B (3:39)

Glad to be with you. Thanks for having me.

A (3:41)

Of course. So you obviously were in the first Trump administration and you 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?

B (3:58)

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 the 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 a 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. Corollary to that is you have to persuade Congress, which he didn't spend any time doing. And closely related is you should inform your allies, not just in NATO, but in the Gulf and the Asia Pacific area, which are the principal purchasers of Iranian oil. And he didn't do that either. And probably worst of all, there's no evidence that he's done much to consult with or assist the opposition inside Iran. Now, I don't expect that a lot of that would be public or should be public, but there isn't even a sense that it's going on. And since he's made it pretty clear he doesn't want any substantial boots on the ground inside Iran with the opposition, with the factors from the regime, including the regular military, not the Revolutionary Guard, but the regular military, 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, its 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 the lawn 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.

A (6:47)

Yeah. You know, President Trump has said that he has technically changed the regime because he's killed a number of people and there is a new ayatollah. Obviously, he is the son of the former ayatollah. 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.

B (7:08)

Well, I really don't understand why. If I might just say it clearly, the regime has 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 they call it the Veli Adi Faqi, the rule of the jurists, meaning the ayatollahs. And they're governed by a very radical Ideology that's instilled in the Revolutionary Guard and in the, 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 their 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 it out.

A (8:11)

Yeah. I, I do wonder, though, say he had sold the, 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 facilities. Why would he say that? We had completely obliterated all of the nuclear facilities and the uranium enrichment in Iran, and now we're back in a war less than a year later.

B (8:51)

Because Trump's always a winner. The world's divided into winners and losers. He's a winner. Everybody else is a loser. Unless your last name happens to be Trump. I don't know about that.

A (9:02)

Other Trumps might not get that in the family.

B (9:07)

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, which we bombed, 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 in mowed, 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 Hamas learned a lot from the North Koreans, which is do everything that's sensitive under a mountain somewhere. And so that's what Fordo, the nuclear site at Fordo, was. And I think that's what Pickaxe Mountain near Natanz was intended to be. Unless you're convinced that Your intelligence is 100% perfect in a timely fashion. You're in a situation where their nuclear program could get critical and we wouldn't know about it in time. When you make enormous efforts to change regime behavior in a hostile regime and it doesn't work, you can keep doing it, but that's not going to work any better. The only answer is the not to change the regime's behavior, but to change the regime. 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 its weakest since any time since 1979 when it took power. The regime's very unpopular, and we did do damage to the nuclear program. Now, whether it should have started on March 1st of this year, given economic considerations, given Trump's political considerations, with midterm elections coming up, you know, that's why they pay presidents the big bucks. But 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.

A (11:34)

Okay, so do you think 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?

B (11:45)

Well, I think the idea of attacking the Revolutionary Guard and other instruments of Iranian state power that threaten foreigners like Israel, like the Gulf Arabs like us on the one hand, and threaten 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 Ayatollah Khomeini died at some point in the near Future, he was 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 is still no sign of life that he's actually alive or able to carry out the functions of supreme leader. So 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 into the streets, especially not now, and 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 in an interim military government, not the Revolutionary Guard, but the regular military, the conventional forces, that, that then 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.

A (14:07)

Trump has said that he likes the speaker of the parliament in Iran. Why do you think he selected that person? Person?

B (14:13)

I, I simply don't understand. This guy's as hardline as most of the people we've killed. They've just installed a new secretary of the Supreme National Security Council who, if anything, by reports from his past activities, is harder, harder line than Ali Larajani who was just killed. I, I, I don't understand why he thinks Dely Rodriguez is such a pliable figure in Venezuela. Because I don't think when you're dealing with, with ideologues and the people in Iran are harder fixed, more fixed in their ideology than the Chavistas in Venezuela. That 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 cut off the top, which is the right thing to do, but you need to cut off a lot more.

A (15:06)

Yeah. President Trump declared mission accomplished earlier. In your view, what has actually been accomplished?

B (15:14)

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 besieging militia. I think a lot of damage has 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 instability we're introducing into the system. There are reports, for example, in the Middle Eastern press that 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. That's the kind of thing that shows that as discipline in the Revolutionary Guard breaks down, it's harder and harder for them not just to respond to our attacks, but to inflict their will on the people in Iran 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 if you're going to embark on a policy of 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 will get the revenue to rebuild 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, we'll be right back where we are today.

A (17:24)

Can the US Realistically pull out at this point?

B (17:28)

I don't think so because of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. And you know, they have. The regime has added the economic consequences of closing the Strait to its other two great threats, the nuclear threat and the terrorist threat. You can really say that closing the Strait is a threat of that level. The head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, which is where the United Arab Emirates gets most of its oil, said a couple days ago in Texas that closing the Strait of Hormuz 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. Do you think that the government, the government of the ayatollahs that's prepared to close the strait, take 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.

A (18:30)

Well, President Trump said that, don't worry, we'll, we'll protect the UAE and Saudis and the Gulf states. We have, we have military, we have military aircraft that moves at 2,000 miles per hour. That's the latest he's said overnight.

B (18:45)

Well, I think, I think the Gulf states believe they could also placate Iran. 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, 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, Yusuf Elutabi, 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 in Tehran stays in place when hostilities stop.

A (19:52)

Okay, how long do you think that this conflict will last?

