Iran

Trump’s Dizzying DACA Move, Soft on Iran Sanctions, White House vs. ESPN

September 14, 2017 by GregC

Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America react to President Trump making a deal with Democratic leaders to enact DACA into law in exchange for “massive border security” that has yet to be defined. They also sigh as the Trump administration continues sanctions relief for Iran in conjunction with the nuclear deal it still hasn’t scrapped. And they slam the White House for suggesting ESPN anchor Jemele Hill ought to fired for tweeting that Trump is a white supremacist while also blasting Hill and ESPN for their aggressively extreme politics.

McInerney Sizes up War 16 Years After 9/11

September 12, 2017 by GregC

On Monday, Americans observed a solemn remembrance of the lives lost in the horrific terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, but retired U.S. Air Force Lt. General Tom McInerney says victory will be tough to achieve unless the U.S. gets serious about specifically identifying the enemy as radical Islam and getting Muslim leaders to publicly condemn the perpetrators.

“We still have not identified the threat’s ideology, that is radical Islam. Until you do that, you can’t defeat the threat,” said McInerney, who rose to the number three position in the U.S. Air Force and also served as vice commander of U.S. Air Forces Europe.

He says President Trump did identity the ideology correctly on the campaign trail but has not been nearly as bold since taking office.

“We do not use the term ‘radical Islam’ very much in this administration. I’m a little disappointed in the Trump administration because the president was using it quite a bit and then has since restricted his use of the term,” said McInerney.

Another reason he can’t call the war a success is the volatile state of the entire Middle East.

“Now you have the Middle East. It’s the most unstable it has ever been in its history, so that’s why I’m not giving us high marks for being successful,” said McInerney.

Another major priority after 9/11 was the state of American intelligence capabilities. Here again, McInerney sees disappointment compared to what was possible.

“They haven’t identified these threats. They haven’t articulated the issues. Our special ops are good at getting high-value targets, so our intelligence people are doing a good job with all of our censors, etc. But we haven’t bundled it in the proper way, so our leaders can properly express the threat and the ideology I talked about earlier,” said McInerney.

So how can the U.S. prosecution of the war become more effective? McInerney says it all starts with prominent Muslims clearly and frequently denouncing terrorism.

“The only people that can really defeat radical Islam are the Muslims themselves. So we need fatwas out of Mecca and Medina. We need Arab leadership to declare those radical Islamists to be unholy warriors and that they will forever live in damnation for attacking the West,” said McInerney.

McInerney says critical mistakes from both George W. Bush and Barack Obama made the fight more difficult. He says Bush’s decision, through Amb. L. Paul Bremer, to disband the Iraqi army after toppling Saddam Hussein was a major error that only teed up experienced fighters to be part of the subsequent insurgency.

He says Obama’s decision to withdraw all U.S. forces in 2011 then created the vacuum that fostered the rise of ISIS.

McInerney says to pursue stability now requires a concerted confrontation of Iran.

“We cannot have the mullahs running wild over there. They’re developing ICBM’s and nuclear weapons covertly. We cannot accept that,” said McInerney.

He calls the Iran nuclear deal another major mistake by the Obama administration and says extensive collaboration with allies in the region will be need to to neutralize Iran.

“We need to take care of Iran, because they are the most destabilizing group in the Middle East. They are driving a lot of this (radical Islam-inspired terrorism),” said McInerney.

McInerney also asserts that 2016 campaign tactics are hampering our ability to work with Russia, which is a key player in any effort to stabilize the region.

“The Russian collusion was always a deceptive move by the Democratic Party to shield the wrongdoings that the Democrats under Obama did, with the unmasking, with a whole host of other things – Hillary Clinton’s emails, which was a violation of the Espionage Act,” said McInerney.

So now our relationship with Russia is tense. If we’re going to solve the problems over there, we need to be working with the Russians. All those things coupled together can bring the stability we need, but we must replace the current Iranian regime,” said McInerney.

