Former Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton slammed President Joe Biden over the weekend for encouraging Israel not to respond to Iran’s attacks on Saturday, saying that he was an “embarrassment to the United States.”
Bolton made the remarks during a Sunday CNN interview after Iran launched an unprecedented attack on Israel that included 185 one-way suicide drones, 110 surface-to-surface missiles, and 36 cruise missiles.
“And unless Iran sees a powerful response, that risk will continue,” Bolton said. “And the way to reestablish deterrence is not proportional. That’s academic talk. The way you establish deterrence is by telling your adversary, if you ever try that again, the price you will pay will be so much higher than any gain you think you can get, you shouldn’t even think about it.”
“So I think Israel has a wide range of potential targets. You start by flattening Iran’s air defense capabilities,” he continued. “Next, you might go after headquarters of the regular military and the Revolutionary Guard. You could consider going after their oil infrastructure, the oil fields, the distribution pipelines, the export port facilities.”
“And, most importantly, I think Israel should be looking at this as an opportunity to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons program, which is the existential threat that Israel faces,” he added. “I don’t know what they will do. I can’t predict it. But I will tell you this. If Joe Biden, as some press reports have it, is urging the Israelis not to retaliate at all, he is an embarrassment to the United States. This is an American interest to make sure that Iran, which is the principal threat to international peace and security in the region, is, at a minimum, put in its place to spare Israel, to spare the Gulf Arabs, to spare us from the threat that they pose.”
President Biden reportedly told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday that the United States would not support an Israeli counterattack against Iran.
Bolton slammed those in the U.S. who say that diplomacy should be what Israel pursues.
“Well, how well is diplomacy working so far? Hamas this morning again rejected the cease-fire plan,” he said. “And, by the way, I have heard from people in Israel they believe there are less than 20 hostages still alive, that perhaps 100 of them are dead. And if that’s true, and if Hamas knows it, but has been negotiating these past months on the basis of 40 coming out, with more possibly later, and Hamas itself saying they can only find 27, Hamas may have been conducting a deception operation to build up pressure on Iran, knowing full well it could never meet the diplomatic goals of the administration.”
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“So deterrence failed 320 times last night against Israel,” he concluded. “If Iran doesn’t feel the pain, I think it’s only got to get worse for Israel.”
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