B (19:58)

Well, I don't, I don't think, I don't think we know. And you know, Trump said at the beginning he thought four to six weeks. I thought that was optimistic. The question is if, and I'll underline, if you decide you want regime change in 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. Meaning you're always obsessed with is it over yet? Is it over yet? Well, okay, it's four weeks in, it's not over yet. But we have near complete dominance of the air over Iran. We have not stopped their missile launching and drone launching capabilities, but we're very Close to that point, I think we need to get the strait open, and then I think 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 coordinate better, to work with others inside the country. The ethnic groups are very dissatisfied to do what's necessary inside for them to get control of their own country back.

A (21:26)

Yeah. And what do you think the next few weeks look like?

B (21:31)

Well, I think that's entirely within Donald Trump's discretion. And I think he is doing some things to keep the military option not only open, but expanding, bringing additional forces into the region, ground forces. That may be to go after Carg Island. It 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 Strait of Hormuz. I'm nervous about it. Although I think those objectives, certainly stopping the export of Iranian oil is a legitimate objective. I'm worried we haven't thought them all through adequately. If they were objectives on March 1, you would think we would have deployed the forces before March 1 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 principal thing that needs to be destroyed to give people inside Iran some confidence that their own people won't massacre them if they take steps to overthrow the regime.

A (22:51)

Why do you think everyone around President Trump, including Pete Hegseth, J.D. vance and others, are being blamed for the Iran operation, but not Marco Rubio, who is the national security advisor, your old position?

B (23:07)

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's view. Overall. I don't think it's Rubio's view based on things he did during his career in the Senate. But up until this point, neither Rubio nor Vance have really spoken out much about the war. And really, it's Trump 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, maybe urging him to continue. I don't know whether that's true or not, but I think that may be what people hope.

A (23:58)

How would you grade him?

B (24:00)

Grade 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 must be a great strain on him to have to defend some of Trump's policies, unless he's changed his views from what he was when he was a senator.

A (24:20)

Yeah, 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.

B (24:30)

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. Look, 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 perhaps others, notifying the allies, trying to bring them on board instead of attacking NATO, as Trump has done for 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.

A (25:14)

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 the administration nor intelligence officials have clearly articulated an eminent threat. I mean, certainly Tulsi Gabbard did not do that during her hearing. Or Dan Ratcliffe. Shouldn't the threshold for military action be higher?

B (25:44)

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. Although, as I said before, when people ask me, how soon could Iran get nuclear weapons, the real answer is 72 hours. They send a wire transfer to the Central bank of North Korea and Pyongyang, and the North Koreans load nuclear devices onto a cargo plane, and they show up in Tehran. 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. I don't think the US has to wait until a threat is imminent. That also assumes 100% perfect knowledge of when it becomes really dangerous. And since if we've learned anything in the past 25 years, 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 preventative 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.

A (26:49)

Well, George W. Bush's administration went into Iraq and Afghanistan on bad intel of weapons of mass destruction.

B (26:57)

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. 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 the nuclear weapons is key. And that puts this regime in exactly the same position of Saddam Hussein. Before George W. Bush attacked his regime and brought it down, Saddam Hussein had kept together 3,000 nuclear scientists and technicians. He called them his nuclear mujahideen. These were the people who had the intellectual capability to rebuild Iraq's nuclear weapons program. And Saddam'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 Saddam and it does for the Iranians.

A (28:12)

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

B (28:20)

I don't think he's talking to anybody. I think it's pretty clear. Intermediaries. 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. Iranians are sending messages back to them and then sending them to us. Okay, that could lead to a negotiation, but there are no negotiations.

A (28:42)

That sounds like telephone to me, honestly.

B (28:45)

Well, you know, I think people are parsing words. I don't think there's any serious Negotiation. And I don't think there's really a chance there's a resolution here by negotiation because the ayatollahs are not going to negotiate their own surrender.

A (29:01)

Congress is now moving toward a vote on authorizing the war. Do you think lawmakers should have weighed in earlier?

B (29:07)

Well, I think the War Powers act is 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 was Congress's most important power, the power of the purse. 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 to withdraw our forces and see if they can get a majority.

A (29:44)

Yeah. Our final question, do you think this strategy is strengthening or weakening the US Globally?

B (29:51)

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 jittering. If you weren't willing to take these risks, you shouldn't have gotten into it in the beginning. All that's called prior planning, of which there's evidence we did precious little.

A (30:21)

Yeah. So do you think President Trump is sending a message to the world that if our gas prices hit $5, then we're out? That's the easiest way?

B (30:30)

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 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. That's a sign of weakness.

A (30:51)

Hmm. On that note, thank you, Ambassador Bolton, for your time. I see you're on cnn. You're everywhere. Appreciate you fitting in the show and would love to have you back on. Hopefully there will be some sort of resolution the next time we check in with you.

B (31:10)

Well, thank you very much for having me.

A (31:12)

Thanks. That was another episode of the Tara Palmeri Show. Thanks so much for tuning in. You can support this show by hitting that subscribe button following liking, sharing, commenting, telling all your friends about it. Go to tarapaulmary.com and sign up for my newsletter, the Red Letter. That's how you get my exclusive reporting straight to your inbox. And by becoming a paid subscriber you can not only get those exclusives, but you support my independent journalism and keep me going. I want to thank my producer on this, Mia Kasarik. I want to thank Abby Baker who also produced the show Booked did social media. She's a rock star. I also want to thank Adam Stewart on the graphics and Dan Rosen, my manager. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart Choice make another smart choice with Auto Quote Explorer to compare rates from multiple car insurance companies all at once. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy.