The Room Where It Happened

by John Bolton;

  I went to my office and called Pompeo at 7:53 p.m. at his residence. We were both in the same mood. I described the scene in the Oval, lighting Pompeo off on Eisenberg, who had, when Pompeo was Director of the CIA, once blocked some agency action with the same kind of irresponsible, half-baked intercession. Pompeo had never forgiven him. Kupperman, who was in his office right next to mine the entire time, confirmed that Eisenberg didn’t try to speak with him, didn’t try to reach me, and didn’t try to find Cipollone or Mulvaney. He simply rushed into the Oval to tell Trump he was about to kill a hundred fifty Iranians. This was utterly inaccurate, unfiltered, and unconsidered, but just the kind of “fact” that inflamed Trump’s attention, as it had here. No process, period. “This is really dangerous,” said Pompeo as we discussed the day’s errors, most notably throwing away a decision based on a consensus analysis and assessment of the relevant data simply because Eisenberg, at the last minute, without consulting anyone, thought Trump should hear a “fact” that wasn’t a fact at all, one that was completely wrong. As Pompeo put it, “There are times when you just want to say, ‘You people figure it out.’ ”

  After I got off the phone, Kupperman told me Pence had returned to the White House, still expecting a nine p.m. time-on-target attack, and wanted to know what had happened. I went to the VP’s office at about eight o’clock, and we talked for twenty minutes. Pence was as dumbfounded as I was. He agreed to go down the hall to see Trump and find out if there was any way to reverse the decision, but there obviously was not. I left for home about eight forty p.m.

  I had thought about resigning several times before, but this for me was a turning point. If this was how we were going to make crisis decisions, and if these were the decisions being made, what was the point? I had been at the White House slightly over fourteen months. I wasn’t looking for long-distance records.

  On Friday, June 21, with confused media stories rampant,52 Mulvaney said he had spoken with Cipollone and Eisenberg the night before, and that Eisenberg had conceded he had talked to no one before charging into the Oval, asserting there was no time before the go/no go point. Eisenberg also had no explanation why the Defense Department’s “fact” only emerged at the last minute, and, proving how far out of the loop he was, he didn’t know the attack had already been set back an hour. There had been ample time for more considered judgment. Mulvaney concluded from Eisenberg’s muddled answers and Cipollone’s lack of awareness that Eisenberg’s behavior was “unacceptable.” There had been a number of “unacceptable” process fouls on Thursday, Eisenberg’s being the worst.

  I spoke with Pompeo afterward, and we rehashed the worst moments of the prior day. On the chimerical idea of the attack on the UK embassy in Tehran, Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt (whom Pompeo had woken to get the facts) wrote Pompeo an e-mail saying, in Pompeo’s paraphrase, “Always glad to talk to you, but why did you wake me in the middle of the night? Some jackass drives a car into the gate at our embassy? Nothing new in our world!” So much for that fantasy. We spoke again later in the morning, and Pompeo said, reflecting again on Thursday’s events, “I can’t do what he [Trump] wants me to do. It’s massively unfair. I can’t do it. We put our people at risk. And you know what will happen when I see him today for lunch; he’s going to spin me. He’s going to say, ‘Mike, you know this is the right thing to do,’ right?” I asked Pompeo how he planned to handle this spin, which would come not because Trump doubted his decision but because he wanted Pompeo to accept his line. Pompeo responded, “I’ll say, ‘Sir, that’s one view; let me give you my theory. If I were a parent of a child at Asad Air Base, I’d feel more at risk,’ to try to make it personal to him. I’d say, ‘If we leave this unanswered, the risk of a nuclear Iran goes up.’ ” That was all true, but neither of us believed it would sway Trump. He never tried to conform me to this line, perhaps because he didn’t care anymore, or never had.

  Pompeo said he had stayed up until two a.m., so distressed had he been. He felt the Thursday breakfast consensus was firm enough to be the basis for a strike decision. Reversing that decision undercut all our arguments about Iran. He said, “I can give him [Trump] latitude in what he decides he wants, but I can’t figure out how to do what he wants. We can keep telling people we are concerned about Iran’s missile programs, but who will believe us?” There was more, but Pompeo’s comment here actually revealed a significant divergence between us. I was not so prepared to give Trump latitude in what he decided, since so much of it was badly wrong. I urged that we “keep saying what we have been saying.” We had just had the crisis Kelly predicted, and Trump had behaved just as irrationally as he feared. We agreed not to resign without calling each other first, which was the first time that subject had come up. I wouldn’t at all characterize this as a lengthy exchange on the pros and cons of resigning, which it wasn’t, but the subject was obviously hanging in the air.

