John Bolton is our new national security advisor. Trump has once again picked the worst man for the job.
He has now selected John Bolton, former US ambassador to the United Nations. Bolton has distinguished himself as one of America’s most hawkish and ineffective diplomats for decades. He is known as an architect of the Iraq War, an enemy of multilateralism and foe of the United Nations, where he served during the George W. Bush administration through a recess appointment when he could not win Senate confirmation. He is also a harsh critic of the Iran nuclear deal and of North Korea, and is seen as someone who might promote conflict in both cases.
Few prominent national security figures are as ill-suited to the job of national security adviser as Bolton when you consider his views, his temperament and his ability be an honest broker. In fact, he is actually one of the few people on earth who would be worse than Mike Flynn, who was the worst national security adviser of all time.
Really, Bolton is terrible. For anything.
Keep your eyes open. There’s going to be a desperate search for excuses to go to war with someone, anyone, to prop up the president’s plummeting popularity. There are going to be more inventions, like “WMDs in country X”, or “Aluminum tubes!” and there are going to be assholes promoting pre-emptive nuclear strikes, and there will be torture advocates in the CIA slavering at the thought of getting to clean up afterwards.
I wouldn’t put anything past them. The only provocation to war that I’ll believe wasn’t engineered by John Bolton and his vicious crew would be the assassination of our national security advisor. I don’t think he’s mad enough to go that far. But I could be wrong.
What do you do if you are in the Iranian government right now?
I think there is likely no conceivable answer that won’t result in bombings of some sort.
…and…and…and…and in the end, at least half of the US population will march lockstep behind the drums of war. And the R’s will keep both houses under their control.
Yet another war might be the one thing which will shake the regime out of power. Even Trumpholes won’t be happy about another war; it’s resources going out, rather than going towards all the things they thought it would be for.
I think the leaders in Iran will be just fine with being bombed, assuming it isn’t with nukes (a big assumption admittedly) because it will give them a nice enemy to hate and a fine excuse to double down on the elimination of inconvenient democracy.
But if the USA hits North Korea with anything there are going to be hundreds of thousands of South Korea dead in just a few hours, no nukes required.
@Caine(#3)
I think you underestimate the petty vindictiveness and short-term thinking of Trumpkins.
This is what happens when you don’t investigate and jail these criminals in the name of looking forward, not backwards. They keep coming back and leading us further and further down the path to crazytown.
It just started. The US just accused 9 Iranians with hacking various facilities in the US (including universities but primarily 5 government facilities) as being allegedly on behalf of the Iranian government.
Cyberhacking by white-skinned Russians? meh, we’re not worried about it.
Cyberhacking by brown-skinned Muslim Iranians? WAR!
They are, no doubt, honorary brown-skins; but most Iranians I’ve seen aren’t particularly “brown-skinned” to my eye (which I admit is not highly trained in these matters; nor is my sample necessarily representative).
Bolton recently called UK news anchor Kay Burley a ‘munchkin’ live on air (they were discussing Trump as far as I recall).
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/kay-burleyjohn-bolton_uk_5a6a1fc6e4b06e2532659532
Bolton is absolutely terrifying. I thought Bannon was bad but at least he was sane (for some value of sane).
I had not thought that Trump could assemble a worse cabinet or executive team (not sure of the correct US terminology) than he did at the start of his administration but over the last few days he has managed to dredge even deeper into the rotting manure pile.
@1 doubtthat
What do you do if you are in the Iranian government right now?
Start covert operation in Washington, inciting Bolton to call his boss an idiot or that implies that Bolton is the brains behind Trump.
Start back-channel talks with any relatively sane American officials about ways to avert an attack.
Start full-court diplomatic press with any sane nation (i.e. any country other than the USA), but particularly with the UK, EU and China and maybe South Korea. Maybe Turkey? If Iran gets badly damaged, that likely strengthens the Kurdish position since Iran has about 6 million Kurds, some of whom are likely to want a Kurdistan that includes their Turkish brothers and sisters. Russia will already be on-side and its blatant diplomatic support would probably hurt, not help.
