English transcript

Joining us now is John Bolton.

He was President Trump's national security advisor in his first term.

He's also the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Ambassador Bolton, thanks so much for joining us.

As you know, Iran denies there's been any dialogue with the U.S., but what do you make

of these talks between the two countries based on what President Trump is saying?

Well, you know, both Gutter and Oman also deny that they're engaged in any mediation,

so I'm not sure where the talks were.

I think it's pretty clear, though, that the Asian markets overnight took a pretty big

hit.

The Nikkei average in Tokyo was down three and a half percent, so was the Shanghai exchange

average down about three and a half percent.

So it's certainly convenient that there were productive talks going on so that our markets

would come back up in terms of price of stocks and down the price of oil.

I hope that's right.

We'll find out soon enough.

But I think the basic problem remains the regime.

As long as they're there, they now have palpable proof that if they close the Strait of Hormuz,

the world's economy suffers.

So their leverage is significantly up if we allow this to continue and allow the regime

to remain in place.

As you know, Iran has now threatened retaliation against power plants of U.S. allies and to

keep the Strait of Hormuz closed indefinitely, that's what they're promising, if the U.S.

attacked Iran's own power plants.

Do you suspect the Trump administration took those threats seriously?

Well, it's hard to know since the threat to attack Iran's civilian energy capabilities

sort of came out of nowhere with a 48-hour deadline.

I don't know how that decision was actually made.

But the Gulf Arab states have warned us for a long time not to go after certainly Iran's

export capabilities or its oil infrastructure broadly, precisely because they feared retaliatory

attacks on them.

I don't know what produced the Saturday ultimatum from Trump.

I think ultimatums are fine in this case, but there's still plenty of military targets

to go after to achieve the objective of opening the Strait.

If we can't open the Strait through military means, then we're in serious trouble, given

the implication that we've taught the Ayatollahs in Tehran for how they can leverage the Strait

open or closed into the future indefinitely as they choose.

Ambassador, has the U.S. done enough damage to Iran that the president can now simply

walk away and declare victory in your view?

Certainly not as long as the Strait of Hormuz is closed.

But I think what he's done so far, he started out as far back as January calling for regime

change.

If you leave a wounded beast in control in Tehran at this point, they will rebuild the

nuclear capability.

They will rebuild the terrorist infrastructure.

They will strengthen the regime again.

And we're just going to face this.

It's only a matter of time when.

I think that the regime is under enormous pressure.

I hope, I've said from the beginning, we should be working with the opposition, coordinating

with them, assisting them, providing them resources, including weapons.

They are the ones who can help carry out regime change inside Iran based on the destabilization

of the regime that our attacks has caused.

And to give that up now, I think really it says to the regime that they've got the patience

and the resolve, and we do not.

What do you expect is factoring into the urgency right now for all these new talks?

And there's some indication that Egypt and Turkey may be intermediaries between the U.S.

and Iran.

Well, I think Trump is worried about the effect on markets, obviously caused by the closure

of the Strait of Hormuz, which again raises the question, why wasn't this made a priority

earlier in the military action?

It was absolutely correct to go after Iran's air defenses, to go after its ballistic missiles,

which were a big part of their retaliatory capability.

But closing the Strait of Hormuz was obviously part of that capability, and known to everyone,

known to everyone.

So it should have been a priority earlier so that we might not be under this pressure

now.

Ambassador John Bolton, thanks as usual for joining us.

Thank you.