Since 9/11, terrorist attacks in the West feature fewer grand, sweeping plots and many are carried out by individuals or small cells. McInerney says our intelligence efforts should be able to sniff out these plots much better because we know where to look for the potential terrorists.

“When you look at the incidents we’ve had in Europe and the United States, it always goes back to the mosques. We have not taken the appropriate actions to infiltrate them and to get rid of the bad ones,” said McInerney.

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Trump’s ‘Unfortunate Decision’ on Iran

July 21, 2017 by GregC

President Trump made an “unfortunate mistake” by re-certifying the Iran nuclear deal on Wednesday and he was pushed into a decision he didn’t want to make through the power of an entrenched government bureaucracy, according to former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton.

On Monday, after almost an hour of animated debate with his national security team, President Trump reluctantly declared that Iran is complying with the terms with the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, hammered out by the Obama admnistration, Iran, and five other nations.

“It was an unfortunate decision for the administration to issue this certification,” said Bolton. “I think the president was blindsided by the bureaucracy.”

Bolton, who served in the State Department during the first term of the George W. Bush administration, says the foreign policy bureaucracy is a powerful force in Washington.

“It was the bureaucracy on autopilot from the Obama administration. If you don’t tell them to change direction, they just keep doing what they were doing before,” said Bolton.

But it’s not just Obama holdovers pushing the status quo. Reports confirm that Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford all pleaded with Trump to re-certify the agreement.

Bolton says the bureaucracy has a way of winning over new cabinet members to embrace existing policy.

“The bureaucracies have a way of capturing the appointees. Some of those (Trump officials) are still in the bureaucracy or never really left it. It’s an art form. People who know Washington, particularly who have watched the State Department seduce political appointees, especially Republicans and they make reasonable-sounding arguments that are simply justifications for continuing the prior policy,” said Bolton.

The Iran deal has now been re-certified twice in the first six months of the Trump administration. Each time, the official recognition of Iranian compliance has been accompanied by a Trump administration denunciation of Iran’s human rights record and sponsoring of terrorism.

Bolton says the disconnect is jarring.

“It’s a committee camel that came out and it reflects the confusion that happens when you don’t give the president options and when you don’t allow time for a full debate. Those mistakes will not be made again,” said Bolton, who firmly believes Trump will not certify the agreement again.

Those who applauded the decision to re-certify say abrogating the deal would create a great deal of chaos, particularly with our allies who were part of the negotiations with Iran.

Bolton doesn’t think that should be a deterrent from doing the right thing.

“If the allies are going to be upset by something, what you do is a vigorous diplomatic campaign to explain why we think the deal was a mistake, indeed why they made the same mistake we did, and why we’ve got to correct it before it’s too late,” said Bolton.

“The consequences of a bad deal are a regime of religious fanatics in Iran getting nuclear weapons,” said Bolton.

Bolton says the problems with the JCPOA are legion, starting with the painfully unclear language that he says Iran can manipulate and insist it is meeting its obligations.

“Many provisions of the deal are so badly worded, they’re so ambiguous, that a reasonable person could say, ‘The Iranians came right up to the line of their interpretation of the deal and they didn’t cross it so it’s hard to say it’s really a violation.’ That’s the argument,” said Bolton.

“That argument fails for several reasons. First off, the fact that the agreement is badly worded is one more reason to junk it. It shows just how poorly our negotiators, including Secretary of State John Kerry, did. It shows the leeway that it affords Iran. And it shows the way forward. They’re going to press the ambiguities right to the outer limit,” said Bolton.

And he expects Iran to eventually blow right past those limits.

“If they can hide what they’re doing, they’re going to press beyond the outer limits and make it impossible to enforce the deal strictly. That’s part of the problem. The deal is so bad that trying to enforce it strictly is like trying to nail jello to the wall,” said Bolton, while also nothing the deal offers no inspections of Iranian nuclear sites and has no binding provisions concerning ballistic missile development.

Bolton says the bottom line is that nothing has changed as a result of this agreement.