Ensure UN Security Council and/or General Assembly censures any US moves. Probably will not affect the American war criminals but gains the sympathy of the rest of the world’s nations.
Perhaps, discuss with China, whether precipitating a complete financial collapse of the USA would help or hurt?
Try to carry out some public relations in the USA (good luck), the Saudis own most of the lobbyists and probably half the Senate and House and MBS will be edging Bolton on.
Try discussing with members of the House and Senate just how successful the Afghan and Iraq/Syria fiasco have been and pointedly mention that Iran has a modern military, a population of 50 million and does not hesitate to fight. It has a terrain that look as nasty as Afganistan’s.
It is not Iraq with a 30 year out-of-date military, an almost starving population of 10 million and a terrain that is flat and wide open, ideal for American air power or Afghanistan with essentially no military at all.
Start civil-defence preparations; step up arms production, especially long-range missiles to interdict US ships in the Gulf or the Me; see if Russia can step up arms deliveries, maybe a few S-400 anti-aircraft missile systems; see if China or India has anything to loan. Maybe threaten to blow the hell out of Israel and Saudi Arabia?
I hope history doesn’t repeat itself but knowing that Republican presidents start wars to bolster their popularity or other petty reasons make me very pessimistic. This is Trump we’re talking about. @8. Yeah, something most people don’t know is that there are many ethnic groups in Iran. Like the Assyrians, Lurs, Mandaeans, Yezidis, etc. But still the point acroyear was making is that the Trump administration are hypocrites for ignoring Russia while being rabid over Iran because of xenophobia, racism, and Islamophobia.
There are many problems with our third world wars.
1. One glaring one:
We can simply just end up losing. Again.
It’s what happened in Vietnam.
And no one thinks Iraq ended up as some great victory.
It’s been 15 years and we are still fighting in there.
2. Iran is a whole other class of third world nation.
It’s big. 80 million people.
Iran is about 7 times bigger than United Kingdom. United Kingdom is approximately 243,610 sq km, while Iran is approximately 1,648,195 sq km.
They have huge geographic advantages and we don’t have much in the way of a staging area.
3. I’m sure we could win a few set piece conventional battles. And lose the occupation and peace big time.
Yeah, I saw that this morning.
1. It’s pure agit-prop in the service of building support for a war with Iran.
2. There are huge numbers of foreign hackers vacuuming US networks for whatever they can get.
3. The worst of the bunch are the Chinese. They follow the money and go after industrial secrets and intellectual property.
4. I remember the leadin to the Iraq war, the weapons of mass destruction fiasco.
It was dismaying how well it worked.
When we invaded Iraq, the Bush administration had the support of the majority of American people. All based on the clumsiest and most obvious of lies.
“Provocation to war?” More like “self-defense.”
“Aluminum tubes!”
I recently learned that most universities in anti-America countries have laboratories utilizing centrifuges in their research. I’d say that’s reason enough to send in the bombers.
It’s at times like these that I’m glad I’m not logged in as Richard Howland-[sob]Bolton
@4 Ed Seedhouse
I don’t think any leader of a Middle East country that finds themselves subject to our aggression feels good about any of this. I take your point, which is good, that it’s the people who are in trouble, but I promise you the leadership of Iran does not want their country to look like Iraq does currently.
@11 jrkrideau
Part of what made me consider the question is what happened when the west (Britain and US) overthrew Mossadegh in the 50’s. Mossadegh nationalizes Iranian oil because Britain is just taking it all, and Churchill gets pissed. Britain does two main things:
1) Starts paying off the feudal-like lords in rural Iran.
2) Starts spreading rumors that Mossadegh is a communist.
The US, in the midst of our red scare, jumps right in.
So, what does Mossadegh do? He does what you suggest – reaches out to other countries in a hope that a power balance will slow the aggression. What is the only other country strong enough to counter the US and Britain in the 50’s?
And this is what I see with Iran now: if they start trying to make alliances with other countries because they’re scared, we are going to use that alliance as “evidence” of how dangerous Iran really is. It’s more difficult now because we’ve left the two-side Cold War, but if, say, Iran starts reaching out to China, that is going to embolden a guy like Bolton, not slow him down.