  Trump had a call set with Mohammed bin Salman, and before making it, he asked my opinion about a statement he was thinking of tweeting. I didn’t object, thinking to myself, “Why not? Things went so badly wrong the day before, how could a few tweets make it worse?” Here they are:

  President Obama made a desperate and terrible deal with Iran – Gave them 150 Billion Dollars plus 1. 8 Billion Dollars in CASH! Iran was in big trouble and he bailed them out. Gave them a free path to Nuclear Weapons, and SOON. Instead of saying thank you, Iran yelled…

  …Death to America. I terminated deal, which was not even ratified by Congress, and imposed strong sanctions. They are a much weakened nation today than at the beginning of my Presidency, when they were causing major problems throughout the Middle East. Now they are Bust!…

  On Monday they shot down an unmanned drone flying in International Waters. We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights when I asked, how many will die. 150 people, sir, was the answer from a General. 10 minutes before the strike I stopped it, not…

  …proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone. I am in no hurry, our Military is rebuilt, new, and ready to go, by far the best in the world. Sanctions are biting & more added last night. Iran can NEVER have Nuclear Weapons, not against the USA, and not against the WORLD

  I suppose I really thought, “If he wants to put something out that foolish, who am I to object?” I believed Trump would own it so totally after those tweets that perhaps people would understand how idiosyncratic the whole thing had been. It was wounding to lay all this out in public, but there was no stopping Trump from revealing himself.

  I called Dunford at eight forty-five to get his version of what had happened. He said he had been up until one in the morning trying to chase down the “casualty” point just in case Trump changed his mind again when he woke Friday morning. Dunford was not happy, saying Trump had basically called him “feckless” during the Sit Room meeting because he thought Dunford’s target options were “too small,” and then later called off the retaliation entirely because it was too large! Good point. On the casualty issue, Dunford said, well after the Sit Room meeting, Pentagon lawyers asked what the potential Iranian casualties might be. Dunford had said, “We don’t know,” which is what he had said in the Sit Room. The lawyers then searched for a table of organization that might lay out the manning pattern for the kinds of targets we had selected and somehow concluded it would be fifty people per battery. “This is all lawyers,” said Dunford, meaning no one with hands-on combat or command responsibility was involved in this “estimation.”53 As best Dunford knew, as the attack moved toward launch, there was no legal issue. No one had flashed a yellow light. At 7:13 p.m., said Dunford, Trump called to say he had heard there could be one hundred fifty dead Iranians. Dunford said he responded, “No, it’s not one hundred fifty.” First, said Dunford, we were already down to two sites rather than three because one we had identified had already packed up and moved, and we weren’t sure where it was. That meant potential deaths were one hundred at most, even by the lawyers’ estimates. As for the t
wo remaining sites, Dunford said they assessed that it would be fifty people per site “max” and tried to explain to Trump why, in the middle of the night Iran time, the numbers at the site were likely to be far smaller. He couldn’t break through, as Trump said, “I don’t like it. They didn’t kill any of our people. I want to stop it. Not a hundred fifty people.”

  I then explained to Dunford what had happened from my perspective, with Eisenberg’s running into the Oval with the lawyers’ estimate. I could sense Dunford shaking his head in amazement on the other end of the phone. “I just want the President to own it,” he said. “He didn’t want to own it last night. There are consequences when that happens…” He trailed off. Dunford then said, “And the tweets this morning. He’s telling the Iranians, ‘Do what you want as long as you don’t hurt Americans.’ That means they can do everything else they want.” That was exactly right.

