Iran’s Fatwa against Nuclear Weapons: the Evolution of a Myth

October 10, 2022

By Dr. David Wurmser

At the time of this writing, the Iranian people are rising up across all its communities to free itself from the Islamic Revolution. It is unclear that the regime will survive. This hope, combined with the horror of its amassed brutality over the last 43 years and the complete disregard for international convention, let alone international law, should remove the option of proceeding with any new nuclear agreement with Iran. Instead, the West should finally reach consensus that the current talks must be terminated. The reliability of any treaty – which is after all a contract under the very international law the regime has consistently not only violated but whose validity it has dismissed – is futile. The regime is not a legitimate interlocutor.

Indeed, the very act of negotiating with the regime itself validates and enriches the regime at precisely the time that the Iranian people have rejected its legitimacy and are desperately trying to fight the mechanisms of brutality. An agreement would not only signal that the West assumes the regime’s survival, but it would unlock hundreds of billions of dollars to fund the regime’s repression apparatus internally and its instruments of accelerating aggression externally. In essence it betrays the Iranian people who are trying to free themselves from the deadening hand of this regime.

Moreover, the regime has consistently used international negotiations to make a withering argument against its own people whenever its internal legitimacy was shaken. It has argued that the international community does not care about Iranians and Iranian freedom, but only conspires perpetually to weaken the “great Iranian nation.” The symbol of such greatness, they argue, is Iranian nuclear power. As such, the regime argues, the West is supporting Iranian popular attempts at liberation only as leverage to suppress the power of the Iranian nation and deny its historical greatness, and that the West will abandon the Iranian people the moment the leverage is spent or worthless. To this end, it points to the statement by the Obama administration in 2009 during the height of the “Green” revolution that it tempers its support for the demonstrators because it has “other priorities as well,” clearly implying the nuclear talks.

Beyond these valid and overarching considerations, the obsession with continuing talks with Iran over its nuclear program rests on a key assumption: that in the end, Iran does not want nuclear weapons – indeed, feels religiously opposed to such weapons — but only seeks them for a sense of security or a form of leverage on other matters. One of the most important documents to which western diplomats consistently refer that bears this assumption out is the Fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khamenei in 1997 which specifically prohibits nuclear weapons as un-Islamic. Between 1997 and 2012, this Fatwa became a backstop of confidence for diplomats who began conceding verifiable and solid restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for a sweatheart nuclear “cutout” deal with Iran that erases lingering past concerns and gives it rights and privileges within the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) far beyond any other P-5 nation (US, UK, Russia, France and China) within the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The fatwa stood at the center of US debate in the several years leading up to the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, a.k.a. the 2015 “Iran nuclear deal”). Despite the fact that there has never been a text issued of this Fatwa in public – and thus we do not know with any certainty what it purports to say, its has been the subject of academic and international policy journals analyses. The Iranian regime encouraged highlighting the solidity and importance of this fatwa, suggesting in its propaganda “academic” journals that it was an even more solid guarantee than the NPT itself. For example, a Kent University Ph.D., Farhad Sirjani, wrote with the veneer of scholarly garb in 2013:

The Fatwa elaborates and confirms Iran’s commitment regarding WMD ban, on the one hand, and Iran’s insistence on its NPT right to peaceful uses of nuclear technology, on the other. It is concluded that the commitment undertaken by Iran via the Fatwa, is, in some important respects, more comprehensive and more long-lasting than that Iran has undertaken under the NPT. ¹

This fatwa influenced not only the public debate, but policymaking not only at the level of diplomats, but at the presidential level itself under the Obama administration. For example, on September 24, 2013, at the UN General Assembly’s annual opening in New York, President Obama in his speech said:

“Meanwhile, the Supreme Leader has issued a fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons, and President Rouhani has just recently reiterated that the Islamic Republic will never develop a nuclear weapon. So these statements made by our respective governments should offer the basis for a meaningful agreement.”²

The appeal to this fatwa has once again appeared recently in US government briefings and statements as the United States continues to seek a new nuclear agreement with Iran. Indeed, so much is it understood by Iran that this fatwa remains a core pillar of the assumptions governing western policy that the Iranian regime employed the threat of rescinding it – strongly suggesting it believed such a threat forms effective pressure on the US government. As Iranian lawmaker, Sabbaghian Bafghi, said on August 2, 2022:

“We will ask Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to change his fatwa and strategy on the prohibition of producing nuclear weapons if the enemies of the Islamic Republic continue their threats.”³

The problem is that this Fatwa has never been published, nor likely has it ever existed. The core assumption and evidence to which western diplomats cling to allay their fears of Iran’s ultimate intentions for the acquisition and use of a nuclear weapon, in fact, does not exist. It never did.