It’s a fucking terrifying situation. Even going to the UN is the sort of behavior that will just get the Trump base more fired up.
I sincerely do not believe that there is anything Iran can do to avoid a US/Israeli attack. The only people who can stop that are Americans.
But really, the only way for Iran to be safe from us is to have a nuke…
Just goes to show how weak Trump’s great memory is. Bolton was one of the architects of the Iraq fiasco, which Trump was claiming he was so totes against [he was actually lukewarm]. Nothing he does is surprising, just assume the worst.
Whaaa…? Trump picks one of the instigators of the Iraq war? Despite talking for months about how he was supposedly against it from the start (he wasn’t) and how Clinton was so terrible because she voted for it? Colour me so fucking surprised!!
doubtthat @18: “but I promise you the leadership of Iran does not want their country to look like Iraq does currently.”
You do? Based on what? Personal knowledge?
I mean they are basically, so far as I can see, religious zealots with power they would like to keep. Democracy is an inconvenience to them. I expect they would be happy to see a few thousand democrats bombed out of existence because it would rally the remaining ones around them. There is nothing like a convincing enemy to keep an autocrat in power.
But maybe I am wrong, although I think that question will not weigh heavily on the mind of the tiny fingered one, who is I strongly suspect planning a lovely war in a far away place to win the mid-terms, which are otherwise not looking good for him right now.
With “good” luck it will start an endless war to keep the plebes in line forever.
An early disappointment of mine with Obama was his failure to cause or even let the system go after our war criminals. In a perfect world, Obama is inaugurated, hesitates at the podium, and says “Okay, Fred, GO.” Then the authorities arrest about a dozen of our war criminals, have them transported to The Hague, and let the justice system work as it did after WWII.
I understand most of why he didn’t do it but when I was a little kid learning stuff that made us different AND better than the other guys, a differing aspect of the USA was (WAS) we punished our own criminals no matter our level of discomfort.
I remind all that more than a handful of W administration miscreants have been advised never to travel to certain foreign countries because they would probably be arrested, tried, and possibly/probably convicted under international law.
Various media outlets, via painstaking research, identified W administration 600 to 700 public statements about weapons of mass destruction that WE know that THEY knew were false.
Americans have short memories and have already forgotten about the worst foreign policy blunder in our history.
@ 19 doudtthat
Re Mossadegh and other countries
I see your point about the fact that nobody went to Iran’s help in the 1950’s but that was just a coup. Here we are talking about unprovoked armed aggression and the breaking of an international agreement for no justifiable reason. An agreement to which China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the EU were signatories and with which they see no problem.
The total international situation has also changed. Then the US was the one, overwhelming, world power both militarily and economically. It was half of the world economy and still had the reputation as a good guy because of its part in WWII.
Now it is a fading world power with a reputation as a rogue state that has not managed to win a war since it partnered with the rest of the allies in WWII.
It has, essentially, no goodwill or trust left to it among the rest of the nations of the world. It is respected only because it is the biggest bully on the block. Other countries may decide that it is time to confront the bully before it is their turn to be invaded. Ever since Iraq, the world has seen that one cannot placate the USA.
Iran starts reaching out to China, that is going to embolden a guy like Bolton, not slow him down
If he even knew about it. The Iranians and Chinese have been running intrigues since before Rome was founded. It would not be on Fox News. I dare say the Chinese already have contingency plans to destroy the US economy as a last resort. It might be a trivial effort to trigger those plans.
I promise you the leadership of Iran does not want their country to look like Iraq does currently.
I am sure they do not but this was a country that fought a 10 year war of attrition against an American-supported Iraq. And that started over a land dispute! This is an attack by the Great Satan. Iran would be fighting for its country, its way of life, and its religion.
What they would see, and I agree, is that not fighting is more likely to leave their country looking like Iraq than an all-out war.
The fall of Iraq meant the looting of the country by US contractors, the USA’s determined efforts to develop sectarian strife—one of their few successes—a resulting civil war and the creation of ISIS. With that record in memory, a surrender is unlikely.
