{"id":9769,"date":"2019-05-18T14:27:26","date_gmt":"2019-05-18T09:57:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/?p=9769"},"modified":"2021-10-02T11:28:12","modified_gmt":"2021-10-02T07:58:12","slug":"mek-terrorists-pay-bolton-regularly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/posts\/9769","title":{"rendered":"MEK terrorists pay Bolton Regularly"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI actually temper John,\u201d Trump said, \u201cwhich is pretty amazing.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fourteen months into his tenure as national security adviser, John Bolton has become a central figure in the run-up to what could be the most extensive American military offensive since the invasion of Iraq. Tensions between Iran and the United States have been high for weeks, beginning with a menacing video Bolton released in February targeting the Iranian supreme leader and reached a boil last week when, according the New York Times, he ordered the Pentagon to prepare to send as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East to counter Iran.
\nHis saber-rattling in the Middle East comes on the heels of his recent and unsuccessful public campaign to topple President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, which left President Donald Trump complaining privately that Bolton wants to get him \u201cinto a war,\u201d the Washington Post reported. Trump, long an opponent of America\u2019s \u201cendless wars\u201d despite initially supporting the Iraq invasion, reportedly \u201cprefers a diplomatic approach\u201d to Iran as well and \u201cwants to speak directly with Iran\u2019s leaders,\u201d a Post story noted Wednesday evening. The ensuing debate has left Trump, who once promised to \u201cbomb the shit\u201d out of Islamic State terrorists, in the unusual position of moderating his notoriously hawkish national security adviser.
\n\u201cHe has strong views on things but that\u2019s okay,\u201d Trump said during a White House press conference last week. \u201cI actually temper John, which is pretty amazing.\u201d
\nWhat\u2019s also pretty amazing is how frequently Bolton has argued in favor of regime change in Iran, an enemy he has been fixated on for decades. As early as May 2002, Bolton considered Iran\u2019s \u201congoing interest in nuclear weapons\u201d a threat to the United States on par with North Korea and Iraq. Then the top arms control official in the State Department, Bolton continued to emphasize the threat of Iran to American security and the security of Israel, even during the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. In February 2003, he assured Prime Minister Ariel Sharon during a visit to Israel that \u201cit would be necessary\u201d for the United States to \u201cdeal with\u201d threats from Iran, Syria, and North Korea after ousting Saddam Hussein. The prior year, a senior British official told Newsweek that President George W. Bush\u2019s national security team was fixated on Iran even more than Iraq. \u201cEveryone wants to go to Baghdad,\u201d the official said. \u201cReal men want to go to Tehran.\u201d
\nBut why does Bolton care so much about Iran, a country that for decades was a pariah in the international community and kept in check by the stranglehold of American sanctions? The none-too-simple answer resides in his understanding of America\u2019s place in the world and opposition to any limits on American power.<\/p>\n

The roots of Bolton\u2019s warmongering against Iran<\/strong>
\nAs a diplomat and national security official across four Republican administrations, from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump, Bolton has made the case for regime change in North Korea and Syria, among other places. But Iran remained a persistent concern for him, due to its alleged links to terrorism and burgeoning nuclear program. Once he left his position as ambassador to the United Nations in the Bush White House in 2006, he began more openly criticizing Bush\u2019s Iran policy as too soft, calling it \u201cfour and a half years of failed diplomacy.\u201d In an appearance on Fox News in 2008, Bolton argued in favor of bombing Iranian camps that the US said were training insurgents to oppose American troops in Iraq. \u201cThis is not provocative or preemptive\u2014this is entirely responsive,\u201d he said. \u201cIf we don\u2019t respond, the Iranians will take it as a sign of weakness.\u201d
\nHis enmity was further inflamed when President Barack Obama began negotiating with Tehran to eliminate their nuclear program. Bolton dismissed the prospect of diplomatic solution in several opinion pieces. \u201cThe inescapable conclusion is that Iran will not negotiate away its nuclear program. Nor will sanctions block its building a broad and deep weapons infrastructure,\u201d he wrote for the New York Times in March 2015, four months before Obama announced a deal with Iran that had broad international support in blocking the rogue state\u2019s pathway to creating a nuclear weapon in exchange for partial sanctions relief.
\nBolton rejected this outcome. Only a military strike \u201clike Israel\u2019s 1981 attack on Saddam Hussein\u2019s Osirak reactor in Iraq or its 2007 destruction of a Syrian reactor\u201d can do the job, Bolton wrote. He failed to mention that Israel\u2019s premeditated strike on Osirak was condemned at the time by the United Nations and troubled US officials in the Middle East. Even Ronald Reagan confided to his journal that when this happened he believed \u201cArmageddon is near.\u201d
\nFor Bolton, diplomacy with Iran has never been a realistic option. Last year, he argued that \u201cAmerica\u2019s declared policy should be ending Iran\u2019s 1979 Islamic Revolution before its 40th anniversary.\u201d On the fortieth anniversary of the revolution that toppled Iran\u2019s US-backed shah and led to the creation of modern Iran, Bolton released a video implying Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would not be in power for long. \u201cI don\u2019t think you\u2019ll have many more anniversaries to enjoy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s offered no less than a full-throated endorsement for regime change in other venues too. In 2016, he gave a speech in Paris to tens of thousands of supporters of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a group of Iranian exiles who were responsible for a series of bombings in Iran prior to the revolution, including one that killed six Americans. The MEK supported the Iranian Revolution and were cheerleaders for the takeover of the American embassy in Tehran, which led to the kidnapping of more than 50 American citizens for over a year, but ultimately broke with the ruling clerics and went into exile. The group is considered by some Iran experts to be a cult and, for more than a decade, was listed as a terrorist group by the United States. Bolton has been attending the MEK\u2019s annual event for at least a decade, the New Yorker has reported.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cThere is only one answer here: to support legitimate opposition groups that favor overthrowing the military theocratic dictatorship in Tehran,\u201d he said. \u201cLet me be very clear, it should be the declared policy of the United States of America and all its friends to do just that at the earliest opportunity.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