As such, it is important to go back to the evolution of this myth to its origins in the 2008-2012 period to ferret out that western belief in the critical assumption is, in fact, flawed.

KHAMENEI’S FATWA AGAINST NUCLEAR WEAPONS

As the negotiations between the P5+1 (the UN Security Council’s five permanent members plus Germany) talks with Iran in Istanbul began in mid-April 2012, the proceedings and public discourse were both seized with reporting of the issuance (or supposed issuance) of a fatwa, or a religious ruling, by Ali Khamenei, the supreme religious authority in Iran’s current revolutionary regime. The fatwa, Iran’s press reported, forbids the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons – what it called “the three “nos.”

Iranian officials noisily heralded the fatwa as proof that Iran was not trying to weaponize its nuclear program, and was thus operating within its nuclear rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty:

“The fatwa that the Supreme Leader has issued is the best guarantee that Iran will never seek to produce nuclear weapons, Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Sadeq Amoli Larijani said on Wednesday [11 April] … Khamenei has issued a fatwa declaring that production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons are all haram (prohibited in Islam).”⁴

Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi highlighted this as a turning point in the negotiations, saying that the West realized that Khamenei’s fatwa against making atomic bombs “had a religious basis and was announced on the basis of Shari’ah tenets and not for political purposes. Taking this into consideration, the West came to the conclusion at the Istanbul talks that a joint framework was needed as a basis for advancing the talks with Iran.”⁵

In recent weeks, the West has led an effort to tighten the screws on Iran through toughened sanctions with the hope of compelling Tehran to accept a restraint on its nuclear program, the first test of which were the Istanbul talks. While it may not be the official US negotiating stance yet, the United States has recently defined its red line in public signaling not around the state of progress of Iran’s program, but whether Iran would cross the threshold of weaponization. As such, Western diplomats were quick to note that such a fatwa could be an important benchmark that suggests the current effort of isolating and pressing the Iranian regime is beginning to show signs of success. As the London Telegraph reported, “[Secretary] Clinton revealed that she has been studying Khamenei’s fatwa, saying that she has discussed it with religious scholars, other experts and with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. ‘If it is indeed a statement of principle, of values, then it is a starting point for being operationalized,’ Clinton said.”⁶ Europeans were even more encouraged: “One of the diplomats, who demanded anonymity because he was sharing information from a closed session, said the Iranians appeared to be moving toward that goal [of discussing their program], engaging in discussion about the peaceful use of nuclear energy and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. He said the Iranian team had mentioned supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s ‘fatwa,’ or prohibition, of nuclear weapons for Iran, in the course of the plenary discussions” which European Union foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton described as “the beginnings of a sustained process.”⁷

RECURRING REPORTS OF THE FATWA

The saga of this heralded fatwa is neither new, nor is it tied to the current state of pressure under which the Iranian regime finds itself. It dates as far back as 1997, and has been reported before – indeed several times – in the Iranian press or referred to in statements by Iranian officials:

 In an interview in the German paper, Der Spiegel, in early December 2011, Iran’s foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi added: “Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has issued a fatwa saying that nuclear weapons are not acceptable in Islam and that they are banned in Islam. This means that the mass destruction weapons play no role in our defense strategy.”⁸

 In an interview on November 19, 2011 with the Italian paper, Corriere Della Sera, Iranian ambassador to Rome, Seyed Mohammad Ali Hossaini, said: “Iran has always aimed for a peaceful, civilian use of nuclear energy, we stated that right at the start of our program. Our highest authorities have always said that they believe the production, storage, and use of nuclear arms is something execrable, or even “haram,” which in Islamic religion is a prohibited action, totally to be condemned and banned. This principle is also contained in a fatwa, a religious precept, issued by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is the highest religious and political authority in the Islamic Republic of Iran. And we immediately issued it worldwide. The importance of this fatwa is such that, even if the international community were to give the green light tomorrow to an Iranian nuclear bomb, our government could not build one.”⁹

During a visit to Slovenia on July 11, 2011, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, said that Khamenei issued a fatwa declaring that the production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons are all haram.¹⁰

