Trump security pick reflects hard-line stance on Iran

NEW YORK: US President Donald Trump’s choice of John Bolton as his new national security adviser reflects a shift in his administration toward more hawkish stances on the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea, analysts told Arab News on Friday.
Trump shook up his foreign policy team on Thursday for the second time this month by replacing H.R. McMaster with Bolton, a former UN ambassador who has advocated the use of military force against Pyongyang and Tehran.
Fahad Nazer, a fellow at the National Council on US-Arab Relations, a Washington-based cultural group, said the appointment will go down well in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other members of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).
“Ambassador Bolton is a well-known commodity who understands the sources of instability in the Middle East and who believes in clear and firm positions to counter-security threats. I think that countries in the GCC and beyond will appreciate his clear positions and resoluteness in the face of the myriad challenges the region faces,” Nazer told Arab News.
“Saudi-US relations are longstanding and have continued to strengthen, broaden and deepen over the past eight decades regardless of who is in the White House or the administration. Relations are built on shared interests and concerns, and are based on institutions.”
Bolton starts work next month and will advise Trump on everything from the fight against Daesh to China’s economic rise, Russia’s election-meddling and looming nuclear talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
The 69-year-old Bolton is a Fox News analyst who considered a run for the Republican presidential nomination against Trump and others in 2016. He is a colorful figure in Washington, with a pronounced moustache and trenchant views on global challenges.
Bolton famously kept a defused hand grenade on his desk at the State Department during former President George W. Bush’s administration. His 2007 memoir is titled “Surrender Is Not An Option,” and he often criticizes North Korea, the UN and European governments.
On Iran, Bolton has tweeted that the 2015 nuclear deal “needs to be abrogated.” The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as it is formally known, traded sanctions relief for time-limited curbs on Tehran’s uranium enrichment and other work.
This chimes with Trump, who has slammed “the worst deal ever” and threatened to axe the agreement in May unless Europe tightens the screws on Tehran by removing the so-called sunset clauses by which the pact expires.
Sigurd Neubauer, a Washington-based Gulf analyst, said Bolton’s appointment is a “logical step toward implementing” anti-Iran policies and raising the pressure on Tehran over other issues, such as ballistic missile testing and arming proxies.
“It is well understood in Washington policy circles that Trump’s objective to create uncertainty over whether his administration will pull out of the JCPOA is meant to squeeze Tehran financially, which depends on sanctions relief to operate its government and prevent the economy from collapsing,” Neubauer told Arab news.
The White House personnel switch, announced in a tweet and a White House statement, came little more than a week after Trump fired Rex Tillerson as secretary of state and nominated a tough-talking loyalist, Central Intelligence Agency Director Mike Pompeo, to replace him.
Lindsey Ford, a former Pentagon official and political and security director at the Asia Society think tank, said the appointments of Bolton and Pompeo removed restraining influences in the president’s inner circle.
“The immediate consequences of these changes will be most visible in the administration’s approach toward North Korea,” Ford told Arab News.
“Bolton has openly argued for a preventive strike option against Pyongyang’s nuclear program, while making clear his disdain for diplomatic agreements such as the nuclear deal with Iran.”
Many analysts point with concern to Bolton’s track record in the Middle East. As the State Department’s top arms control official under Bush, he pushed hard for the 2003 invasion of Iraq — a move ultimately based on false intelligence about mass-casualty weapons in the country.
Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the pro-Israel lobby group J Street, described Bolton as a “completely inappropriate choice” whose sabre-rattling on Iran could result in a repeat of the errors made in Iraq, which is still struggling to recover 15 years after the US-led invasion.
“Bolton was one of the earliest champions of regime change in Iraq. He helped promote false information that led to the disastrous US invasion, a decision he continues to defend to this day,” Ben-Ami said in a statement emailed to Arab News.
“He has applied the same attitude and approach to Iran, publicly advocating in 2015 to bomb Iran and insisting that diplomacy could never succeed in preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, even as negotiations to defang Iran’s nuclear program without firing a shot were just weeks away from reaching fruition.”
Bolton has also advocated keeping the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba open, applauded Trump’s plan to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and proposed pressuring China by boosting US support to Taiwan, which Beijing views as a renegade province.
McMaster, hired early in Trump’s presidency to replace scandal-plagued Michael Flynn as national security adviser, had widely been expected to leave.
Trump and McMaster frequently clashed and the president was looking for a replacement, advisers said.
The White House said Trump and McMaster had “mutually agreed” that he would leave.
“I am very thankful for the service of Gen. H.R. McMaster, who has done an outstanding job and will always remain my friend,” Trump’s tweet said.