The Obama administration says it was excellent diplomacy that led to Iran releasing ten U.S. sailors who were taken into detention on Tuesday, but former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton says it was another example of Obama appeasing Iran after a belligerent act and encourages other adversaries and enemies to follow suit.
Two U.S. Navy patrol boats were intercepted on Tuesday. Video shot by the Iranian government depicted Americans on their knees and holding their hands on their heads. Later, the female sailor was shown wearing a hijab and another sailor apologized on camera for the “mistake” of entering Iranian waters.
Obama drew criticism for not mentioning the incident on his State of the Union message Tuesday night. By Wednesday morning, however, Iran released the U.S. service members.
That same morning, Secretary of State John Kerry hailed their release and even thanked the Iranians.
“I want to thank the Iranian authorities for their cooperation and quick response. These are always situations which, as everybody here knows, have an ability, if not properly guided, to get out of control,” said Kerry.
“All indications suggest or tell us that our sailors were well taken care of, provided with blankets and food and assisted with their return to the fleet earlier today,” added Kerry.
Bolton says the praise for the Iranians is completely unwarranted because Tehran’s actions in interdicting the boats were unwarranted.
“There was no reason for the Iranians to bring them to Farsi Island, to take them off the two ships. If they were inadvertently in Iranian territorial waters, the standard procedure is just to warn them off, make them identify themselves and tell them to shove off back into international waters,” said Bolton.
Bolton believes the Iranians had a clear reason for detaining the sailors.
“I think what may really have been at stake here was the boats themselves. I wouldn’t be surprised if they contained sensing equipment and advanced communications equipment,” said Bolton.
He says it is vital for the government to investigate what the Iranians learned from those boats.
“It’s very important that Congress find out what, if anything, was compromised in terms of our sensitive intelligence gathering capabilities, weapons systems, communications on those boats that the Iranians had a day and a half to search,” said Bolton.
Bolton is also unimpressed with the release of the sailors within hours.
“Why did they release the American crewmen after 18 hours? Because they had everything they needed. They gained propaganda benefit inside Iran because this was depicted as aggressive Americans being stopped by the Revolutionary Guard and arrested and humiliated. They gained propaganda value in the rest of the world because everybody says, ‘Oh, those wonderful Iranians, releasing the people in less than a day,'” said Bolton.
Bolton believes the proper U.S. response would have been for Obama to condemn the detention of the sailors in his State of the Union speech. He would have also suggested ripping up the Iran nuclear deal, but Bolton says preserving that was one of Obama’s top goals as this played out.
“All he wanted to do was get the people out with a minimum of fuss and to save the nuclear deal,” said Bolton.
Just like the nuclear deal, Bolton sees this as another episode of Iran testing Obama and Obama failing the test.
“This is another example of provocative action on the part of the Iranian government, followed by appeasement on the part of the United States,” said Bolton.
He says the U.S. response will only trigger more trouble.
“Having gotten away with this it would be perfectly logical for them to take it up a notch and try an even more provocative action,” said Bolton.
Bolton fears Iran won’t be the only one to learn that lesson.
“Our enemies don’t know who’s going to win the November election any better than we do but they know one thing for sure. They’ve got Barack Obama in office for another year and whatever steps they want to take to advance their agenda against the United States, this is the time to do it,” said Bolton.
“I’m very worried over the course of the next year that we’re going to have a series of provocations in diverse parts of the world that the administration’s simply not going to be able to handle,” said Bolton, who noted terrorist attacks in Turkey, Iraq and Indonesia just the past few days.
Bolton also rejected some of the key points from Obama’s speech Tuesday night, starting with the president’s attempt to reassure Americans that ISIS is not a threat to the existence of the U.S.
“This is actually a very important insight into what’s wrong with the Obama administration’s foreign policy. It may be the case today that ISIS is not an existential threat to the United States. Although I might note it’s an existential threat to the people that ISIS terrorists have killed,” said Bolton.
“While it may not be the country as a whole that’s at risk, my minimum standard is this: no American should be killed by terrorists and that should be the president’s standard as well,” said Bolton.
Bolton says Obama simply doesn’t understand the job of a commander-in-chief.
“The job of the president is not simply to get up every morning and look around the world and say, ‘Well, they’re not an existential threat today.’ Real statesmen look five or ten years out or even further into the future and say, ‘What incipient problems around the world today can threaten us down the road and what are we going to do today to keep those problems from metastasizing,'” said Bolton.
