The Room Where It Happened

by John Bolton;

  Mention of Iran was desultory. Merkel asked us to stay in the deal, and Trump reacted with indifference. At the press event, Trump said of Iran, “They will not be doing nuclear weapons,” and that was pretty much it. Possibly more eventful was yet another putative Israeli attack on Iranian positions in Syria the day after,13 which Mattis and others at the Pentagon worried could prompt Iranian retaliation (probably through surrogate Shia militia groups in Iraq) on US forces. None happened, and in any event Trump seemed unconcerned. Briefing Netanyahu on his Iran thinking, Trump said that the whole deal was based on lies, Iran had played the United States for fools, and that Israel should feel free to flay the deal publicly, which of course Netanyahu was already busily doing.

  As the days went by, I quietly confirmed with Mnuchin, Haley, Coats, Haspel and others that everything pointed to an early May withdrawal from the Iran deal, and that we all needed to think of the decision’s appropriate rollout and follow-up steps in our respective areas. Mnuchin insisted he needed six months to get the sanctions back in place, which I couldn’t understand. Why not make the reimposed sanctions effective immediately, with some short grace period, say three months, to allow businesses to adjust existing contracts and the like? This was a perennial problem with Treasury under Mnuchin. He seemed as concerned with mitigating the impact of sanctions as with imposing them to begin with. No wonder Iran, North Korea, and others were so good at evading sanctions: they had plenty of time to get ready under Mnuchin’s approach (which was, in essence, the same as Obama’s). Pompeo agreed with me that the sanctions should take immediate effect. We did score a small victory when Mnuchin reduced the “wind-down” period on most goods and services from 180 days to 90 days, except for oil and insurance, which he kept at 180 days. Of course, oil was the overwhelmingly most important economic issue at stake, so Mnuchin’s retreat was hardly significant. And we were not talking just about “winding down” existing contracts, but a grace period within which new contracts could be entered and performed with no prohibition at all. It was unnecessarily self-defeating.

  Pompeo, Mattis, and I had our first weekly breakfast at the Pentagon on May 2 at six a.m., and Mattis continued to make his case against withdrawing. It was clear that Trump had made up his mind. Throughout the rest of the day and the week, and over the weekend, preparations intensified for the withdrawal announcement, particularly drafting the official presidential decision document, to make sure there were no loopholes that supporters could crawl back through. Stephen Miller and his speechwriters were also working away on Trump’s speech, which was progressing well. Trump had plenty to add, so the drafting went right until the text had to be prepared for the teleprompters. Although I had aimed for Trump’s announcement to be on May 7, Sanders told me that the First Lady had an event scheduled that day, so we moved the withdrawal to May 8. Thus are weighty matters of state disposed. And, in fact, even there Trump wavered, wondering about one date or another, literally until almost the last minute.

  There was a final, perfunctory Trump-May phone call on Iran and other issues on Saturday, May 5,14 and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson arrived in Washington Sunday night for further discussions. That night as well, Mattis sent me a classified document at home again opposing the withdrawal, but still not requesting a high-level meeting to discuss it. I felt like saying that his position was well preserved and well papered for history, but I refrained. The Pentagon still wasn’t telling us what it would have to do operationally if the US withdrew, having moved from overt opposition into guerilla warfare. It didn’t slow us down.

  I saw Johnson in my office at nine a.m. Monday, having first met him in London in 2017, discussing Iran and North Korea at length. We reviewed Trump’s recent meetings with Macron and Merkel, and Macron’s “four pillars” idea; Johnson said they had been thinking along the same lines. I said I would be happy to call the idea “Johnson’s four pillars,” and we all laughingly agreed. He, like Macron, stressed that Britain fully understood the existing deal’s weaknesses, which would have surprised many supporters who still worshipped at its altar.15 I explained why the announcement would be coming soon, although, knowing Trump, I did not say it would be the next day. We would not then simply lapse into inaction but would bring back into force all the nuclear-related US sanctions the deal had put on ice. As we parted, I reminded Johnson that I had said to him the previous summer that I wanted to help out on Brexit, and still did, although we had had little chance to talk about it. I spoke later with Sedwill about this conversation and was later on the phone with Étienne when he exclaimed that Trump had just tweeted:

  I will be announcing my decision on the Iran Deal tomorrow from the White House at 2:00pm.