“Iran has never abandoned its policy to get deliverable nuclear weapons. It’s exploiting this deal. It’s made temporary, easily-reversible concessions. It’s cooperating with North Korea, which is getting ever closer to its own deliverable nuclear weapons capability,” said Bolton.

“We’re living in a delusion if we think this deal is slowing Iran down,” he added.

So what is the right U.S. posture? Bolton says the U.S. bring back economic sanctions immediately and be prepared to do whatever needs to be done to prevent Iran from being able to deploy nukes.

“To be realistic, if we don’t want Iran to have deliverable nuclear weapons, if that’s really what we believe, we and Israel have to look at a military option,” said Bolton.

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ISIS Defeat Spawns New Threats

July 10, 2017 by GregC

The U.S. and other coalition partners are celebrating the defeat of ISIS in Mosul, but a prominent national security expert says the victory is actually jump starting the most dangerous part of the ISIS strategy and paving the way for Iranian domination of Iraq.

“The global Coalition fighting ISIS congratulates Prime Minister al-Abadi and the Iraqi Security Forces on their historic victory against a brutal and evil enemy,” stated Lt. Gen. Stephen J. Townsend, commanding general of Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve.

“Make no mistake; this victory alone does not eliminate ISIS and there is still a tough fight ahead. But the loss of one of its twin capitals and a jewel of their so-called caliphate is a decisive blow,” he added.

On Monday, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi went to Mosul to declare victory in the eight-month-long battle to take back Iraq’s second-largest city from the Sunni radicals. The win comes just three years after Iraqi forces humiliated themselves by throwing down their weapons and taking off their uniforms as ISIS advanced.

Retired U.S. Navy Captain Chuck Nash says U.S. involvement played a key role.

“The United States has been back in there. We’ve been training. I know some of the special forces people who have been over there and did a fantastic job. Now they’ve got some good, solid leadership in the junior officer and middle ranks and they’re still working on some of the senior ranks,” said Nash.

But as ISIS rapidly loses control of territory in Iraq and Syria, including control of the supposed capital of the caliphate, Nash says the West is about to see the evolution of the group that presents the most danger to us.

“It’s a big deal. That’s going to hurt their recruiting efforts somewhat, but what they’re doing is going into ISIS phase three,” said Nash.

He says the first phase was to build up up troops from the former Al Qaeda in Iraq into a large fighting force and the second phase was to expand the territory of the caliphate. Now that those gains are being quickly rolled back, Nash suspects we’ll see more of the latest strategy from ISIS.

“Phase three is, ‘What happens when we lose that ground? How do we reinvent ourselves?’ What’s happening is they’re sending hundreds of these foreign fighters back to their countries of origin and the countries of origin are taking them in. So they’re going to metastasize this,” said Nash.

As horrific as the ISIS control over parts of Iraq and Syria have been, Nash says we knew where to find them and kill them. He says this dispersion strategy makes the job of free societies a lot harder.

“At one point, it was a cancer but it was a tumor, it was observable. We could see it growing, but it was localized. Now as they lose and they go into phase three, that cancer is going to metastasize,” said Nash.

He says the means Islamic radicals are going back to their home counties and the leaders of those countries are rolling out the red carpet.

“Now they’re going to be among us and what are they going to do? The whole vehicle into crowds, the knifing attacks and all that, and it won’t take long until the bombs start going off either. This is a very dangerous phase, which is why these governments are near suicidal by allowing these people back into the countries,” said Nash.

Back in Iraq, it’s not just better trained Iraqi soldiers who are defeating ISIS. He says the best fighters are actually a combination of Iranian Quds forces and various Shia militias from the southern part of Iraq.

Nash says Iran and it’s satellites are not just fighting to uproot ISIS, but because Tehran has visions of dominating the region.

“The Iranians are looking to connect the Persian Iran, the Shia Iran, through Shia Iraq, through and into Syria and Lebanon where they have Hezbollah. They’re looking at what’s been termed the Shia crescent, that now covers an arc spanning from the east in Iran all the way westward to the Mediterranean,” said Nash.