You may well be right that there is nothing that Iran can do to avoid a US/Israeli attack. It still needs to try, if only to make the USA look even more like a criminal nation.
See the last paragraphs in my earlier post for after the war starts. The idea is not so much defeat an attack but to make in costly. There is the problem that if it is too costly the crazed duo of Trump and Bolton might even resort to a nuke. Of course, that would mean that killing Americans becomes a patriotic duty in much of the world. in the rest of the world the USA becomes more of a pariah than North Korea. The Mafia would feel it immoral to have any dealings with the USA.
Iran has ballistic missiles with a 2000km range. It has some good anti-aircraft batteries (Russian S-300’s, no idea how many). It likely has older ones or Iranian developed ones. This is not like flying over Iraq.
It has fairly decently equipped army/revolutionary guard. It is not going to defeat a US/Israeli full-scale assault but the cost is likely to be high.
Another thing is that as raven @13 points out the USA does not have much in the way of a staging area. The only two I can think of is Israel and Saudi Arabia, both in range of those ballistic missiles and Saudi Arabia is within a few minutes range of a jet or a cruise missile.
Well I suppose one might try setting up a staging place in Iraq but I am not sure that would be really wise, even if one could apply enough pressure on the Iraqi Gov’t to get them to agree.
The next closest is Djibouti. I think I am forgetting some island in the Indian Ocean but I doubt it has the resources to serve as a staging place
I cannot see an Iranian attack plane getting through the US/Israeli air defences but that is going to tie up resources. A cruise missile might get through.
Of course, if you base your forces in the Eastern Province, you may be opening yourself up to sabotage and terrorist attacks. The Shia in the Eastern Province hate the Saudi monarchy and with good reason.
Come to think of it, the Shia in Bahrain might chip in. They have as much (more?) in common with Iran as with a bunch of Salafi, desert Arabs in Riyadh and they tend to hate the Bahraini government. Where is the US 5th Fleet based?
The next minor problem is that if you are going to put boots on the ground, you either stage a seaborne/airborne assault from Saudi Arabia or you stage through Kuwait/Iraq on the ground. Or just through Iraq if you are coming out of Israel.
I had thought Iran had a population of 50 million (so much for memory) but I see it is 81 million. invading a country of 81 million, generally well educated and probably well armed people who hate you and have Iraq as an example of what the USA can do is not likely a great idea. Especially as Iran may have time to develop hidden arms and supply caches and hideouts in anticipation of a long, drawn -out guerrilla war.
@ 23 Ed Seedhouse
I mean they are basically, so far as I can see, religious zealots with power they would like to keep.
I think you misunderstand the country. It is a quasi-democracy. It is not a dictatorship.
I imagine the current government wants to maintain power but, most (all?) legislators and perhaps even local governments, are elected, albeit from an already sanitized list. There is a heavy clerical presence in the government but even they must get elected.
Governments (administrations in US terms) change as a result of elections. The elections are not shams. Within the limits set on who may or may not run they are probably as honest or more honest than your normal US election.
It is a theocratic republic. It is not like Zimbabwe under Mugabe, a complete kleptomaniac dictatorship or, for example, Saudi Arabia which is a theocratic absolute monarchy.
Democracy is an inconvenience to them.
No, as far as I can see, they, the legislature, the government and the general population think of the country as a democracy. It looks from the outside, to be more like a constitutional monarchy with the Supreme Leader being a rather powerful monarchy. It seems to have some God-awful aspects but that’s another matter. The US thought of itself as a democracy while it had millions of slaves.
The Gov’t, overall, seems to enjoy a general sense of legitimacy, though in many cases, not a lot of popularity. The most recent demos, riots, etc., a few months ago appear not to have been an attempt overthrow the Gov’t but more a protest against corruption and a failure of Gov’t policies to deliver jobs and increased prosperity outside the main cities.
There is nothing like a convincing enemy to keep an autocrat in power.
I am sure that is one of the few lessons Cadet Bone-spurs has absorbed from whatever history he may have been exposed to.