  No suspense left there. Étienne had been watching Trump’s tweets more carefully than I! There was little doubt what was coming, which I confirmed to Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer and a few others, not that anyone needed much explanation.

  On D-day itself, Trump called China’s Xi Jinping at eight thirty a.m. on several issues, including North Korea. Trump said he would be making a statement on Iran shortly and asked, in an almost childlike way, if Xi wanted to know what he would say. Xi said it sounded like Trump wanted to tell him, a completely on-target insight. Trump, in a “why not?” moment, said that, feeling trust in confiding in Xi, he was terminating the nuclear deal, which was bad, and that we would see what happened. Xi said he would keep the news confidential, adding simply that the US knew China’s position, meaning Xi did not plan to make it a major bilateral issue. Macron called and asked what Trump planned to say on Iran, but Trump wanted to be sure Macron would be circumspect. He admonished Macron not to make it public, asking for Macron’s word. Macron replied affirmatively, believing that Iran should not leave the deal, nor would France as they worked to achieve a comprehensive new deal, as the two leaders had discussed previously. Trump didn’t think Iran would exit, because they were making too much money. Trump mused that at some point he should meet with Iranian President Rouhani, flattering Macron as the best of the Europeans, and that he should tell Rouhani Trump was right.

  Trump delivered the speech at about two fifteen p.m., which went according to script, with Pence, Mnuchin, Ivanka, Sanders, and myself in attendance. Afterward, we all walked back to the Oval Office feeling things had gone off as planned and that the speech would be well received. A few minutes after two thirty, I conducted a close encounter with reporters in the White House briefing room, which was on the record but not on camera so that the media pictures would be, appropriately, of the President giving his speech. With that, we were done.

  * * *

  It had taken one month to shred the Iran nuclear deal, showing how easy it was to do once somebody took events in hand. I did my best to prepare our allies Britain, Germany, and France for what happened, because they had seemed completely unready for a possible US withdrawal. A lot remained to be done to bring Iran to its knees, or to overthrow the regime, Trump’s stated policy to the contrary notwithstanding, but we were off to a great start.

  For several months after the withdrawal, work proceeded to follow up on Trump’s decision to reimpose economic sanctions, and to take other steps to increase pressure on Tehran consistent with his decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal. Basically, the initial plan was to bring back into effect all the previous sanctions suspended by Obama’s nuclear deal and then make adjustments to close loopholes, increase enforcement activity, and turn the campaign into “maximum pressure” on Iran.16 By July 26, it was time to hold a restricted Principals Committee meeting to see how we were doing, which we did at two p.m. in the Sit Room. The most interesting part of the meeting was Mattis’s efforts to downplay the overall importance of Iran in the international threat matrix facing the US. He said Russia, China, and North Korea were bigger threats, although his reasons were vague, and I was pleased to see Pompeo and Mnuchin both push back, given that Iran was one of the top four threats identified in the National Security Strategy Trump had approved b
efore my arrival. But the ghost of Mattis’s protestations about taking Iran seriously would dog us right until the end of 2018, when he departed, and beyond. So momentous was this meeting that it leaked to the press and was reported the next day.17 In the meantime, Iran’s currency was dropping through the floor.

  In mid-August 2018, and then again in January 2019, I traveled to Israel to meet with Netanyahu and other key Israeli officials on a range of issues, but especially Iran. This was existential for Israel, and Netanyahu had become the leading strategist on rolling back Iran’s nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile programs. He also clearly understood that regime change was far and away the most likely way to permanently alter Iranian behavior. Even if that was not the Trump Administration’s declared policy, it certainly could happen as the effects of sanctions took hold. Moreover, given the views of the Middle East’s Arab oil-producing states, there was, and had been tacitly for years, agreement on the common threat Iran posed to them and Israel among themselves, albeit for different reasons. This Iran consensus was also contemporaneously making possible a new push to resolve the Israel-Palestine dispute, which strategically could very much benefit America. Whether we could make the most of these new alignments operationally, of course, was very different.