In September 2004, Iran’s broadcasting authority reported that Khamenei had issued a fatwa – apparently as early as 1997 – stating that the use of nuclear weapons was contrary to and forbidden by Islam, and that this fatwa had been mentioned by Iran’s nuclear negotiator and National Security Council head, Hassan Rouhani, during the talks with the West.¹¹

The Islamic republic issued an official statement at the emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna on Aug. 9, 2005, which was reported through a website, saying: “The Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has issued the fatwa that the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that the Islamic Republic of Iran shall never acquire these weapons. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who took office just recently, in his inaugural address reiterated that his government is against weapons of mass destruction and will only pursue nuclear activities in the peaceful domain.”¹²

But is taking weaponization off the table by Iran really the bottom line issued by the highest religious authority in the land?

TOLERANCE OF STATEMENTS CONTRADICTING THE FATWA

Fatwas are serious affairs within a community of believers, and even more so among Shiites who break themselves down into schools of followers headed by one of several religious scholars who have attained the highest form of learning and are worthy of emulation (Marjah al-Taqlids). In Iran’s Islamic Republic, this reaches even greater heights, with the reigning theological premise being that of the Valiyet e-Faqih (Rule of the Jurisprudent) – a concept rejected by most Shiites outside of Iran – in which a ruler is anointed to assume the voice and authority of the occulted 12th Imam in the absence of his return. He is superior to any of the other sources of emulation and assumes the role of supreme ruler with accompanying religious authority.

As such, it is all the more surprising that ever since 1997 when the original fatwa by Khamenei was ostensibly released, a good number of Iranian leaders have issued fatwas or made statements which seem to directly contradict the religious edict of the unassailable and infallible supreme leader. These fatwas either suggest Iran is contemplating a nuclear weapons strategy, or outright call for Iran to develop, or even use, nuclear weapons:

In 2005, Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi published a book titled, The Islamic Revolution – Surges in Political Changes in History. Apparently the publisher, the Center of Publications of the Imam Khomeini Research Institute, released only 3000 copies limited to the seminary in which he taught. On page 337 of his book, clearly referring to nuclear weapons, he wrote: “We have to produce the most advanced weapon inside the country, even if our enemies do not like it. There is no reason that they have the right to produce a certain special type of weapon, but that other nations do not.”¹³

Mesbah Yazdi is not only a member of the Council of Experts – the body which chooses the Supreme Leader – but also the founder of the Haqqani school in Qom which trains future cadres of the regime whose alumni form the backbone of the clerical management class that runs Iran’s key political and security institutions. Mesbah Yazdi is one of the most prominent religious figures in Iran and is considered the mentor of President Ahmadinejad and leader of the Mahdist school (those who believe they see the signs aligning that confirm the 12th Imam is on the verge of returning from occultation).

On February 16, 2006, the reformist internet daily, Rooz reported that the late Mohsen Gharavian – a lecturer at the Qom seminaries and a prominent disciple of Mesbah Yazdi, issued a fatwa which read: “One must say that when the entire world is armed with nuclear weapons, it is only natural that, as a counter-measure, it is necessary to be able to use these weapons. However, what is important is what goal they may be used for … According to Shari’ah, too, only the goal is important….”¹⁴

On April 24, 2011, the website of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Gerdab, published what it envisions the day after Iran’s first nuclear test: “The day after Iran’s first nuclear test will be an ordinary day for us Iranians, but many of us will have a new gleam in our eyes – a gleam of national pride and might.” The article then continued by citing the Koran’s chapter 8, verse 60: “And prepare against them what force you can, and horses tied at the frontier, to frighten thereby the enemy of Allah and your enemy.”¹⁵ In tying this Koranic phrase directly to the quest for nuclear weapons, the IRGC publication in essence defines nuclear weapons as a requirement of the Islamic Republic’s constitution, since Article 151 of Iran’s Constitution relies on the authority of that very passage of the Quran when it states: “Prepare against them whatever force you are able to muster, and horses ready for battle, striking fear into God’s enemy and your enemy.”

