Former US National Security Adviser John Bolton on Sunday blasted President Joe Biden for encouraging Israel not to respond to Iran’s attacks on it.
Speaking to CNN in an interview, Bolton said that Biden was an “embarrassment to the United States.”
Commenting on the attack, in which Iran fired some 300 drones and missiles from its territory towards Israel, Bolton said that “unless Iran sees a powerful response, that risk will continue. 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.”
Bolton asserted that it “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.”
Bolton slammed those in the US who say that diplomacy should be what Israel pursues.
“Well, how well is diplomacy working so far? Hamas this morning again rejected the ceasefire 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.”
He added that “deterrence failed 320 times last night against Israel. If Iran doesn’t feel the pain, I think it’s only got to get worse for Israel.”