Former U.S. national security adviser John Bolton sharply criticized President Trump’s Iran strategy and expressed broad skepticism about the prospect of making peace with Tehran in a Friday appearance on the Financial Times podcast Swamp Notes.
Bolton made clear that he supported the American airstrikes last week that targeted three Iranian nuclear facilities but also suggested that Trump had personal motivations.
“I think what he’s doing is campaigning for the Nobel Peace Prize, and he thought he’d get it in the Ukraine-Russia war. That didn’t happen,” Bolton said in a response to a question about Trump’s claims of victory in the aftermath of the strikes. “But I think he’s looking at the possibility that maybe he can get it here.”
Several GOP lawmakers have made moves in recent days to nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. The government of Pakistan also nominated him last week.
Trump griped last week before the strikes that he would never get a Nobel Peace Prize, arguing that he deserved one for American peace efforts in Ukraine, Rwanda and a number of other conflicts.
Bolton, a noted Iran hawk, was sharply critical of Trump’s proposed tactics toward achieving peace in the country, referencing a CNN report that the United States was exploring helping Tehran access as much as $30 billion in funding for a civilian nuclear program. Trump has denied such reports.
“This is madness,” the former national security advisor said. “I don’t expect this to go anywhere, because to be truly satisfied that a country the size of Iran was really only engaged in peaceful nuclear activity requires an intrusive presence, whether it’s the IAEA or foreign intelligence services, that the ayatollahs simply will never permit.”
After first maintaining that the strikes were a one-time, targeted measure to disable key Iranian nuclear sites and help negotiate a ceasefire between Iran and Israel, Trump’s rhetoric on Iran has heated up in recent days. He said Friday that he would consider bombing the country again if concerns about its nuclear program mounted.
Bolton, a longtime skeptic of peace efforts with Iran, including the Obama-era nuclear deal, questioned whether Trump could effectively negotiate with the regime.
“When you’re dealing with that kind of ideology, it’s not like a Manhattan real estate deal,” he said.
Even prior to the onset of strikes between Israel and Iran earlier this month, Bolton insisted that planned nuclear talks with the United States were “fruitless.” He repeated similar lines on the FT podcast Friday, calling the Iranian government “a group of medieval religious fanatics.”