One might be tempted to discount these statements, since they are from officials who could be seen as part of the competing faction to the Supreme Leader. But other officials, who owe their allegiance and careers to Khamenei’s sufferance (and thus cannot be considered to be from a “deviant” or competing faction), also have expressed a quest for weaponization:

On December 14, 2001, during the al-Quds (Jerusalem) day sermon, Iran’s former president, Ali Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani declared at the University of Tehran not only that Israel can be destroyed with a single bomb, but suggested that Israel’s likely nuclear retaliation is digestible because the Muslim world would only be damaged by it: “If one day … the world of Islam comes to possess the weapons currently in Israel’s possession [nuclear weapons] – on that day this method of global arrogance would come to a dead end. This … is because the use of one nuclear bomb in Israel would leave nothing on the ground, whereas it will only damage the world of Islam.”¹⁶ He added that “It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality.”¹⁷

On August 22, 2006, at the ceremony in Arak in which Iran inaugurated its heavy water plant, the Deputy Speaker of the Majlis (parliament), Mohammed Reza Bahonar, declared: “The Iranian people is faced by unreasonable forces that possess nuclear weapons, and there is no [force] that can deter them. If they put pressure [on Iran], the [Iranian] people may ask the government to produce nuclear weapons for the sake of deterrence … You [the West] need to fear the day the Iranian people will amass in the streets, demonstrate and ask of its government to produce nuclear weapons in order to counter the threats…”¹⁸ Far from paying a price for this statement, Bahonar, who is also the Leader of the Islamic Society of Engineers, was reelected and served in the post until 2011.

An Iranian paper, Asr-e Iran, published an editorial on February 28, 2010, saying: “The truth is that for Israel … the mere sense of insecurity is deadly poison…The truth is that Israel knows very well that even if Iran obtains nuclear weapons, it will never use them except in self-defense… Rather, Iran’s possession of such weapons will sow in Israel a sense of insecurity – and this sense alone will be enough to shatter the glass palace of this illegitimate regime in the Middle East. An Iran with nuclear weapons means an end to the dream of ‘secure Israel’ – and this means the exodus of most of the residents of this occupied land… This exodus will include human, financial, and other capital, and, therefore, will be a death sentence for this regime.”¹⁹

These articles by both allies and competitors to Khamenei have never elicited a price or even a reprimand for having so blatantly crossed the Supreme Leader and his fatwa.

THE FATWA CONTRADICTS OTHER FATWAS

The effort to gauge the meaning and validity of this supposed fatwa is also problematic since no reasoning or context is provided in the reports or statements discussing why such a weapon is, from a religious point of view, materially different from any other weapon, and why it should be thus forbidden (haram) rather than encouraged to fulfill – as the IRGC’s publication, Gerdab suggests – the stipulation outlined in Koranic verse 8:60 and mentioned in Article 151 of the Constitution.

In the West, we accord not only nuclear weapons, but an entire category of weaponry, a special status defined by the term “weapons of mass destruction,” namely their ability to inflict mass death and realistically contemplate swift, genocidal annihilation. In Iran, however, mass destruction has been sanctioned as part of a sanctioned cult of annihilation and martyrdom. The Iranian regime has issued numerous fatwas which provide the religious justification for not only the permissibility, but the imperative of inflicting mass killing of the enemy, and the acceptance of severe retaliation as a religiously justified risk and cost.²⁰ This is true not only of the competing clerical leaderships surrounding Khamenei and Ahmadinejad – but even the “moderate” camp defined by the likes of Rafsanjani.

Given the context of other fatwas’ legitimizing a cult of annihilation and martyrdom, it is impossible that this fatwa grounds its special treatment and prohibition of the nuclear weapon in the ghastly nature of the weapon, as we do in the West. And in every mention of the fatwa, only the one sentence appears and there is no discussion, nor any stated reason – as there often are in fatwas in Shi’ism, which generally list both the verdict and the arguments that led to it – why nuclear weapons alone are singled out for prohibition and inapplicable to the Koran’s chapter 8, verse 60 and Iran’s Constitution’s article 151, both of which command Muslims to “muster whatever force you are able” to fight the enemy.

Other aspects of Iranian rhetoric are also inconsistent with the heralded fatwa. Specifically, Iran suggests rather bluntly how analogous its current situation is to North Korea’s as Pyongyang moved toward weaponization, implying Tehran reserves the right to pursue the path the fatwa forbids.