Iran does not need a war. It holds elections like any other democracy. Weird ones perhaps, but people win or loss elections, governments change, etc. There are lots of people who would like to see wholesale changes in the government structures and policies but even they might be happy to settle major reforms with having a full-blown revolution, much as they might like one.
jrkrideau@23: “I think you misunderstand the country. It is a quasi-democracy. It is not a dictatorship.”
Yeah, and the Soviet Union was a democracy – everyone got to vote!
I think you misunderstand the country. The constitution gives supreme power to a religious sect. How is that a democracy?
What is the probability that a war with Iran would result in bombs landing on the US?
jack16
wars cost money even little one that last a long long time cost one hell of a lot of money.
we are increasing the yearly deficit with a huge tax cut and a huge budget with increased military funding we have not even gotten in to his f’n wall yet. we are it seems starting a tariff war
One of the things that china has been doing is buying lots of that debt with bond purchases they are likely going to stop those and might even start selling some of their holdings into the market.
The result might make it harder for us to sell our bonds and at least be forced to raise the interest rate.
One of the primary reasons that the USSR collapsed was the lack of easy credit. We are all ready stretched rather thin all we would need is the next “economic Correction” in the market to really see the fur fly.
Stay away from rotating fans!
uncle frogy
@23 Ed Seedhouse
That’s very reductive. Iran is a complicated society. It’s government is partially controlled by religious folks, but the other half of the government is not. It’s also just wrong to pretend like the Ayatollahs are frothing at the mouth lunatics. They are not suicide bombers sitting in a parliament building. That’s the exact characterization were going to be hearing to justify attacks against them.
@25 jrkrideau
You make a lot of good points, and certainly the rest of NATO turning against the US – not just standing idly by like they did with Iraq but actually opposing the US – could make a difference, but then the real fanatics in this scenario are Bolton and his ilk.
But this is the eternal conundrum strong countries impose on the weak: either they accept terms, which involve puppet regimes, humanitarian abuses, seizure of resources, or they are destroyed. Vietnam tried to work with us, Saddam capitulated on weapons, Iran was a developing Democracy in the 50’s that was borderline worshipful of the US – none of it matters. Any action they take will be interpreted as more evidence of whatever bullshit reason we had for aggression.
Saddam was a great example of this (obvious monster that he was):
We say, “Prove that you have no stockpiles and have abandoned your weapons programs.”
Saddam, “Ok, ok, here are a shitton of documents showing that I don’t have any weapons or functioning programs.”
We say, “Hey, those documents do show that you don’t have weapons or programs, obviously must be lies, start the bombing.”
There was literally nothing Saddam could have done to avoid bombing. Admit he has weapons – oh, dangerous, bomb – show he doesn’t – what a liar, bomb.
Iran is about to be in that position unless we, Americans, do something.
Didn’t Trump run on, in part, “No more stupid wars” ? Looks like we’re set up for a few already. And how will Russia and China respond? What exactly does an incompetent ignoramus consider “stupid”?
2 questions:
What happens when Iran nukes Israel in retaliation to incoming ICBMs? (assuming they can )
Besides the immediate damage to N. Korea of a nuke strike and their response/aftermath in S.Korea… Won’t Japan and a fair portion of the Pacific be affected by fallout and lingering radiation?
Fucking fuck this man is a fucking idiot.
>Iran is a complicated society.
Did I say otherwise? It is a complicated society run by a few religious fanatics who don’t like democracy and need an external enemy to stay in power for much longer. Cue John Bolton
>It’s government is partially controlled by religious folks, but the other half of the government is not.
Which the “religious folks” (fanatics) would just *love* to change.
>It’s also just wrong to pretend like the Ayatollahs are frothing at the mouth lunatics.
>They are not suicide bombers sitting in a parliament building.
Can you say “red herring”? I never said nor did I imply they were anything of the sort. But they *are* religious fanatics – in my opinion. I might be wrong. We are uncomfortably close to finding out…
>That’s the exact characterization were going to be hearing to justify attacks against them.
Of course – but again, beside the point.
>Iran is about to be in that position unless we, Americans, do something.
Yeah, and where we differ is that I think *both* sides have reasons to want that. Two groups of religious fanatics with atomic bombs – what could go wrong?
