John Bolton has spent years arguing that bombing Iran isn't just justified, but necessary.
Because Iran, for many decades has been the world central banker of international terrorism, funding Shia Sunni terrorist on an equal opportunity basis.
For decades, he's argued that American military force has solved the problem of hostile regimes in the Middle East. He backed the invasion of Iraq, champion some of the most disastrous American interventions of the modern era, and despite that, he's still arguing more force, more intervention, and more regime change will bring stability to the Middle East. Now, as the US escalates again, Bolton's worldview is back at the center of the debate, a world view that when it
comes to Iran, our government shares. I'm Daniel James and you're listening to seven am today former US National Security Advisor John Bolton on the strikes on Iran and why a man who backed the invasion of Iraq still sees bombing as the answer. It's Friday, March twelve, Ambassador Bolton. This war has been criticized by world leaders, by international policy experts, by politicians in our country and in yours. You say it's legally questionable, strategically risky, and morally unjustified.
We seem to be on a path without any clear aestimati on cost.
The powers involved in this conflict must immediately cease hostilities and commit to dialogue and diplomacy.
Blo Mafia.
Nobody believes that Donald Trump is engaged in this war on the side of the Iranian people for democracy and human rights.
Why then, do you think it was the right call for America to bomb our aunt Well?
I think the objective of regime change in Iran, which may or may not be Donald Trump's objective, who knows, But I think legitimate reason here is that we've had ample demonstration over a sustained period of time that Iran's quest for deliverable nuclear weapons and its support for international terrorism in the Middle East and around the world is a threat to our security, the security of Israel, the security of our friends in the our world, and really
the West as a whole, and that it's been demonstrated that there is no alternative that will eliminate the threat other than taking military action against the regime in hopes of toppling it and giving the people of Iran the chance to take control of their own government. So I think it's strategically necessary. I think it's perfectly legitimate, and indeed it is the moral thing to do to rid the world of this abhorrent autocracy.
Knowing Donald Trump as you do, and having worked along beside him, how much confidence, if any, do you have that this decision was driven by a coherent strategy rather than impuls because in the dice. Since the stroke, the White House has offered shifting explanations of itsimes, including mixed messages about regime change to terrence and durriction of the conflict.
Well, I'm sure it was not driven by a coherent strategy. He doesn't do coherent strategy. He doesn't have a philosophy, he doesn't do policy the way we normally understand it.
You just said it is a little excursion and you said it is a war.
So which one is it?
Well, it's both. It's both. It's an excursion that will keep us out of a war, and the war is going to be uh, I mean for them, it's a war. For us, it's turned out to be easier than we thought. But think of it. They had thousands of missiles, seven eight thousand missiles.
I tried to persuading that our objective should be regime change back in the first term, obviously without success. And I have to say, I'm still wondering who had the magic words that made him change his mind this time?
Was it Benjamin na Perhaps?
Well, I don't think so, because that's been that Nahu's policy for a long time, including in the first term. He's thought about regime change because of its implications for Israel longer and harder than anybody else. And he wasn't able to persuade Trump in the first term. So there's something out there that did this, And I don't know what it was, and I don't know how long it will last. It may have faded already.
You say that lock Trump, you want raging change, but already the slain Autoritoles been replaced by his son. He was close with the Revolutionary Guard. Di you CoA said that to be raging change, and what good's that change? The replacement leader is just as bad or worse.
No, to me, regime change it means getting rid of not only the Iotolas but the Revolutionary Guard. I could make a pretty good argument that functionally the Revolutionary Guard is in charge of the country. Now they control the nuclear and ballistic missile programs. By most estimates, they control at least forty percent of Iran's economy, and the Iatola's served mainly as theological cover, kind of ideological legitimacy for the regime itself.
So you know.
The sign of the former Supreme leader, it's you know, new bo, meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Us intelligence has warned that there's not a strong alternative opposition in our oan, So heady get raging change in those conditions.
Well, the regime is more unpopular and weaker than at any point since it took power in nineteen seventy nine. The demonstrations in December and January were caused fundamentally by really economic conditions that have taken the economy to its lowest point in anybody's memory. Today's demonstrations the largest so far, and in their second week, flames and fury over the country's currency falling to a record low. According to the young people, who amount two thirds of the people under
thirty are dissatisfied. They know they could have a different life. They can see it across the Gulf. The women have been dissatisfied for three years or more after the murder of Masiamini, the young Kurdish woman who defied the iatola's command to wear the he job. And one thing about the opposition of the women. Every ayetola, every revolutionary guard general has a mother, A lot of them have sisters, wives and daughters, and they hear the same thing from
all of them. So the effect of these US and Israeli airstrikes is to destabilize the regime at the top, to open fractures in the regime, to get the leaders going at each other. And I think the elevation of the Supreme Leader's son to the Supreme Leader position has already helped increase those fractures. The whole concept of the Islamic Revolution, I think has to be thrown out ultimately.
I think that's what the people of Iran want. What kind of government they want going forward, I don't know, and I can tell you one thing, We're not going to dictate it from the outside.
Both the International Atomic Energy Agency and US intelligence assists that Iran's weapons program was shot in two thousand and three. Iran hasn't reached uranium to dangerous levels, but that's not the same thing as proven weaponization. The Iraq War was sold on weapons development claims that turned out to be utterly false. Why should audiences trust youal certainty and the certainty of the administration when the central premise of what happened in Iraq was so catastrophically wrong.
Well, I don't think the central Iraq premise was so catastrophically wrong. In fact, you now have Democrats in the United States. This is very interesting saying that you know, the bombing of Iran's nuclear weapons program isn't going to end as the nuclear threat. They say, the knowledge of how to build a nuclear program can't be a ra
by bombing. They are correct, and in Iraq, after the UN found after the First Golf War a much more extensive nuclear weapons program in Iraq than anybody had known before, and they dismantled that in the nineties into the George W. Bush administration, Sodom Hussein kept together three thousand roughly roughly
three thousand nuclear scientists and technicians. He called them his nuclear Mujahideen, and these people had the intellectual capacity to rebuild the nuclear weapons program, which was one reason we thought Saddam was a threat that is precisely what the Democratic senators and others are saying today. Trump's bombing of
the nuclear facilities will not accomplish. When you see the persistence with which the Iranians have pursued nuclear weapons, it's very clear they regard this as something central to their regimes legitimacy. They're not going to give it up. They'll negotiate to give it up, they'll make all kinds of concessions,
but they will never stop that pursuit. And when you combine it with what they've done in terms of the support of terrorist groups, and you listen to them for forty seven years chant death to America, you know eventually you should take it.
Seriously coming out what's an acceptable amount of bloodshed to bring down the regime? Ambassador, we know from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya that toppling regimes is easier than building stable states afterwards. How will Iron be any different to the chaos and long term conflict we saw after American interventions there?
Well, I don't think the three cases are at all similar. I think in the case of Afghanistan, the mistake we made was in trying to build a central, unitary state, which was contrary to a millennium of afghan culture. I think we could have left well enough alone in many senses, and I think the biggest mistake we made in Afghanistan was leaving, because if we were still there, we'd have much greater visibility into the risk of terrorist attack. I
think our mistake in Iraq was not overthrowing Saddam. That was an incredible military success. It was setting up the Coalition provisional Authority and becoming a governing force, a political player in Iraqi affairs. Was done with the best of intentions, but it was a mistake. I think we should have turned matters back to the Iraqis as early as possible and let them decide what they want to do and make the mistakes that we made and learned from them.
In the case of Iran, that's why I described a moment ago. I think a military government and interim kind of regime, at least one that's not run by religious fanatics, is going to be necessary to restore order and could provide a basis for a real constitutional debate. So that's something roughly I think what might work in Iran.
You said that these could take months, not wakes. What level of regional escalation, civilian death toll, oil shock and retaliation against the US, to your God, is acceptable as a prose for pursuing graijame change.
Well, I think the Iranian decision to attack the Gulf Arab States has turned into a catastrophic mistake for them.
A missile fragment falling to the ground and exploding in Doha, the capital of Kutter. It's part of the retaliation from Iran after the US and Israel launched a massive.