  By early September, attacks on the US embassy in Baghdad and the US consulate in Basra, undoubtedly, in my view, by Shia militia groups acting at Iran’s behest, revealed new tensions within the Administration, as many in State and Defense resisted forceful responses.18 The unwillingness to retaliate, thereby raising the costs to the attackers and hopefully deterring them in the future, reflected the hangover of Obama-era policies. Even twenty months into the Trump presidency, new appointees and new policies were not yet in place. If it were still early 2017, the problem might have been understandable, but it was sheer malpractice that bureaucratic inertia persisted in such critical policy areas. The debate over responding to these sorts of attacks lasted right through my tenure, because of obstructionism and Trump’s impulsive desires to reduce America’s troop presence in the region, leading uniformly in a more passive direction. For all that Trump hated about the Obama Administration, it was no small irony that his own idiosyncratic views simply reinforced the bureaucracy’s existing tendencies, all to the detriment of US interests in the Middle East more broadly.

  I was also troubled by Treasury’s unwillingness to bear down on Iran’s participation in the global financial messaging system known as SWIFT. There was considerable interest among congressional Republicans in stopping Iran’s continued connection to the system, but Mnuchin and Treasury objected. They had understandable concerns, but invariably they pushed for no change in existing policy, the characteristic attribute of bureaucratic inertia. The real answer was to squeeze Iran ever harder and work to find more ways to comprehensively monitor Iran, not to give it a pass simply to continue with monitoring mechanisms that could be replaced and perhaps even improved with a little effort.19 The NSC staff and I kept pushing on this, largely behind the scenes, and succeeded later in the year, but even more difficult obstacles to our Iran policy emerged in the coming year.

  CHAPTER 4 THE SINGAPORE SLING

  Even as we neared withdrawing from the wretched Iran nuclear deal, Trump’s focus on North Korea’s nuclear-weapons program resumed. The more I learned, the more discouraged and pessimistic I became about a Trump-Kim summit. I was deeply skeptical of efforts to negotiate the North out of its nuclear-weapons program,1 which Pyongyang had already sold many times to the US and others in exchange for economic benefits. Despite breaching its commitments repeatedly, North Korea always cajoled a gullible America back to the negotiating table to make more concessions, ceding time to a proliferator, which invariably benefits from delay. Here we were, at it again, having learned nothing. Worse, we were legitimizing Kim Jong Un, commandant of the North Korean prison camp, by giving him a free meeting with Trump. It called to mind Winston Churchill’s dark 1935 observation about Britain’s failed policies toward Germany:

  When the situation was manageable, it was neglected, and now that it is thoroughly out of hand, we apply too late the remedies which then might have effected a cure. There is nothing new in the story. It is as old as the Sibylline books. It falls into that long, dismal catalogue of the fruitlessness of experience, and the confirmed unteachability of mankind. Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong—these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.2

  Having endured eight years of Obama mistakes, which I constantly feared would include dangerous concessions to North Korea, as his Iran policy had, not to mention the Bush 43 Administration’s failed Six-Party Talks and Clinton’s failed Agreed Framework, I was sick at heart over Trump’s zeal to meet with Kim Jong Un. Pompeo told me that Trump’s fascination with meeting Kim dated to the Administration’s outset; clearly the options were very limited.

  On April 12, in the midst of the Syria whirlwind, I met with my South Korean counterpart, Chung Eui-yong, Director of their National Security Office. In March, in the Oval, Chung had extended Kim’s invitation to meet to Trump, who accepted on the spur of the moment. Ironically, Chung later all but admitted that it was he who had suggested to Kim that he make the invitation in the first place!3 This whole diplomatic fandango was South Korea’s creation, relating more to its “unification” agenda than serious strategy on Kim’s part or ours. The South’s understanding of our terms to denuclearize North Korea bore no relationship to fundamental US national interests, from my perspective. It was risky theatrics, in my view, not substance. I urged Chung to avoid discussing denuclearization at the upcoming April 27 North-South summit, to prevent Pyongyang from driving a wedge between South Korea, Japan, and the US, one of its favorite diplomatic strategies. I told Trump that we needed the closest possible coordination with Moon Jae-in to avoid North Korea’s engineering a split between Washington and Seoul. I wanted to preserve US–South Korean alignment, and avoid the headline “Trump rejects South Korea compromise,” but he seemed unconcerned.

