump into this. He made the same arguments in the first term and they had no effect. Why did they produce the result they did in the second term? I don't know. And if all the people who were leaking what happened during that meeting

27:41in the Situation Room were so concerned, why didn't they speak out more strongly and tell Trump what their opinions were? I mean, I think I know one reason for that. I always spoke out and told him what my opinions were and here we are. But what's the point of being a senior advisor if you don't give the advice you believe in? Are you suggesting there that were any of his senior advisors give him advice that would go against what he wants to hear that they would get fired? Well, I don't know what the situation is today.

28:12It could be substantially different. But if everybody's covering their posterior for what happened in that meeting after the fact, then you have to say, well, what are they in government for? Is it for those high-level government salaries they're getting or are they there to try and affect policy? There's one more element of this. Trump was very publicly, he seemed surprised that Iran would attack the Strait of Hormuz, that it would attack its Gulf allies. It was almost like he hadn't seen the intelligence community's work on this

28:42where, you know, as you well know, all the wargaming shows that this is exactly what Iran would have done and you need to prepare for that. When you heard all of this, why did you think Trump was surprised? I don't know. I don't see how