  Trump said later in the morning that his tweets were “perfect” and said, “Tehran is just like here. People are meeting in rooms discussing this”—another example of Trump’s mirror-imaging—along with, “The Iranians are dying to talk.” And then, we learned later, he deputized Rand Paul to speak to the Iranians. When I passed this news to Pompeo on Saturday, he was simply speechless, having the same reaction as I: it was mind-boggling Trump would entrust anything sensitive to Paul, let alone something that could determine the fate of his presidency.54 I told Pompeo I was meeting with Netanyahu on Sunday in Jerusalem, and it might well be a landmark performance if I said what I really thought, thereby certainly finishing my tenure as National Security Advisor. Pompeo joked, “It’ll be a twofer in that case.” After our several Friday conversations, I did think Pompeo was serious about all this. If he was, we would be in uncharted waters if both of us resigned simultaneously. While that was still unlikely, we were a lot closer than we had ever been before. Reporters were asking Trump about me, and he said as he left for Camp David on Saturday: “I disagree very much with John Bolton… John Bolton is doing a very good job but he takes a generally tough posture… I have other people that don’t take that posture, but the only one that matters is me.”55 One had to wonder how much longer I should remain.

  In any case, I left for Israel a few hours later, there being no reason not to, since the strike had been called off. In Israel, I reviewed where things stood on Iran. Netanyahu and his team focused on the latest information gleaned from Israel’s daring raid on Iran’s nuclear archives, and the subsequent International Atomic Energy Agency inspection of the Turquzabad site, which revealed human-processed uranium.56 It was not enriched uranium, but perhaps yellowcake (uranium oxide in solid form), and certainly evidence contradicting Tehran’s repeated assertions it had never had a nuclear-weapons program.57 Iran had tried to sanitize Turquzabad, as it had tried to sanitize Lavizan in 2004 and the explosive test chambers at Parchin between 2012 and 2015, but it had failed again.58 This could well be evidence Iran kept alive its “Amad plan” for nuclear weapons well after it was supposedly ended in 2004 and would definitely put Tehran on the defensive internationally.

  Back in Washington, the Pentagon, characteristically, was opposing sanctions Trump had finally decided to impose on the Supreme Leader’s office. It was insisting on an NSC meeting before going forward, which was badly timed since both Pompeo and I were out of the country. Nonetheless, a meeting was convened, which I attended via a satellite video hookup from the former US consulate building in Jerusalem, now the “temporary” embassy. Esper and Dunford said they were worried the proposed sanctions would inhibit our ability to negotiate with Iran. (Pompeo, unable to participate because of travel, said he told Esper later that he was “touched” by their concern, but he thought he could handle it.)

  Trump broke in to say, “Even our enemies liked that we didn’t attack.” (No kidding!) “We have capital accumulated. It was the most presidential act in decades. It worked out very well.” Mnuchin pressed for the Executive Order he had drafted, not actually sanctioning Khamenei but only his office, which I thought was a mistake. Trump responded, “It would be much more effective if we designated the Supreme Leader,” which was unquestionably true. More confused discussion ensued, and Trump said “we really [didn’t] know” what the sanctions’ effect would be. “Actually, I think it will help with the talks. Most would say it helps with the talks. And why aren’t we doing [Quds Force Commander Qasem] Soleimani? Put his name in there.” When someone suggested Soleimani might already be covered by other sanctions, Trump said, “Put his name in anyway. John, would you put his name in there?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Would you put the Supreme Leader’s name in there?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said again.

  “I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but I want to do it. Put it in. They have to have a reason to negotiate. Add Zarif,” said Trump, further making my day. “Make them [the sanctions] strong, super strong,” Trump concluded.59

  By raising these issues and trying to block the draft Executive Order, Dunford and Esper had made things worse for their own position. It served them right. I also thought Trump was showing the others that despite his wretched Thursday evening decision, over my objections, as everyone knew, I was not yet about to be fired. I considered the outcome of the NSC meeting near-total victory. (Secretary of State Paul later persuaded Trump to defer the Zarif sanctions for thirty days. I wonder if he cleared that with Secretary of State Giuliani? By the end of July, however, Trump, reversing course again, was ready to authorize sanctions on Zarif, which we did.) In Washington, Trump tweeted:

  Iran leadership doesn’t understand the words “nice” or “compassion,” they never have. Sadly, the thing they do understand is Strength and Power, and the USA is by far the most powerful Military Force in the world, with 1.5 Trillion Dollars invested over the last two years alone…

  …The wonderful Iranian people are suffering, and for no reason at all. Their leadership spends all of its money on Terror, and little on anything else. The U.S. has not forgotten Iran’s use of IED’s & EFP’s (bombs), which killed 2000 Americans, and wounded many more…

  …Iran’s very ignorant and insulting statement, put out today, only shows that they do not understand reality. Any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force. In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration. No more John Kerry & Obama!