Enough they thought they could intimidate the golf Arab States, and it turned out they were wrong. I think the golf Arab States always wanted regime change, they just wanted it without a lot of fuss and bother and I understand that that's not possible, but I think they will
resist it. And in terms of the damage that's being done, I think if you could measure the amount of let's just call it tonnage of bombs that are being dropped on Iran compared to the tonnage of bombs they're dropping on all of their adversaries, the ratio is unbelievably, unbelievably heavy in favor of the anti Iotota forces. And that's what's going to cause their problems internally if.
We zoom that for a moment, Ambstaday, Does this wall benefit China or Russia?
Well? I think in the short term it benefits Russia a little bit because it's driven up the oil prices. But ultimately Iran is a surrogate, an outrider for both Russia and China in the new Sino Russian axis that's being formed. They lost the Aside regime in Syria last year, They've partially lost Venezuela, they maybe on the verge of losing Cuba, and now Iran is under great pressure. That leaves them with the real wonderful choices of Belarus and
North Korea as the remaining outriders. And I think ultimately this shows to them that we have the capability to affect them in their part of the world, so to speak, and they don't have any comparable capability.
What about Ukraine? Has this war harmed Ukraine? I mean burning through me to set missiles that Kiev has been begging for, the deployment of Tomahawks that Ukraine has also been calling for. Has this harmed their chances of defeating Russia or pushing back Russia?
Well, I think Trump had so reduced the amount of assistance we were giving that it's hard to imagine he could give up more. The one the one thing I'm worried about is because Russia has reportedly been providing Iran not just with military intelligence but tactical advice on use of drones that they've learned against Ukraine, that at some point Putin could say to Trump, Look, Donald, we shouldn't be adverse to each other. Let's make a deal. I'll
cut off military intelligence to Iran. If you cut off military intelligence to Ukraine, that would be a big problem. And that may be what Putin is waiting to do.
That would worry me and bessid is the measure of success for Trump, reging change or whether this war results in a turnaround in his flagging poll numbers.
The only result that ever matters to Donald Trump is the greater glorification of Donald Trump. And that's why he can't. He stopped the Twelve Day War last summer after one day of American bombing with fourteen bunker busters because it was an unqualified success, and the bunker busters did enormous damage to the Iranian nuclear program, they did not obliterated as Trump said, because he never he always exaggerates. But
they did do substantial damage. There was much more to do, but he cut it off because he had what he wanted, had visible success, no casualties, and if he cut it off, no more risk. That's what I'm worried about here, and I think that's what the Israelis are worried about. I don't think they have the practical capability or the political leeway to continue the war after the US stops, whether they want to or not.
What are the chances if this action isn't successful, whatever success is defined for the president, that he will just turn around and blame Israel for its lack of success.
Well, if something goes wrong, it won't be Donald Trump's fault because it never is. So he might blame Bibet in Yahoo, he might blame somebody in his own administration, but it won't be his fault. I'm sure that.
So finally, Ambassador, what does victory look like to you? In Iran? You've laid out some of the aspects of it, but five years down the track, ten years down the track, what does success look.
Like if this eliminates the nuclear program and the support for terrorism and the ballistic missile program and the iatolas and the Revolutionary Guard are out. I would consider that success. I don't expect Iran to become a Jeffersonian democracy. If they were still under a military government, let's say, like Egypt, they would still be infinitely better than what we have now.
Ambassador Bolton, thank you so much for your time.
Well thanks for having me.
Also in the news, Alassian workers have lashed out a billionaire boss, Mike cannon Brooks, after he acts ten percent of the software company's staff via email on Thursday. The Australian founder blamed AI for the sixteen hundred job losses, five hundred of which are in Australia. He told staff AI is changing the mix of skills needed and the number of roles in certain areas. The sealed section of the Robodet Royal Commission has been released. Three years after
the final report. The Anti Corruption Commission found two former public servants, Serena Wilson and Mark Whitnol, had engaged in serious corrupt conduct. However, the watchdog concluded they will not be referred to face criminal charges. Another four people, including former Prime Minister Scott Morrison, were cleared I'm Daniel James. You've been listening to seven AM. We'll be back tomorrow.