Given the Shia domination of Iraq’s government, Nash suspects there will be little resistance in Baghdad to doing Iran’s bidding.

“When we deposed Saddam Hussein, that opened the door for the Iranians and now the Shia population vastly outnumbers the Kurds and the Sunnis. So it is a Shia country and it is a Shi’ite government and it is aligned with Iran,” said Nash.

However, Nash believes that Iraq can be convinced to take a different course, premised on the boundless economic potential of remaining fiercely independent.

On a trip to Iraq shortly after Hussein was deposed, Nash and others received a briefing on the economic possibilities resulting from Iraq’s location at the fertile crescent and their vast oil reserves.

“The reason is because of Mesopotamia. [The briefing officer] said, ‘This is the richest soil, the rainfall and the water from the Tigris and the Euphrates could be the breadbasket of southwest Asia and the Middle East. Add in oil, and all of a sudden you have a monster of an economy,” said Nash.

Nash says there’s an obvious foot in the door for the President Trump and our allies by showing a willingness to partner with Iraq in rebuilding Mosul and other cities devastated by ISIS.

“He needs to engage the Iraqi government and let them know when they come out of this that the United States is willing to trade and continue to work with Iraq to help them re-establish,” said Nash.

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Scope of Iranian Missile Program Exposed

June 21, 2017 by GregC

Iranian ballistic missile tests are seen as blatant evidence that the regime there continues to pursue nuclear weapons and the Iranian resistance is now detailing the scope and aggressiveness of the missile program.

On Tuesday, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, or NCRI, unveiled new evidence to explain that far from Iran ratcheting down it’s threat to the Middle East and the world, it has been accelerating its effort ever since it became clear the West was committed to making a deal back in 2015.

“Tehran had decided (before the the nuclear deal was finalized) to step up their efforts on the missile side of their rogue behavior, namely expanding both the production of the missiles but their readiness to deploy them and make them operational,” said Alireza Jafarzadeh, deputy director of the NCRI’s U.S. office.

Jafarzadeh says the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, is taking a bigger role in the missile program through the Aerospace Force.

“It used to be called the Air Force of the IRGC, basically having helicopters control airports and all of that. Since a few years ago, they changed the whole structure into Aerospace Force, meaning the dominance is with the missile program. Most of their work is the expansion of the missile program,” said Jafarzadeh.

The new report, gathered through intelligence sources in Iran who are hostile to the regime, shows a vast network of facilities working on the missile program.

“We managed to identify, so far, 42 different locations around the country that are dedicated to their missile program, and they include sites that are engaged in the design, production, testing, and launching their missiles,” said Jafarzadeh.

The 2015 Iran nuclear deal did not force Iran to make any concessions with respect to ballistic missiles, but Jafarzadeh says the current efforts do violate United Nations Security Council resolutions against Iran missile development.

He also asserts that the revelations expose violations of the nuclear deal since many of the ballistic missiles only serve one purpose – to carry nuclear warheads.

“One of the troubling things we found out during our investigation was that there was a direct connection between the nuclear weapons program of Iran and their missile program. These are not two separate entities,” said Jafarzadeh.

Jafarzadeh says one of the bases on the list, Semnan, is a smoking gun of collaboration between the nuclear weapons program and the advancement of missile capability. He says the agency tasked with weaponizing nukes, STND, is joined at the hip with the missile program at Semnan.

“We found out that every week there is a high-level delegation from STND going from Tehran to Semnan, doing some activities and coming back. So that’s a very troubling thing,” he said.

He also says the new intelligence sheds even more light on just how cozy Iran is with North Korea.

“The other element we found out was the extensive connection and collaboration between North Korea and Iran on their missile programs, to the extent that North Korean experts, when they travel to Iran to help the missile program, they stay at the private residence area that the regime has allocated for the North Koreans. They don’t check into some hotel,” said Jafarzadeh.

“Vice versa, the Iranian missile experts travel to North Korea and spend time and exchange ideas and views and expertise,” he added.