Khamenei’s mouthpiece Keyhan drew the most direct analogy on October 13, 2006 in an editorial entitled: “Lessons from North Korea:”

“What led Korea to this point was nothing but persistence in the face of the U.S., which would not agree to … assure it that it would not act to topple the North Korean government .… The Koreans said many times before that if America would stop its operations to topple their government … then North Korea would have no problem whatsoever with the inspection of their efforts to produce nuclear weapons. But the Americans, with their usual defective mindset … persisted and now it’s over… North Korea has built a nuclear bomb before America’s eyes, despite the great pressure it was under, and despite years of harsh international sanctions – and no one has managed to do anything against it … What this means is that if any country, such as North Korea, concludes for political or security reasons that it must have nuclear weapons, it will ultimately succeed in implementing its wish – even if the whole world does not want it to.”²¹

Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator of last decade, Ali Larijani – who is now the Speaker of Iran’s parliament – made the connection directly:

“You have pressured North Korea for two years and consequently it withdrew from the NPT and IAEA…I recommend that you once again pay attention to the conduct of North Korea. After two years … you have accepted North Korea’s nuclear technology… So accept ours now… [A]lthough Iran proposes these peaceful conditions, if you want to use aggressive language, Iran will have no choice but to protect its technological accomplishments by withdrawing from the NPT.”²²

In short, in the view of the Iranian leadership surrounding Khamenei, the United States’ refusal to meet the DPRK’s demands fully not only justified, but left Pyongyang no other choice but to realize its nuclear quest and seek a weapon. Iran’s leaders argue that Iran now finds itself along the same path, implying that if their demands are not met, they too would not only be justified, but impelled, to seek the very nuclear weapons the reported fatwa ruled are forbidden.

THE HIDDEN FATWA

Taken together, it is nearly impossible to reconcile Khamenei’s reported fatwa prohibiting nuclear weapons with the gist of Iranian public statements since the first references to it were made in 1997 – all of which flow in the opposite direction.

Moreover, the problem is compounded by the fact that that Khamenei’s fatwa has never been seen or published – not in 1997, 2005, 2011, or today. The Iranian press referred to it, and Iran’s negotiators at various P5+1 talks have regularly raised the existence of this fatwa as proof of Iran’s good intentions, but Khamenei has never said or released it in public. It is impossible to properly analyze, or understand the context in which it needs to be understood and followed, or if it even exists.

Either the fatwa outright is a fabrication for the purposes of willful deception of the West or that the operative phrase is embedded in the context of a larger fatwa which makes the prohibition on these weapons – and perhaps others as well – conditional on theoretical circumstances such as, for example, the age in which Islam has universally triumphed and, the Mahdi has returned. Indeed, were the operational phrase in the fatwa so conditioned, then it would have been perfectly consistent and reinforcing for Mohsen Gharavian to have issued his fatwa on Iran’s right to nuclear first use in 2006. And this would explain why there never was any criticism, let alone sanction taken, by any journalist, institution or official connected with Khamenei or the government against Gharavian or any of the others who suggested Iran has a nuclear armaments concept or should have or use a nuclear weapon.

CONCLUSION: CONTRADICTING FATWAS REVEAL TACTICAL FISSURES IN THE REGIME

As if the drama surrounding its sudden appearance on the scene without accompanying evidence, not least of which is the absence of any publication to date of any official text of this fatwa, makes this entire episode deeply suspicious. The only evidence that we have that such a fatwa exists is that official statements from Iran say it is so, but they too fail to provide any text. Mohsen Rafighdoost, a minister in the IRGC responsible for a significant part of the nuclear program, said in 2014 he sought to pursue a nuclear weapons option, but was restrained by the ostensible edit – which led quickly to established Western journals, such as Foreign Policy, to seize on the statement as definitive evidence of the edict.²³ Of course, it is unclear why the IRGC even had a role in the nuclear program if it was not for military purposes.

In short, there is no evidence that this fatwa exists beyond dubious statements from officials saying it does. Moreover, assuming the phantom edict does exist, nobody knows what it actually says since its content has never been published. Whole articles have been written by Iranian propagandists about it and analyzing its importance without ever citing even a single phrase or line from the edict.

In contrast, there is evidence from other, published and clearly existing fatwas that the Iranian regime does consider nuclear weapons as legitimate. And in the last years, there have been several Iranian officials, such as Abolfazl Razavi Ardakani, who have said it was either temporary and in effect – surprise, surprise — only until the most recent period in which Iran actually reached the technical ability to approach a nuclear device.

