Former national security adviser and U.N. Ambassador John Bolton told Newsmax on Wednesday the U.S. cannot afford to take a reactionary position toward Iran, which has used proxies in Iraq and Syria to strike at U.S. military targets stationed there.
Iranian-backed Hamas also was responsible for an Oct. 7 terrorist attack in Israel, and Iranian-backed Hezbollah has been firing rockets into Israel from Lebanon. Also, Iranian-backed Houthi rebels have been sending drones and rockets at commercial vessels in the Red Sea that U.S. naval vessels there have intercepted.
"There are two ways to make sure that Iran goes back in its box and things don't get worse in the region," Bolton told "American Agenda." "One is to beg them not to do more, which is basically what the White House strategy is. The other is to establish conditions of deterrence to make it clear to Iran and all these terrorist proxies that whatever pain they think they can impose on Israel, on us, on our other allies in the region, they will be faced with a lot more pain in return.
"Their conclusion ought to be that they are much better off not initiating anything else, but if we don't make them feel pain, they will not see any consequences for the terrorist actions that they've been going on now for three months, and it will get worse."
Iran also reportedly has accelerated its enrichment of uranium in pursuit of a nuclear weapon. It has reached 60% purity of uranium enrichment, with 90% the standard for weapons-grade use.
Bolton agreed with former U.S. Sen. and 2000 Democrat vice presidential nominee Joe Lieberman, who told Newsmax on Tuesday that the time to hit Iran is now.
"If the Iranians don't understand that they will be held responsible for the acts of their proxies, whom they basically consider expendable, if the ayatollahs don't see pain in their own countries, see their own assets being put under threat, they're not going to step back," Bolton said. "What Sen. Lieberman was really saying is, if you want to avoid a wider war in the region, the time to act is now, not later when it gets worse.
"If this is the way Iran behaves now, imagine how they will behave once they get nuclear weapons, which is the direction that they're headed in. I don't think there's a lot of time to waste.
"I'm very worried about this, but particularly when it comes to American casualties. … American officers have been quoted anonymously in the media, saying the only reason we haven't had a real mass-casualty event as a result of these attacks is luck, and I think that's rolling the dice with the lives of American people in Iraq and Syria. I think it's irresponsible of the White House to behave that way."
Former President Donald Trump, under whom Bolton served as national security adviser, ordered the U.S. to take out Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force. Soleimani was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Iraq on Jan. 3, 2020.
"It could be that, it could be a lot of different things regarding Quds Force headquarters, anti-aircraft positions, the Iranian Navy in the Gulf, in the Red Sea," Bolton said. "There are a lot of targets, and Iran needs to know that."
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