The locations of these missile bases are also very suspicious, according to Jafarzadeh.

“Most of the sites focusing on production were in the central part of the country near Tehran. All the sites related to launching and operations were either on the western border of the country, which brings them closer to their targets in Europe and the western side of the world, or the southern part of the country near the Persian Gulf,” said Jafarzadeh.

“That makes the Iran regime much more accessible to the Persian Gulf countries, making very clear the objective of their entire missile program. It’s not for defensive purposes. This is meant to intimidate. This is meant to dominate,” he said.

“And most importantly, on top of all of these things, it is meant to give the Iranian regime the ability to build the bomb and to be able to carry it. That is to say building a nuclear warhead. That is their ultimate objective,” said Jafarzadeh.

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Comey Won’t Allege Obstruction, Gripe Sessions, ISIS vs Iran

June 7, 2017 by GregC

Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America start the day reacting to reports that former FBI director James Comey will not accuse President Trump of trying to obstruct justice. They also sigh as tensions mount between President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions after Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation. And they are a bit surprised to see ISIS attacking Iran, but also see some benefit in two detestable entities focused on each other rather than targets in the West.

The Iranian Terrorism Funding Machine

May 8, 2017 by GregC

The Iranian exile group that recently unveiled evidence of Iran violating the terms of the nuclear agreement is now detailing how the regime is allegedly fleecing its own people to fund the military and bankroll Hezbollah.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran, or NCRI, is responsible for exposing Iranian nuclear ambitions some 15 years ago. Now the group is releasing, “Iran: The Rise of the Revolutionary Guards’ Financial Empire.” An additional subhead reads, “How the Supreme Leader and the IRGC Rob the People to Fund International Terror.”

The book maintains that despite appearances of an active private sector, the regime and its elite military wing, the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, really have a stranglehold on economy. The regime touts an emphasis on privitization, but that means something very different in Iran.

“Back in 2005, the supreme leader basically brought this nice looking plan called privitization, turning everything to the private sector,” said Alireza Jafarzadeh, deputy director of the NCRI’s Washington office.

“In fact, that was really a restructuring of the Iranian economy to give the ownership of a wide range of industries and institutions to those either associated directly with the supreme leader or with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards,” said Jafarzadeh.

He says there was nothing fair about this embrace of “privitization.”

“The government, based on the constitution, has the right to seize and confiscate property if that property is obtained through what they call illegitimate means. ‘Illegitimate means’ is something they can define any way they want to,” said Jafarzadeh.

In essence, most of the Iran economy is in the hands of just over a dozen government cronies.

“We’re talking about 14 major powerhouses that are controlling the entire economy. All of these 14 are either entirely controlled by the supreme leader or by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards,” said Jafarzadeh, who says just one of these entities is sitting on about $90 billion and together the 14 are rolling in hundreds of billions of dollars.

All major sectors of the economy are involved.

“We’re talking about large mines, primary industries including downstream oil and gas industry, power generation, foreign commerce, banks, insurance, roads, railroads, airlines, shipping companies, food companies, agriculture, you name it,” said Jafarzadeh.

Jafarzadeh says the Iranian people are struggling more than ever to get by, so where is this money going? He says it’s not hard to figure it out, it’s going to the military, meaning the buildup of the nuclear program.

“The official budget is anywhere from 30-35 percentof the budget is allocated to what they call defense-related issues. On top of all of that, the money they make from running the economy is directly funneled to these programs, including the nuclear weapons program,” said Jafarzadeh.

But that’s not the only places the money goes. Jafarzadeh says a lot of money also goes to foundations with troubling ties.

“It’s supposed to be a religious foundation to help the poor, but it has turned into a foundation that actually funds terror in Lebanon. Another foundation…sends a lot of money to Lebanon to support Hezbollah there,” said Jafarzadeh.

While Jafarzadeh believes the evidence of Iran commandeering the economy through a private facade to build nukes and fund terror is strong enough to take to the United Nations, he says there is something even more effective that the U.S. State Department could do by itself.

“By designation the IRGC as a terrorist organization, they can close all of these loopholes. It would make it illegal for any U.S. person or U.S. entity to deal with any of these institutions run by the IRGC or associated with them,” said Jafarzadeh.

“It would make life a lot more difficult for the IRGC to transfer funds and to all kinds of things they’re doing in the region,” said Jafarzadeh.

Jafarzadeh says the dire straits of the people is also on the brink of boiling over as they watch their government hoarding resources rather than developing ways to help the people.

“Over the past year, we had over 6,000 anti-government demonstrations and protest acts, a lot of them economically driven to begin with but they quickly turned into political slogans by the people who hold the rulers as big thieves who are plundering their resources,” said Jafarzadeh.

“If people thought that things were volatile in 2009, it’s even more volatile now and there is certainly great prospects for change,” he added.

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Iran Caught Cheating on Nukes

April 25, 2017 by GregC

Despite U.S. government conclusions to the contrary, Iran is cheating on the 2015 nuclear deal and is actively weaponizing nuclear weapons, according to the group who uncovered Iran’s most recent nuclear ambitions in the first place.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran, or NCRI, unveiled intelligence and satellite imagery in recent days that is says it proof of Iranian actions that violate the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA. It also alleges that the activity is taking place in areas and facilities that are off limits to regular inspections from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The NCRI is very confident in the validity of its reports.

“These are the very same sources that have been proven accurate in the past. The network of the movement inside Iran, the MEK, was responsible for exposing the Natanz uranium enrichment facility and the Arak heavy water facility back in August of 2002,” said Alireza Jafarzadeh, deputy director of the NCRI’s Washington office.

Those revelations triggered the international response that has played out for the past 15 years. He says the group’s sources inside Iran have also made many other discoveries that have panned out over the years. And Jafarzadeh says outside experts back up those conclusions.

“Those that have seen the satellite imagery that we disclosed during our press conference have confirmed that the satellite imagery shows the construction, the way the buildings are configured, basically corroborates what we’re saying, that this facility is being used for nuclear weaponization,” said Jafarzadeh.

He says further proof that the intelligence is right can seen in the official Iranian response.

“None of them denied our claim outright. Instead, they started attacking us, saying how bad we are and why the United States should not listen to us, without addressing the particular revelation we made. They made no reference to it, nor did they invite the IAEA to come and visit,” said Jafarzadeh.

Jafarzadeh says the specific facility shown in the satellite photos depicts a location specializing in detonators. Much of the secret activity is believed to be going on at Iran’s Parchin facility, a spot that Jafarzadeh says Iran blocked inspectors from for years until finally relenting two years ago. He says it makes sense for Iran to do clandestine work there.

“They thought they closed the chapter on Parchin. Now with this new information and new evidence, there is a renewed call among nuclear experts that the IAEA should be able to go back to this place among other locations that the IAEA has never inspected,” said Jafarzadeh.

He also outlined what the process ought to include.

“The IAEA now has to have access to all of those buildings, to be able to interview their top nuclear scientists, including Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who has been the top person behind the whole program over the past 15-20 years,” said Jafarzadeh.

So why hasn’t Parchin been part of regular inspections since the JCPOA was enacted in 2015? Jafarzadeh says the Iranians successfully limited inspections to “declared sites.”

“I’m not very comfortable with the term “declared site” because these are not really sites declared by Iran. It was exposed by us and then Tehran said, ‘Oh yes, we have those sites,'” said Jafarzadeh.

“[The IAEA] basically keeps track of how many centrifuges they have, how much uranium hexafluoride was produced. They have a checklist they go through, and of course Tehran is very shrewd and they know this is not the place they need to cheat,” said Jafarzadeh, noting the violations happen at facilities the IAEA cannot access or does not know about.

Jafarzadeh says the actions of the West over the past 4-5 years have clearly emboldened the likes of Iran and he notes there are close ties between the two nuclear programs.