At the group\u2019s rally the following year, in 2017, Bolton vowed to celebrate the fall of the regime \u201cbefore 2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

#JohnBolton 8 months ago among MEK supporters tells them they will overthrow #Iran\u2019s regime and celebrate in #Tehran with Bolton himself present, \u201cbefore 2019\u201d pic.twitter.com\/H7oaaU3faU
\n\u2014 Bahman Kalbasi (@BahmanKalbasi) March 22, 2018<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Once Trump took office but before Bolton joined the administration, he pursued his hawkish agenda by lobbying to rip up Obama\u2019s nuclear deal. The agreement was \u201cexecrable\u201d and should be abrogated \u201cat the earliest opportunity,\u201d Bolton wrote in August 2017 in the National Review. \u201cWe can no longer wait to eliminate the threat posed by Iran.\u201d
\nThe hawk in Trump\u2019s Situation Room
\nSince joining the Trump administration last year as national security adviser, replacing HR McMaster, who urged Trump to maintain the Iran deal, Bolton has had some success in escalating the pressure on Tehran and reducing its sources of revenue through sanctions. Last year, his efforts to persuade Trump to leave the nuclear deal finally succeeded, although several European allies remained in it. He warned Iran of \u201chell to pay\u201d if it crosses the US, and proclaimed that an American military presence would remain in Syria indefinitely until \u201cIranian proxies and militias\u201d left the country. Even though Trump ignored that last promise when he announced the withdrawal of US troops from Syria in December, Bolton kept pursuing military solutions to challenge Iran.
\n\u201cI am convinced that John Bolton has calculated that he has about 18 months to start a war with Iran or he\u2019ll miss his chance,\u201d says Joe Cirincione, an expert on nuclear weapons policy and the president of the Ploughshares Fund, a global security foundation. \u201cThey want Iran to be like Japan at the end of World War II.\u201d
\nBolton reportedly asked the Pentagon in September for options to strike Iran after a Tehran-linked group fired mortar shells toward the American embassy in Baghdad, which \u201clanded in an open lot and harmed no one,\u201d the Wall Street Journal reported. Bolton\u2019s request concerned US officials who spoke with the Journal.
\n\u201cIt definitely rattled people,\u201d a former senior US administration official told the newspaper. \u201cPeople were shocked. It was mind-boggling how cavalier they were about hitting Iran.\u201d
\nThat request was a prelude to what Bolton would ask of the Pentagon this month. In response to intelligence that Iran was planning to strike US military assets in the Middle East, Bolton announced the early deployment of an aircraft carrier and several Air Force bombers to the region. (The US routinely deploys carrier groups to the Gulf region and this particular one had already departed Virginia on April 1, well before Bolton\u2019s statement about the Iranian threat.)
\nSources with knowledge of the intelligence quickly threw cold water on the severity of the threat. \u201cThe administration blew it out of proportion, characterizing the threat as more significant than it actually was,\u201d multiple anonymous Trump officials told the Daily Beast. In a briefing to reporters at the Pentagon, the second-ranking general in the US-backed coalition to fight ISIS suggested there had been no increase in threats toward American forces. \u201cThere are a substantial number of militia groups in Iraq and Syria, and we don\u2019t see any increased threats from many of them at this stage,\u201d the British general, Chris Ghika, said. (US Central Command later dismissed these comments in a rare rebuke of an allied general, insisting there are \u201ccredible threats available to intelligence from U.S. and allies regarding Iranian backed forces in the region.\u201d) Nonetheless, US officials used the intelligence to justify removing nonessential diplomats from its embassy in Baghdad on Wednesday.
\nNow the US is considering another series of military options despite Trump\u2019s apparent opposition. The New York Times reported Tuesday that \u201cActing Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan presented an updated military plan that envisions sending as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East should Iran attack American forces or accelerate work on nuclear weapons.\u201d Trump denied the storyand said, if military action were taken against Iran, \u201cwe\u2019d send a hell of a lot more troops than that.\u201d
\nThe newspaper said the plans were ordered by \u201cJohn R. Bolton.\u201d<\/p>\n

By Mother Jones,<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI actually temper John,\u201d Trump said, \u201cwhich is pretty amazing.\u201d Fourteen months into his tenure as national security adviser, John Bolton has become a central figure in the run-up to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[90,642,20],"module":[81],"ctype":[17],"blog":[109],"class_list":["post-9769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mujahedin-khalq-organizations-propaganda-system","tag-mujahedin-warmongers","tag-paid-advocacy-for-mko","tag-third-view-mek","module-article","ctype-story","blog-western-bloggers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9769"},{"taxonomy":"module","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/module?post=9769"},{"taxonomy":"ctype","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctype?post=9769"},{"taxonomy":"blog","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog?post=9769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}