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National Security Adviser John Bolton had his team request options from the Pentagon to strike Iran late last year — a move that worried top defense officials that a possible new war in the Middle East was imminent.
On September 6, Iranian-backed militants in Iraq shot three mortars into Baghdad’s massive diplomatic compound, which is home to the US Embassy. Two days later, rockets shot by unknown attackers streaked toward the US consulate in Basra during anti-Iran protests in the city.
Those strikes, which injured no one, led Bolton to have the National Security Council (NSC) ask the Defense Department for military plans to attack Iran, according to US officials and people familiar with the request — although it’s unclear how close the US came to bombing the country.
The sequence of events, which the Wall Street Journal first reported over the weekend, shows how seriously the Trump administration has considered escalating its policy toward Iran. Yet multiple US officials, including NSC spokesperson Garrett Marquis, told me Bolton’s request was merely meant to ensure the president had all options presented to him — a key part of his job.
“The NSC coordinates policy and provides the President with options to anticipate and respond to a variety of threats,” Marquis said in an email.
Still, the request caused some controversy in the Pentagon. Then-Defense Secretary James Mattis didn’t even want to respond to the attacks with a strongly worded statement (let alone a military strike), alarming US officials across the government, a senior administration official told me.
The White House eventually did issue a statement on September 11 declaring that “the United States will hold the regime in Tehran accountable for any attack that results in injury to our personnel or damage to United States Government facilities.”
And Mattis had “deep concerns” about Bolton’s strike request, one US official told Axios on Sunday. The Pentagon eventually provided some military options to the White House — such as a strike on an Iranian military facility — but Mattis and other officials rejected the idea of a large-scale retaliatory attack.
Mattis declined to comment for this article.
Some US officials say Bolton’s request is another example of his long-held animus toward Tehran. Both in and out of government, the top Trump aide has made clear his desire to see the current Iranian regime fall.
But one person familiar with how the NSC operates told me that Bolton is using the council to bend US foreign policy to his will — and especially toward a much harder stance against Iran — all under President Trump’s nose.
“They do what they want,” this person, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said. “In any other administration they would be fired.”
That’s troubling. While Bolton in this case may have just been doing his job, it still brings up the question about just how much he’s using his power to pursue one his long-term objectives — regime change in Iran.
How the Iran request came about
The group Bolton leads — the National Security Council — coordinates national security policy across the sprawling US government. It collects input on major topics from the State Department, the Treasury Department, the Pentagon, and other agencies to provide the president with the best options at his disposal.
On the Sunday after the attack on the Baghdad compound, the NSC’s deputies committee, comprised mainly of No. 2s from the various bureaucracies, met to discuss those options. Mira Ricardel, then Bolton’s deputy before a spat with first lady Melania Trump led to her ouster, at one point reportedly called the attacks “an act of war.”
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What’s unclear, though, is if the idea to strike Iran with force came from those meetings or if Bolton singlehandedly wanted the Pentagon to draw up some military options.
Either way, one Pentagon official I spoke to didn’t seem bothered by the ask. “We always have and discuss military options based on new circumstances,” the official said. “The question of how close we were to striking — that no one knows.”
The White House, of course, agrees. “This incident showed the NSC process led by Bolton works,” a senior administration official told me.
Top Trump advisers — especially Bolton — are avid Iran hawks
There are concerns that the NSC works in just the way Bolton wants it to — pursuing his own policy objectives, mainly an aggressive anti-Iran stance.
Bolton has staffed up the NSC with people who share his views. Last week, he hired Richard Goldberg, a noted Iran hawk, to run the administration’s pressure campaign against the country. He also added Charles Kupperman, a former Boeing executive and long-time confidante, to serve as his deputy. Together, they will help Bolton run America’s foreign policy with little input from the president, some say.
Kupperman “is the logical choice for someone who is fiercely loyal to Ambassador Bolton,” Mark Groombridge, formerly a top Bolton adviser at the State Department and United Nations, told me. “They are completely simpatico in terms of their views on foreign policy. The problem, of course, is their views are not simpatico with the person they are advising, President Trump.”
It’s not so surprising Bolton may be using his power to pursue his anti-Iran objectives. In March 2015, he wrote an article suggesting the US and/or Israel should bomb Iran to keep it from obtaining a nuclear weapon. “Time is terribly short, but a strike can still succeed,” he wrote. “Such action should be combined with vigorous American support for Iran’s opposition, aimed at regime change in Tehran.”
And two years later, Bolton gave a speech in which he hoped Iran’s regime would fall before the end of 2018.
#JohnBolton 8 months ago among MEK supporters tells them they will overthrow #Iran’s regime and celebrate in #Tehran with Bolton himself present, “before 2019” pic.twitter.com/H7oaaU3faU
— Bahman Kalbasi (@BahmanKalbasi) March 22, 2018
It also helps that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo despises Iran, too. In a speech last week in Egypt, he spent considerable time detailing why America must counter Iran’s actions in the region.
“[W]e will not ease our campaign to stop Iran’s malevolent influence and actions against this region and the world,” Pompeo told an audience at the American University of Cairo. “The nations of the Middle East will never enjoy security, achieve economic stability, or advance the dreams of their people if Iran’s revolutionary regime persists on its current course.”
However, Pompeo did try to keep the US in the Iran nuclear deal. Trump had long been critical of the accord on the campaign trail, but once he came into office his senior advisers, including Pompeo as well as Mattis, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, convinced the president to remain in the nuclear agreement for more than a year.
Yet just a month after Bolton became national security adviser, Trump abruptly withdrew from the deal.
It’s worth noting that no one knows if Bolton has advocated openly for a strike on Iran since entering the White House. He’s clearly had the chance, not only with the attacks in Iraq but also as Iran continues to operate in Syria. Israel, though, regularly attacks Iranian targets in Syria — something Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted for the first time on Sunday — which may lead the US to stay out of that morass for now.
But it’s not impossible that the US might consider an attack on Iran in the future if it believes Tehran merits a serious rebuke. Asked last September about the attacks on American targets in Iraq, Pompeo said “Iran will be held accountable for those incidents.”
Pressed if he meant a military option, the secretary responded, “They’re going to be held accountable. ... If they’re responsible for the arming and training of these militias, we’re going to go to the source.”
Now that Bolton controls the NSC, that outcome could be much more likely.
