I love John Bolton for his courage and his no nonsense approach to the truth. He doesn't get bogged down with fads. He says it like it is - he's a straight shooter - and he was the only voice of reason in that den of iniquity the United Nations.
Transcript
TONY JONES: Now to our guest. John Bolton is the former US ambassador to the United Nations. Before that he was a principal advisor to President Bush as Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, a position he held from 2001 to 2005. He's now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and he joins us in our Washington studio. John Bolton, thanks for being there.
JOHN BOLTON, FORMER US AMBASSADOR TO THE UN: Glad to be here.
TONY JONES: Now you would have heard the French Foreign Minister saying - warning, in fact - that the world should prepare for war to stop Iran developing nuclear weapons. Do you agree with him?
JOHN BOLTON: Absolutely. Life is about choices, and if the choice is between a nuclear capable Iran and the pre-emptive use of force - I might say a limited use of force - to break their control over the nuclear fuel cycle, I don't think there's any question that's what you have to look at.
TONY JONES: At the same time, the BBC is reporting there's a firm belief in Tehran that the US, enmeshed as it is in Iraq, is in no position to attack Iran. Now, you get the impression, at least many do, that Iran is ready to call America's bluff.
JOHN BOLTON: Well the Iranian statement obviously reflects no comprehension of what our global disposition of forces is or our capabilities. If that's what they think, they are sadly mistaken. Nobody's looking to call anybody's bluff here. Nobody thinks the use of force is an attractive option. But let's come down to the real question: is the use of force as an alternative preferable to Iran having nuclear weapons? No question about it, in my view.
TONY JONES: Could you imagine a war with Iran and what the consequences of that would be?
JOHN BOLTON: Let's get this straight one more time. We're not talking about a war such as we had in Iraq. We're talking about, quite likely, a limited air strike against, for example, the uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz, or the uranium conversion facility at Isfahan, or the heavy water reactor at Arak, that would prevent Iran from getting from uranium in the ground to highly enriched uranium in a nuclear warhead. That is the kind of attack that we're talking about. TONY JONES: But John Bolton, that assumes it would stop there, that the Iranians wouldn't do anything in response, for example they wouldn't do anything to destabilise the position even further in Iraq or Afghanistan or Lebanon, that they wouldn't use international terrorism, that they wouldn't threaten the West's oil supply?
JOHN BOLTON: You mean as opposed to what they're doing now? Look, if this regime can intimidate us with oil at $80 a barrel but without nuclear weapons, imagine what will happen if Iran gets nuclear weapons. If they can see their way clear to this kind of bluster at this point, what will happen after they actually have the weapons? What's your answer to that?
TONY JONES: Well General John Abizaid your former commander in the Middle East has in a sense answered that on your side of the Atlantic overnight. He said the US could live with a nuclear-armed Iran and indeed the West is living already with a nuclear-armed North Korea.
JOHN BOLTON: Well, I'm not very happy about living with a nuclear-armed North Korea because of the threat they pose not only in East Asia but even in the Middle East as we've seen, and facts are not fully clear yet but the possibility of nuclear cooperation between Syria and North Korea. The notion that living under the threat of a possible use of Iranian nuclear weapons is acceptable may appeal to some people but it's not the kind of life I want to live and I don't think it's the kind of life that people in Israel, for example, or other American friends and allies in the region are happy to live with.
TONY JONES: Do you think the United States would countenance an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities?
JOHN BOLTON: Well, I think again, we're not entirely sure of the details of the recent Israeli strike against Syria, but I don't hear any loud objections coming out of the Administration here in Washington to that and if the Israelis were able to accomplish something similar to what they did against Saddam Hussein's Osirak reactor the early 1980s I think the world would be a safer place.
TONY JONES: Yes, we've been reading and we've heard your response in the past few days to Israeli television about that story about the Israeli strike in Syria. Do you believe it is what unnamed US officials are saying? In other words do you believe it was a strike on a secret Syrian nuclear facility?
JOHN BOLTON: Let me just say for the third time, all of the details are not yet known. But I think it would be unlikely that Israel would risk the possibility of negative consequences from a strike inside Syria unless it was against a very high value target such as a facility involved with weapons of mass destruction. So simple logic points to the direction that this must have been considered an extraordinarily high threat by the Israelis for them to conduct such an operation.
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1 comment:
Interesting to know.
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