John Bolton served as national security advisor to Donald Trump from 2018 to 2019. Since then, the “tough” diplomat has become one of the US president’s fiercest critics. When, last October, he was indicted for leaking state secrets, he spoke of politically motivated prosecution. On Friday, it was reported that he was expected to plead guilty to charges that he unlawfully retained sensitive national security information.
Bolton spoke to Kathimerini about the absence of clear objectives and a coherent “grand strategy” in the war with Iran, arguing that the lack of planning weakens the US’ international standing.
The war began with President Trump’s rhetoric of “back to the Stone Age” and “attack Iran extremely hard,” but eventually ended with his remark: “We run out of reserves at about four weeks.” Four months after the outbreak of the conflict, would you characterize it as a strategic failure for the United States?
I think it is a military success because the US and Israel did very considerable damage to Iran’s military industrial complex, its production facilities for things like missiles, drones, missile launchers, to the nuclear program, to their air defenses, their air force, their navy, and to many elements of Iranian state power. However, the mistakes, and I think they are quite substantial, are not military mistakes; they are political mistakes. While considerable damage was done to the regime itself, there was no clear policy of regime change. We did not do anything to work with the opposition inside Iran, we did not brief our allies, and we did not prepare the American people.
