John Bolton’s Plan for Iran

[0] From the New York Times, I'm Michael Wabargo.

[1] This is the Daily.

[2] Iran is warning that it may resume production on its nuclear program, reviving a crisis that had been contained by the signing of the Iran nuclear deal four years ago.

[3] How one man within the U .S. government may have intentionally brought us to this point.

[4] It's Monday, May 13.

[5] Mark Landler, tell me how we got to this point.

[6] in the relationship between the U .S. and Iran.

[7] Well, Michael, the story really starts almost exactly a year ago.

[8] Today, I want to update the world on our efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

[9] When President Trump finally makes good on a pledge he had made during the 2016 campaign.

[10] I am announcing today that the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.

[11] Recall, the Iran nuclear deal was signed between Iran, on the one side, the United States and three European countries, Britain, France, and Germany.

[12] And the idea behind the deal was in return for deferring whatever nuclear ambitions it had.

[13] Iran was going to be released from these very onerous sanctions that the U .S. and the international community had imposed on it.

[14] And as a result, was going to be able to build up the rest of its economy, even while it.

[15] accepting that its nuclear program was going to be hindered for this period of time roughly 15 to 20 years.

[16] Tonight, the breaking news, a major shake -up at the White House moments ago.

[17] We are just learning.

[18] At the same time that President Trump is making good on this campaign promise to pull the United States out of this deal, you have a new personality, a new figure entering the White House.

[19] National Security Advisor, H .R. McMaster, is gone.

[20] President Trump dismisses his former national security advisor, General H .R. McMaster, and McMaster is replaced by a man named John Bolton.

[21] And what is significant about these two things, pulling out of the Iran deal, and appointing John Bolton, happening at the same time, roughly?

[22] Well, for one thing, it puts Iran on a collision course with the United States.

[23] You have the jeopardizing of this deal, which itself had resolved more than a decade.

[24] of confrontation between Iran and the West.

[25] The Iran deal was, in fact, the worst diplomatic debacle in American history.

[26] The importance of John Bolton's arrival is that now you have an official in the middle of the policymaking mix who has perhaps the hardest line record toward Iran of any senior figure in the mainstream foreign policy community.

[27] If you cross us, our allies or our partners, if you harm our citizens, If you continue to lie, cheat, and deceive, yes, there will indeed be hell to pay.

[28] And John Bolton comes at Iran from a very different place than Donald Trump, where they differ is really what the ultimate objective is.

[29] For Trump, he's willing to sit down and talk to the existing leadership in pursuit of a better deal.

[30] Look, the president has said since really beginning in the 2016 campaign, he's open to negotiating with leaders like Rouhani, like with Kim Jong - on to sit down with them.

[31] The Iranians have used negotiations in the path just to delay.

[32] For John Bolton, it's something much more fundamental.

[33] He wants to install new democratic leaders in that country.

[34] He wants regime change.

[35] We should provide material, financial support to the opposition if they desire it.

[36] We should work with intelligence services from other countries, Saudi, Israel, to provide more pressure.

[37] There's a lot we can do, and we should do it.

[38] Our goal, should be regime change in Iran.

[39] So regime change as a concept has been a part of American foreign policy really since World War II.

[40] The U .S. has always debated the wisdom of trying to take out or roll back enemy or adversarial governments.

[41] But what happened in the last 15 years is the phrase regime change became identified with the Iraq War, a war that was far more costly, far longer, far more trouble -prone than the Bush administration ever hoped.

[42] And I think ever since that experience in those difficult days, the idea of regime change has simply become toxic to a large portion of the foreign policy community, but also the political class, both Republican and Democrat.

[43] When people say the words regime change, people think about Iraq.

[44] Hence, no one wants to say those words.

[45] And so the combination of the jeopardizing of the deal and John Bolton is a very combustible mixture.

[46] And what is Bolton's argument for this focus on regime change in Iran?

[47] Bolton's argument is that the Iranian regime is...

[48] The world's largest financier of international terrorism.