“There is a very, very close relationship between North Korea that is helping Iran, not just on their missile program but specifically on their nuclear weapons program,” said Jafarzadeh. “It’s a very scary situation.”

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Trump & the VA, Obama’s Iran Lie, Latest Flynn Fallout

April 25, 2017 by GregC

Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America are encouraged to see President Trump taking steps to make it easier for the Department of Veterans Affairs to fire bad employees. They’re also furious, but not surprised, to learn that President Obama actually did release prisoners connected to terrorism against U.S. forces despite insisting he hadn’t done so. And they react to the breaking news that former National Security Adviser Gen. Michael Flynn accepted money from Russia in 2015 but allegedly failed to report it.

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‘The Obama Era in American Foreign Policy Is Over’

April 7, 2017 by GregC

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton is praising President Trump for ordering a missile strike against a key Syrian airfield in response to Syria’s latest use of chemical weapons against it’s own people, and Bolton says it tells the rest of the world that this administration sees the world much differently than the last one.

“The Obama era in American foreign policy is over and there’s a president in the White House with a very different worldview,” said Bolton, pointing to Obama’s repeated threats of military action in response to using chemical weapons.

He says the Syrians, Russians, and Iranians clearly didn’t expect Trump to act so decisively.

“I think they’re so stunned that Trump acted, given the performance of Obama over the years, saying that that he would view even the movement of chemical weapons as a red line and not enforcing it,” said Bolton.

On Thursday, Trump green-lighted the launch of 59 Tomahawk Cruise Missiles from American ships in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. The missiles targeted Shayrat Air Base, the installation from which the latest chemical weapons attacks were launched.

Reaction has not fallen along traditional lines. Mainstream Republicans and many liberals are hailing the decision, while some of Trump’s most ardent supporters during the campaign were very critical.

Bolton believes it was the right call.

“Anytime you have an authoritarian regime like this that joins a treaty like the Chemical Weapons Convention, says it will give up these weapons of mass destruction and lies about it and uses the weapons, that is a direct threat to the national security of the United States,” said Bolton.

He is also hopeful that other bad actors around the world will act differently when they see the consequences of Syria’s behavior.

“It’s important around the world that people know that we’re simply not going to tolerate countries entering these treaties and then violating them by using weapons against innocent civilians. I think it’ll have an impact well beyond Syria. I think North Korea and Iran, in particular, should draw a lesson from this. I think China and Russia should as well,” said Bolton.

But is this an isolated strike or the start to a more entangled involvement in the region once again? Bolton says Trump’s actions are unlikely to trigger a slippery slope of U.S. engagement. He also says the region is about to look a bit differently and the U.S. must be positioned well.

“We’re going to defeat ISIS, hopefully in a short period of time, maybe by the end of the year. We need to think ahead to what the Middle East is going to look like post-ISIS and I certainly hope it does not include a Russian airbase at Latakia in Syria, which the Obama administration allowed them to have,” said Bolton.

Bolton says this episode should make it clear that assertions of Trump being a Vladimir Putin stooge were grossly unfounded.

“I think this is very interesting commentary for all those in Washington that basically argued that Trump was a Manchurian candidate with his strings pulled by Moscow. That’s not quite the way this has worked out,” said Bolton.

The timing of the strike played out in response to Syria’s use of chemical weapons, but Bolton says launching the mission while the Chinese president is in the U.S. sends a direct message about North Korea as well.

“It was more than an amazing coincidence that President Xi Xinping of China was in Mar-A-Lago with President Trump when he decided on the airstrike against Syria, certainly people have looked at that possibility with respect to North Korea,” said Bolton.

He says there is great urgency for Trump and Xi to act on North Korea as the communist nation’s nuclear program and missile system continue to advance.

“They’re so far advanced toward putting a nuclear device on an intercontinental ballistic missile and hitting targets on the west coast of the United States in the very near future. Some people have estimated that to mean next year,” said Bolton.

Bolton believes the common ground for Trump and Xi would be for the two Koreas to be united again and erase the nuclear menace.

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