May 26, 2018
White House national security adviser John Bolton, who in the past has loudly urged the US government to push for regime change in Iran, says that is not Trump Administration policy.
“That’s not the policy of the administration. The policy of the administration is to make sure that Iran never gets close to deliverable nuclear weapons,” Bolton said May 13 on the ABC program “This Week.”
“I’ve written and said a lot of things over the years when I was a complete free agent,” Bolton said when pressed on the issue of regime change on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo later said the same thing.
Bolton emphasized in the CNN interview that it was his job to advise Trump but that the president is the one who makes the decisions.
“The circumstances I’m in now is that I’m the national security adviser to the president. I’m not the national security decision maker. He [Trump] makes the decisions and the advice I give him is between us.”
In a Fox News interview in January, before he took the job with Trump, Bolton said the United States should take steps such as increasing economic pressure on Iran and providing support to opponents of the regime. “There’s a lot we can do, and we should do it,” said Bolton, who at the time was with the American Enterprise Institute think tank. “Our goal should be regime change in Iran.”
In 2015, Bolton wrote an op-ed in The New York Times calling for air strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Pompeo appeared before a Senate committee May 23, where he was asked if regime change was the US objective in Iran. He answered very simply: “No.”
While many people think Trump advocates regime change in Iran, he has actually long emphasized less US involvement in the Middle East. Trump undoubtedly would like to see the regime changed in Iran, but the question is whether he is willing to invest US resources to bring that about. And Bolton’s and Pompeo’s responses made clear Trump is not.