[49] The world's largest state sponsor of terrorism.

[50] It continues to pursue ballistic missiles.

[51] A potential nuclear proliferator on a grand scale.

[52] The only real purpose of which is to deliver nuclear weapons when they get that capability.

[53] A malign influence in the region.

[54] fomenting unrest, financing militant groups in Syria, in Yemen.

[55] There's no doubt this regime is a threat in the region globally.

[56] A country that is bent on the destruction of the state of Israel, a great American ally.

[57] So he really believes that much of the ills that afflict the Middle East can be laid at Tehran's doorstep.

[58] That the Tehran regime is the central problem in the Middle East.

[59] And that hence the only answer.

[60] or the only way to bring Iran back into the community of civilized nations is to affect a change in leadership.

[61] So basically, people so terrible that they can't possibly be trusted to negotiate a nuclear deal.

[62] In a word, yes.

[63] And how does Bolton begin to set that goal in motion?

[64] At the stroke of midnight, the U .S. will reimpose stiff economic sanctions on Iran.

[65] Well, the first thing he does is he reimposes the sanctions that had been lifting as a consequence of the deal.

[66] The sanctions target Iran's gold and metal industries.

[67] It's auto sector and restrict Iran from using U .S. dollars in financial transactions.

[68] And his goal here is to squeeze the vice around the Iranian economy, to raise the pain threshold for the Iranian government, so that, in effect, they're forced to knuckle under, to come back to the table, to acknowledge that they're willing to swallow a less advantageous deal.

[69] And I think we've already seen the concept.

[70] in Iran.

[71] The real, the currency is declined by 70 % since the sanctions.

[72] Inflation has quadruple.

[73] The country is in recession.

[74] I think this is going to cut into Iran's ability to continue their nuclear program, to finance terrorism, and to engage in military activity around the Middle East.

[75] So the goal here is to make the Iranian government so frustrated with this situation that they just throw up their hands and walk away from the entire nuclear deal.

[76] That's exactly right.

[77] But the Iranians do something unexpected.

[78] Rather than pull out of the deal themselves, they decide to stay in it.

[79] And they do that for a couple of reasons.

[80] One is that the European signatories of the deal, Britain, France, and Germany all pledged to stay in the deal.

[81] So the Iranians hope that even if they're cut off from all contact with the U .S. economy, they can continue to do some level of trading with the Europeans.

[82] And secondly, they make this calculation that Donald Trump is a one -term president.

[83] And that if they simply wait him out, perhaps he will be replaced by a friendlier successor, perhaps another Democrat.

[84] Most Democrats are on the record as saying they would reinstate the Iran nuclear deal.

[85] So there is this belief in Tehran, and it's encouraged, by the way, by both European officials and by some people here in the United States, that they should sit tight, don't rip up the deal, and see if they can wait out Donald Trump.

[86] So once Iran has decided to basically wait out the Trump presidency, how does the Trump administration respond to what is clearly an act of defiance by Iran?

[87] Well, what the Trump administration does publicly is it imposes enormous pressure on the Europeans to fall in line.

[88] Any nation that helps Iran in its quest for nuclear weapons could also be strongly sanctioned by the United States.

[89] To start cutting off links to the Iranians.

[90] in government.

[91] Whether it's the German manufacturer of Siemens, the Danish shipping company Merck, the French carmaker PSA, or the French energy giant total, all of these companies have decided to either scale down or completely pull out of Iran from fear of U .S. sanctions.

[92] So that's the public side of what the Trump administration is doing.

[93] But privately, John Bolton is really building up his Iran cadre within the National Security Council.

[94] And he's doing so, by bringing in these extremely hard -line figures who are experts in sanction strategy, and he's beginning to lay in place the pieces for sort of the next phase of the pressure campaign.

[95] Good morning.

[96] I'm here to make an important foreign policy announcement concerning the Islamic Republic of Iran.

[97] And among the things that he begins exploring and laying the groundwork for...

[98] I am announcing our intent to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps...