The Daily - John Bolton’s Plan for Iran

Episode Date: May 13, 2019

Iran is warning that it may resume production on its nuclear program, reviving a crisis that had been contained by the signing of the Iran nuclear deal four years ago. One man within the United States government may have intentionally brought us to this point. Guest: Mark Landler, who covers the White House for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.Background reading: After President Hassan Rouhani of Iran declared that he would begin to walk away from the terms of the nuclear deal, the Trump administration responded with a new round of sanctions.The lack of ideological coherence in President Trump’s approach to foreign intervention has played to the advantage of more hawkish advisers.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, Iran is warning that it may resume production on its nuclear program, reviving a crisis that had been contained by the signing of the Iran nuclear deal four years ago. How one man within the U.S. government may have intentionally brought us to this point. It's Monday, May 13th. Mark Landler, tell me how we got to this point in the relationship between the U.S. and Iran. Well, Michael, the story really starts almost exactly a year ago.

Today, I want to update the world on our efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. When President Trump finally makes good on a pledge he had made during the 2016 campaign. he had made during the 2016 campaign. I am announcing today that the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. Recall, the Iran nuclear deal was signed between Iran, on the one side, the United States, and three European countries, Britain, France, and Germany. And the idea behind the deal was in return for deferring

whatever nuclear ambitions it had, Iran was going to be released from these very onerous sanctions that the U.S. and the international community had imposed on it. And as a result, was going to be able to build up the rest of its economy, even while accepting that its nuclear program was going to be hindered for this period of time, roughly 15 to 20 years. Tonight, the breaking news, a major shakeup at the White House moments ago. We are just learning. At the same time that President Trump is making good on this campaign promise to pull the United States out of this deal, you have a new personality, a new figure entering the White House. National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster is gone. President Trump dismisses his former National Security Advisor, General H.R. McMaster,

and McMaster is replaced by a man named John Bolton. And what is significant about these two things, pulling out of the Iran deal and appointing John Bolton, happening at the same time, roughly? Well, for one thing, it puts Iran on a collision course with the United States. You have the jeopardizing of this deal, which itself had resolved more than a decade of confrontation between Iran and the West. The Iran deal was, in fact, the worst diplomatic debacle in American history. The importance of John Bolton's arrival is that now you have an official

in the middle of the policymaking mix who has perhaps the hardest-line record toward Iran of any senior figure in the mainstream foreign policy community. If you cross us, our allies or our partners, if you harm our citizens, if you continue to lie, cheat and deceive, yes, there will indeed be hell to pay.

And John Bolton comes at Iran from a very different place than Donald Trump. Where they differ is really what the ultimate objective is. For Trump, he's willing to sit down and talk to the existing leadership in pursuit of a better deal. Look, the president has said since really beginning in the 2016 campaign, he's open to negotiating with leaders like Rouhani, like with Kim Jong-un, to sit down with them. The Iranians have used negotiations in the path just to delay. For John Bolton, it's something much more fundamental. He wants to install new democratic leaders in that country. He wants

regime change. We should provide material financial support to the opposition if they desire it. We should work with intelligence services from other countries, Saudi, Israel, to provide more pressure. There's a lot we can do and we should do it. Our goal should be regime change in Iran. So regime change as a concept has been a part of American foreign policy really since World War II. The U.S. has always debated the wisdom of trying to take out or roll back enemy or adversarial governments.

But what happened in the last 15 years is the phrase regime change became identified with the Iraq war, a war that was far more costly, far longer, far more trouble prone than the Bush administration ever hoped. And I think ever since that experience and those difficult days, the idea of regime change has simply become toxic to a large portion of the foreign policy community, but also the political class, both Republican and Democrat. When people say the words regime change, people think about Iraq. Hence, no one wants to say those words. And so the combination of the jeopardizing of the deal and John Bolton is a very combustible mixture. And what is Bolton's argument for this focus on regime change in Iran?

Bolton's argument is that the Iranian regime is... The world's largest financier of international terrorism. The world's largest state sponsor of terrorism terrorism, the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism. It continues to pursue ballistic missiles, a potential nuclear proliferator on a grand scale. The only real purpose of which is to deliver nuclear weapons when they get that capability. A malign influence in the region, fomenting unrest, financing militant groups in Syria, in Yemen. There's no doubt this regime is a threat in the region globally.

A country that is bent on the destruction of the state of Israel, a great American ally. So he really believes that much of the ills that afflict the Middle East can be laid at Tehran's doorstep. That the Tehran regime is the central problem in the Middle East. And that hence the only answer, the only way to bring Iran back into the community of civilized nations is to effect a change in leadership. So basically, people so terrible that they can't possibly be trusted to negotiate a nuclear deal. In a word, yes.

And how does Bolton begin to set that goal in motion? At the stroke of midnight, the U.S. will reimpose stiff economic sanctions on Iran. Well, the first thing he does is he reimposes the sanctions that had been lifted as a consequence of the deal. The sanctions target Iran's gold and metal industries, its auto sector, and restrict Iran from using U.S. dollars in financial transactions. And his goal here is to squeeze the vice around the Iranian economy, to raise the pain threshold for the Iranian government, so that, in effect, they're forced to knuckle under, to come back to the table, to acknowledge that they're willing to swallow

a less advantageous deal. And I think we've already seen the consequences in Iran. The real, the currency has declined by 70 percent since the sanctions. Inflation has quadrupled. The country is in recession. I think this is going to cut into Iran's ability to continue their nuclear program, to finance terrorism and to engage in military activity around the Middle East. So the goal here is to make the Iranian government so frustrated with this situation that they just throw up their hands and walk away from the entire nuclear deal. That's exactly right. But the Iranians do something unexpected. Rather than pull out of the deal themselves, they decide to stay in it.

And they do that for a couple of reasons. One is that the European signatories of the deal, Britain, France, and Germany, all pledged to stay in the deal. So the Iranians hope that even if they're cut off from all contact with the U.S. economy, they can continue to do some level of trading with the Europeans. And secondly, they make this calculation that Donald Trump is a one-term president. And that if they simply wait him out, perhaps he will be replaced by a friendlier successor, perhaps another Democrat. Most Democrats are on the record as saying they would reinstate the Iran nuclear deal. So there is this belief in Tehran, and it's encouraged, by the way,

by both European officials and by some people here in the United States, that they should sit tight, don't rip up the deal, and see if they can wait out Donald Trump. So once Iran has decided to basically wait out Donald Trump. So once Iran has decided to basically wait out the Trump presidency, how does the Trump administration respond to what is clearly an act of defiance by Iran? Well, what the Trump administration does publicly is it imposes enormous pressure on the Europeans

to fall in line. Any nation that helps Iran in its quest for nuclear weapons could also be strongly sanctioned by the United States. To start cutting off links to the Iranian government. Whether it's the German manufacturer Siemens, the Danish shipping company Maersk, the French carmaker PSA, or the French energy giant Total. All of these

companies have decided to either scale down or completely pull out of Iran from fear of U.S. sanctions. So that's the public side of what the Trump administration is doing. But privately, John Bolton is really building up his Iran cadre within the National Security Council. And he's doing so by bringing in these extremely hardline figures who are experts in sanction strategy. And he's beginning to lay in place the pieces for sort of the next phase of the pressure campaign. Good morning. I'm here to make an important foreign policy announcement

concerning the Islamic Republic of Iran. And among the things that he begins exploring and laying the groundwork for... I am announcing our intent to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. ...are designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is this sort of military wing of the Iranian leadership,

designating the IRGC... As a foreign terrorist organization. As a foreign terrorist organization. This is the first time Washington has formally labeled an arm of another country's military as a terrorist group. The Trump administration says the Iranian force actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft.

And what would be the significance of that in terms of Bolton's ultimate goal here? Well, going after the IRGC not only hinders Iran's ability to project malign influence around the region, it also hits at a very important source of revenue for politically connected leaders in Iran. The IRGC is, in fact, the vehicle by which a lot of Iran's leadership enriches themselves. So going after that group both hurts Iran domestically and hurts its ability to operate internationally. its ability to operate internationally. Bolton also begins laying the groundwork for an even more draconian set of sanctions on Iran's oil industry.

Up until this point, the U.S. had allowed countries, some of whom are U.S. allies, and are very dependent on Iranian oil, to continue to buy from Iran for some temporary period of time. But what happens now is that the administration revokes those waivers. Eight countries will be affected. It basically says to

all of these countries, China, Japan, South Korea, Turkey, Greece, India, and Italy, that no country that wants to avoid itself being blacklisted by the United States can continue to buy oil from Iran. And they either have to cooperate or face sanctions. And the effect of this step is truly devastating to the Iranian oil industry because it was kind of limping along, continuing to export a certain amount of oil to these countries that were operating under waivers. But once these waivers are gone, truly all of Iran's customers are basically put in a position of saying,

we cannot buy oil from you anymore. And because oil is so central to Iran's economy, that is the economic equivalent of just kind of strangling it. It really is the economic lifeline of the Iranian economy. And so cutting it off 100% just has a truly devastating effect. Its currency, the rial, has already lost two-thirds of its value against the dollar since the year began.

The IMF said the Iranian economy would shrink 6% this year. And that was before the latest U.S. moves. This is a level of pressure. This is a tightening of the economic vice, unlike anything the Iranians have so far experienced. But how exactly does it get to Bolton's goal of regime change? Well, one school of thought is that if you reduce Iran's oil exports to zero, you crater its currency, you tank its economy, and you throw millions of Iranian people into poverty, you could in fact spark the kind of uprising that people

like John Bolton have been waiting for for a quarter century, an uprising that would actually topple the regime from inside. So the idea is that you squeeze Iran hard enough that the regular people of Iran rise up and oust the regime, which is a little bit different than I think how most people think of regime change. If you remember Iraq, regime change was the U.S. invading. Here, it's making the people in that country so miserable in a way that they decide to take out their own leaders. And it's driven by a couple of different things. One is that unlike Iraq, invading Iran would be a monumentally difficult undertaking. So the notion of an American invasion of Iran is really

not on the table. This is more about can we make life miserable enough that we can actually bring about regime change from internally. To the degree that the administration is behind Bolton's strategy right now, which it seems it is, are there signs that it's actually working, that the Iranian regime is starting to collapse from within as it's supposed to? I think the short answer to that is no.

There is no question that the sanctions have really hurt the Iranian economy, have devastated its oil exports. But in the main, this is a regime that seems as firmly entrenched as ever. And it's also a regime that is still able to exert influence around the region. It continues to be active in Lebanon. It continues to be active in Syria. It continues to have a role to play in Yemen. So the answer to that is no. Neither internally nor in its neighborhood is there evidence that the Trump administration is really jeopardizing the survival of the regime. And yet this week, we've got some breaking news just coming across the wire out of the Middle East.

we finally did see some signs that Iran is growing impatient. One year to the day after President Trump withdrew the United States from the landmark Iran nuclear agreement, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani says he has sent letters to the remaining signatories of the deal saying, remaining signatories of the deal, saying... Iran's president, Hassan Rouhani, announced that Iran would begin to pull away in a modest way from parts of the Iranian nuclear deal. They would begin some very small-scale enrichment of nuclear material. So they're not violating the deal in any dramatic fashion, but they're beginning to peel away from the edges of the deal. And perhaps more significantly,

they're putting the Europeans in a box. Iran says other countries have two months to implement their commitments to the deal or Iran will, quote, reduce its own. So remember, the Europeans pledged to stay in the deal. They pledged to continue to give Iran the benefits of the deal, even if the United States pulled out. And essentially what the Iranian government said to the Europeans this week is, you have a certain period of time to show us that we are going to get these economic benefits. And if you can't show us, then we're going to pull out of the deal in a much more wholesale fashion. The Iranian president says the country will start enriching uranium again in 60 days.

That's unless Europe, Russia and China can help Iran counter U.S. sanctions on its oil sales. So in effect, what they've done is they've put the Europeans in the middle of their evolving battle with the United States. And kind of encouraged them to choose between Iran and the U.S. And it's a very difficult choice. So on the one hand, the Europeans can defy President Trump and say, we're going to continue to do business with the Iranians, in which case the president could theoretically say, fine, I'm going to sanction you. say, in that case, we have a pretext, a reasonable case for leaving this deal entirely, which is something, of course, the Europeans have been desperately trying to avoid. So is this a sign that Bolton's plan is working? Or is it a sign that maybe it backfired? Well, it depends on

your perspective. From the perspective of someone who wants to keep Iran's nuclear program bottled up, it has totally backfired. From the perspective of someone who is hungry for a confrontation with Iran, it actually provides you with more of a rationale. What do you mean? Well, in the sense that they're now in breach of the agreement. Beforehand, the United States was imposing all this pressure on Iran without really having the legal high ground because the Iranians were complying with the terms of the deal. The American argument was it's a terrible deal. Now the Iranians are in breach of the deal.

So it actually gives more of a pretext, more of a case for the Trump administration to tighten the vice on the Iranians. So if you are somebody who favors regime change, not just going back to the negotiating table, this is a reasonably good place to be. It's a better place to be because now you're dealing with a regime that has to some extent gone rogue, a regime that signed a deal with the international community, which won a lot of credit in Europe for sticking to the terms of that deal, which won a lot of credit at the United Nations for sticking with the terms of that deal. Well, now suddenly the Iranians are also in breach. So I think it does improve your position if your goal is conflict

rather than some kind of diplomatic resolution. If you're John Bolton. If you're, in other words, John Bolton. Mark, it's one way to think about this, that John Bolton would never have signed the Iran deal in the first place, as Obama did. So he's basically trying to get us right back where we were before that deal was signed, which is Iran developing a nuclear program. But this time, rather than solve it through a nuclear deal, he wants to solve it another way, regime change. wants to solve it another way, regime change. I think that's right, because I think that John Bolton's argument is the way to forever guarantee that Iran doesn't develop a nuclear weapon is not to put on these complicated timelines that expire at some point in the future, but to fundamentally change the character of the government in Iran.

So you just don't have to worry about this nuclear threat at all. And trying to achieve it through arrangements, through complicated treaties, is simply never going to work because of the nature of the leadership you're dealing with. Better to start off with a new leadership, perhaps a leadership that has no nuclear ambitions at all, and just change the equation in a more fundamental way. So, Mark, are we still on a collision course with Iran? I'd say the more accurate way to put it is we're back on a collision course. We had been on a collision course with Iran for much of the last decade. And there was this brief period while the

deal was in place where one could say that there was an understanding. But we're now back in a very familiar dynamic. We continue to ratchet up the pressure. We see acts of Iranian defiance, and it's very uncertain how the story plays out. Mark, thank you very much. Thank you, Michael. Thank you, Michael. Late last week, the Trump administration announced a new round of sanctions on Iranian steel, aluminum, copper, and iron, aimed at further squeezing its economy. At the same time, the U.S. said it would build up its military presence around Iran,

including an anti-aircraft defense system, B-52 bombers, and a warship. The military movements are based on U.S. intelligence, suggesting that Iran's government may try to provoke a conflict with the U.S. to cement its hold on power, as the economic toll of U.S. sanctions continues to grow. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. The EU Parliament has only limited powers. It doesn't even propose the laws that it votes on. It's actually the unelected European Commission that comes up with those laws, which are then fleshed out by a different structure.

The Times reports that Russia appears to be engaging in a widespread campaign of misinformation aimed at influencing upcoming elections for the European Parliament, the legislative branch of the European Union. Those elections, scheduled for late May, feature populist candidates who, if elected, would be hostile to the EU and sympathetic to Russia. The Russian campaign involves promoting right-wing parties in Italy and Germany and raising questions on TV networks like Russia Today about the legitimacy of the European Parliament itself. Perhaps the real question is, does it matter who you vote for? Because in reality, even a seismic shake-up at MEP level

won't have any impact on the Commission nor the Council, where it seems the power base really lies. The activity is the latest sign that despite indictments, sanctions and expulsions, Russia remains committed to weakening Western institutions by deepening political divisions. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.