  As if the debacle after the Global Hawk downing were not enough, we immediately faced a diplomatic onslaught from Macron. On his own misguided initiative, he had been working Rouhani hard so Iran didn’t blow through the nuclear deal’s critical limits on its nuclear activities. Macron unquestionably saw easing sanctions against Iran as the key to starting negotiations, or else the European Union’s precious nuclear deal would be on the way to the boneyard. Without US concessions, in Macron’s view, Iran would never come to the table, which was just fine with me. In preparation for a call with Macron on Monday, July 8, Pompeo and I briefed Trump about what to expect, with Pompeo saying we thought Macron “would propose a steep concession just to begin negotiations,” which was “just what Kerry and Obama did, a bad idea.” Trump replied, “We can make a deal in a day. There is no real reason to ease sanctions. Once we do that, they’re hard to get back on,” which was exactly correct. The discussion wandered around for a while, and the subject of Iran’s uranium-enrichment activities came up. “We may need to hit it,” said Trump, and then he was back to wondering unhelpfully about when Milley would take over from Dunford: “Should we get Milley involved? We may need to do this in two weeks. If you put twenty Tomahawks into a doorway, I don’t give a fuck what they say, that’s bad.” That was correct too, although I had no idea which doorway he had in mind, or from where he had plucked the number “twenty.”

  What Pompeo and I didn’t know (nor did anyone else at State or the NSC), and certainly did not approve, was that Mnuchin had been negotiating quietly with French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire to do just what Trump said he w
ouldn’t do. I learned this from Mulvaney, who said Mnuchin had called him to report we had a deal with Iran, which Mnuchin essentially repeated to me later. Neither Pompeo nor I knew anything about Mnuchin’s discussions with Le Maire (although Mnuchin claimed this was somehow agreed at the Trump-Macron D-Day lunch). Besides, this sounded a lot like Mnuchin’s trade negotiations with the Chinese; a deal was always done or just about done. Mnuchin apparently never saw a negotiation where he couldn’t make enough concessions to clinch a deal. When Trump spoke with Macron, it struck me maybe even Trump didn’t know Mnuchin had been trying to give away the store when Macron raised the Mnuchin–Le Maire negotiations. After a Trump discourse on Kerry and the Logan Act, Macron asked directly what Trump would be willing to give up, thereby precisely demonstrating his mentality to make concessions to Iran without getting anything in return. Although Trump first ducked, they did discuss before the call ended the idea of a significant reduction in the oil and financial sanctions against Iran for a brief period, and Trump seemed to be clearly leaning in that direction. This was exactly what Pompeo and I had been struggling to prevent.

  Another disaster. After a customary Oval Office event for new Ambassadors to present their credentials, I stayed behind to ask him to explain his offer to Macron. Trump disparaged Macron but said, he’s the kind of guy who could make the deal. It’s only some of the oil sanctions for a brief period, he said, which was better than the other proposals he’d discussed with Macron, and which is what I conveyed immediately to my new French counterpart, Emmanuel Bonne. “I don’t mind the oil,” said Trump, “you can always turn that [the sanctions] back on.” This, of course, was exactly the opposite of what he had said to Pompeo and me earlier, prompting Pompeo to say he would call Graham, Cruz, and Tom Cotton to stir up Republican opposition to negotiations. I sent Pompeo the record of the call and spoke to him later in the day. The concession on relieving the oil sanctions was “beyond belief” to him, as it was to me, because it showed that Trump did not understand the damage that would be done to our overall “maximum pressure” effort by dialing sanctions up and down like a rheostat. Once again, Pompeo was ready to resign, and he said it was only a matter of time until we both made that call. He said, “We may put this fire out, but the next one will be worse…,” and trailed off. All we could do was hope that Iran would come to our rescue one more time.