Ed, I have talked to people from Iran. Is their government so religiously fanatic that it suppresses innocent things like homosexuality or other religions? Yes. Is it so religiously fanatic that they actually don’t mind their own country being bombed, because they care more about the propaganda value than the destruction of their own people and resources? That seems to be entirely your stereotype.
@ 32 Ed Seedhouse
When you come down to it they probably are more like the upper clergy in the Catholic Church was in the 17th C. Not religious fanatics but quite willing to enforce laws we now think stupid or even evil.
The aytollahs are probably less fanatical than a goodly portion of Trump’s cabinet.
“Ed, I have talked to people from Iran.”
Small sample fallacy. I have talked to people from your country who assured me that Trump was just being anti P.C. and not a fanatic at all. In fact the *only* people I’ve talked to in your country were of that view.
I don’t see anything in Islam that makes it ipso facto less fanatical than Christianity, or scientology for that matter. And there was this little thing called the “inquisition” for example.
“Is it so religiously fanatic that they actually don’t mind their own country being bombed, because they care more about the propaganda value than the destruction of their own people and resources?”
As long as the bombing was conventional I strongly suspect they are. What about Islam makes in any less extreme and fanatical than Christianity?
But again, it’s my opinion. I might be wrong. I hope I am wrong. But not optimistic.
Both Iranian society and the Iranian government is very complicated. An American-Israeli bombing campaign could strengthen the Ayatollahs, it could cripple the structure and lead to utter chaos – Iraq and Syria, as examples. Assad has the benefit of both Russian support and a lack of direct attacks from the US.
Iranians are not the Taliban, they aren’t Al Qaeda or ISIS. They do not want us to bomb. If they did, they wouldn’t have agreed to the previous deal.
Treating people in the Middle East as irrational maniacs has a long history of leading to very poor outcomes.
My point has nothing to do with what both sides want. Again, I think Iran very clearly does not want to be bombed.
The point is that there is nothing Iran can do to avoid being attacked by the US if Bolton gets going. Their behavior is almost completely irrelevant to the ultimate result. Once again, look at Saddam – he was given an ultimatum, he complied, still bombed. Ho Chi Minh did everything he could beginning with the Woodrow Wilson administration to resolve the problems in Vietnam without war, didn’t matter. They either accepted permanent colonial status or looked to the USSR for support.
@ 28 jack16
What is the probability that a war with Iran would result in bombs landing on the US?
Hey, Americans are known for own goals on their own forces and their allies but the risk is not that high, well except for live fire training incidents.
Oh, if you mean IRAN bombing the USA, vanishingly small to infinitesimal at the moment. I may have this wrong but I believe that Iran has been limiting the range of their ballistic missiles to no more than 2000km. Probably to avoid giving more propaganda fuel to the mad ant-Iranians in the US. So much for that.
Otherwise, I do not think they have any delivery platforms that could bomb the USA.
@ 31 Ragutis
What happens when Iran nukes Israel
Iran does not have any nukes. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was agreed to by Iran and the P5+1 group (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, plus Germany) was an agreement that Iran would not develop nuclear weapons and permitted international inspections to ensure this.
So far Iran has been certified as conforming with the agreement by the relevant inspection bodies. China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and Germany accept the results.
This is the same agreement that Trump says he will unilaterally refuse to certify for unknown reasons thus loudly proclaiming that he will not keep any international agreement he does not like. This does not increase trust in the USA on the international stage.
@ 3 Caine
Yet another war might be the one thing which will shake the regime out of power.
This may come as a surprise but the rest of the world does not want get blown to ratshit (sorry, currently dealing with a rat infestation due to renovations) just because the USA has a screwed-up political system.
This is an attitude I see in Americans all the time. Only Americans are real and all the peoples in the rest of the world are imaginary figures. Is there such a thing as a narcissistic nation?
It reminds me of Madeleine Albright saying the Bush administration thought killing half a million Iraq children through the sanctions was worth it, if it got rid of Saddam Hussein. And she said this on national television, apparently totally oblivious that it would be seen in Iraq.