Wednesday on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” former National Security Advisor John Bolton accused President Donald Trump of using Nobel Peace Prize ambitions to guide his foreign policy decisions.
According to Bolton, his pursuit of a ceasefire was a “mistake.”
“[Y]ou know, this DIA intelligence early assessment was leaked,” host Anderson Cooper said. “Whether it’s accurate or not, it’s certainly a lot of caveats apply. It is early. There’s going to be other assessments. If what the general tone of it is accurate that this not — the damage was not as widespread as obliterated, as the president said, what should the U.S. do? Would you see a world where there’s more strikes?
Bolton replied, “Yes, I don’t know anybody who listened to the president or the secretary of defense and the vice president and the language they used who thought it could even remotely be a justifiable at this point. It might be at some point. It might be that the analysis is closer to this leak DIA report, which I hate commenting on because I haven’t seen it. I don’t have any basis on which to judge it or comment on it. I think what we’re seeing here is a president driven by not U.S. national security interests, but his fascination with getting a Nobel Peace Prize. And he thought he had a mission that went flawlessly, the mission itself. I don’t think anybody can find any defects in that, at least that I’m aware of. And he jumped on it and said, this is great.”
“Then he tried to get the ceasefire, which he created and pulled through and got upset on when it looked like that was about to fall through to muddy up his victory,” he continued. “This is his story to get the Nobel Peace Prize. And he doesn’t want to hear any contradiction. I think it was a mistake to call a halt to the bombing. Certainly might want to pause to get the assessment. How much damage did we do? How much more do we need to do? And I think it was a mistake to go for a ceasefire. If you want to destroy the Iranian nuclear weapons program, which I think is the right objective, it’s going to take some time. And by the way, we essentially, we and the Israelis, appear to have all the time we need because Iran’s air defenses, its capability to interfere with aerial bombardment have essentially been eliminated. There was no rush here.”
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