  Later in the morning, I met with my Japanese counterpart, Shotaro Yachi, who wanted me to hear their perspective as soon as possible. Tokyo’s view of the looming Trump-Kim meeting was 180 degrees from South Korea’s—in short, pretty much like my own. Yachi said they believed the North’s determination to get nuclear weapons was fixed, and that we were nearing the last chance for a peaceful solution. Japan wanted none of the “action for action” formula that characterized Bush 43’s failed Six-Party Talks.4 “Action for action” sounded reasonable, but it inevitably worked to benefit North Korea (or any proliferator) by front-loading economic benefits to the North but dragging out dismantling the nuclear program into the indefinite future. The marginal benefits to Pyongyang of even modest economic aid (or release from pain, like easing sanctions) was much greater than the marginal benefits to us of the step-by-step elimination of the nuclear program. Kim Jong Un knew this just as well as we did. At that point, Japan wanted dismantlement to begin immediately upon a Trump-Kim agreement and to take no longer than two years. I urged, however, based on the experience in Libya, that dismantlement should take only six to nine months. Yachi only smiled in response, but when Abe met Trump at Mar-a-Lago the following week (see chapter 3), Abe asked for dismantlement to take six to nine months!5 Yachi also stressed North Korea’s abduction of Japanese citizens over many years, a powerfully emotional issue in Japan’s public opinion and a key element in Abe’s successful political career. At Mar-a-Lago and later, Trump committed to pursuing this issue and followed through faithfully in every subsequent encounter with Kim Jong Un.

  Pompeo, the Administration’s initial contact for North Korea as CIA Director, was already negotiating the summit’s venue and date, and the prospect of releasing three American hostages. Kim wanted the meeting in Pyongyang or Panmunjom, both of whi
ch Pompeo and I agreed were nonstarters. Pompeo saw Geneva and Singapore as the two most acceptable choices, but Kim didn’t like to fly. North Korea’s rickety airplanes couldn’t reach either city anyway, and he didn’t want to be too far from Pyongyang. My hope: maybe the whole thing would collapse!

  At Mar-a-Lago, Abe spoke at length about North Korea’s nuclear program, stressing as had Yachi in our earlier meeting in Washington, that we needed a truly effective agreement, unlike the Iran nuclear deal which Trump had so frequently criticized, and which the Obama Administration itself had emphasized was not even signed.6 Of course, Pyongyang was just as capable of lying about a signed as an unsigned document, but it might just trip them up. Abe also urged Japan’s long-standing positions that, in discussing ballistic missiles, we include short- and medium-range missiles (which could hit significant parts of Japan’s home islands) as well as ICBMs (which the North needed to hit the continental United States). Similarly, Japan also wanted to eliminate the North’s biological and chemical weapons, which I agreed should be part of any agreement with Pyongyang.7 Trump asked Abe what he thought of Kim’s recent visit to see Xi Jinping in China, and Abe said it reflected the impact of America’s implicit threat to use military force, and the cutoff, under international sanctions, of much of the oil flow from China. Abe emphasized that the US strike against Syria a few days before had sent a strong signal to North Korea and Russia. Kim Jong Un’s father, Kim Jong Il, had been frightened when Bush 43 included the North in the “Axis of Evil,” and military pressure was the best leverage on Pyongyang. I thought Abe’s convincing presentation would sway Trump, but the impact turned out to be limited. The Japanese had the same sense that Trump needed continual reminders, which explained why Abe conferred so frequently with Trump on North Korea throughout the Administration.