Our Leader’s fatwa that Iran would not pursue an atomic weapon was meant for its time. It is possible that the Leader will change his mind. This is based on the Islamic ruling about whether it is allowed to put stones in the enemy’s river in order to poison him. The answer is that this is allowed if it’s the only way to prevail…. It is possible that the Leader will give the order to enrich uranium to 90%. The Leader knows perfectly well when to give which fatwa. The fatwas of the religious scholars, especially secondary ones, are not permanent. There is a difference between primary fatwas and secondary fatwas. A jurisprudent can issue a ruling and then cancel it 10 years later.”²⁴

And finally, there are even official statements that suggest that the fatwa never existed. Former Iranian member of the Majlis (parliament), Ali Motahari, said on April 24, 2022 that:

“From the very beginning, when we entered the nuclear activity, our goal was to build a bomb and strengthen the deterrent forces, but we could not maintain the secrecy of this issue, and the secret reports were revealed by a group of hypocrites.”²⁵

On balance then, the evidence is substantial the entire tale of Khamenei’s phantom nuclear fatwa is little more than an attempt at strategic deception. Either the fatwa does not exist or exists within a hidden context, the obvious failure of enforced discipline of message, and the absence of any reprimand is likely a result of fissures within Iran’s regime.

However, since even allies of Khamenei were on record before 2006 suggesting a nuclear weapons quest, the fissures cannot be understood through categories such as “hardliners” or “moderates” over nuclear policy, but a schism between two schools of thought, reflected most starkly by Khamenei on the one hand, and Mesbah Yazdi on the other. Most of the post-2006 statements overtly suggesting a nuclear weapons quest appear to come from the clerics surrounding Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, while those reinforcing the ostensible fatwa came from the traditional clerical elite aligned with Khamenei and his close associate, Ali Larijani.

While the disagreement plays itself out over the fatwa issue, it is not about the legitimacy of nuclear weapons at all, but about a disagreement over whether Iran should pursue Taqqiyah (deception) and caution against the West because open confrontation could be dangerous, or whether Iran should flaunt its ambitions since the West is toothless and overt confrontation would only expose that weakness.

Khamenei represents the clerical establishment, who views the preservation of the revolutionary regime and its mundane moorings as the prime directive. While not moderating or compromising, Khamenei and those close to him have consistently chosen to maneuver and be indirect rather than have a confrontation with the West.

In contrast, Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi rejects maneuvering and indirect confrontation as too cautious, and even heretical against the will of Allah. Instead, he and his followers believe the hidden 12th Imam is near his return, and that divine intervention – secured by rigid adherence to principle – is the true source of victory for the Islamic Republic. For example, in his book which discussed the need to pursue the “special” (read nuclear) weapon, Yazdi wrote:

“In seeking to acquire the technology, Iran must be patient and not be deterred by economic shortages. Divine, messianic support has been the determining factor of the Iranian regime during the various trying periods which have plagued it since its foundation.”²⁶

In late 2007, Khamenei’s ally, Ali Larijani, who hails from one of the grand, traditional clerical families (the Amelis) of Qom, was forced by Ahmadinejad to resign as the head of the Supreme Council for National Security. His replacement, Saeed Jalili is guided by Mesbah Yazdi. In his first major speech published four days after assuming his new position on October 21, 2007, Jalili attacked previous governments for having “strayed from the principles derived from Islamic revolutionary teachings.” In contrast, Jalili argued that under Ahmadinejad, Iran’s foreign policy has returned to its ideological base and is “avoiding the past experience of sacrificing principles when faced with a challenge…Principles should not be sacrificed … in the name of pragmatism.”²⁷ Jalili even went on to suggest previous policies demonstrated “cartoon-like behavior [which causes] 180-degree turns in foreign policy without any basis.” Jalili then echoes Mesbah Yazdi’s eschatological spin: foreign policy should be coupled “with reliance on divine assistance” and should be based on a theological model which will bring “a good ending in this and the next world as was the intention of the Islamic revolution.” Referring to the previous governments’ suspensions of Iran’s nuclear program to avoid international reactions, Jalili “steadfastly stressed” the need to “return to an ideological and principled approach” in order to shape the nature of Iranian foreign policy in accordance with Islamic “authenticity based on the Prophet’s diplomatic strategy.” He went on to suggest that “pragmatism” should be seen as willful disobedience to the divine Will.”²⁸

In short, the inconsistency surrounding Iranian governmental statements and the fabrication or selective reporting on Khamenei’s fatwa on the nuclear issue tells us almost nothing about the regime’s theological view of the legitimacy of pursuing nuclear weapons, but it does expose the nature and theological foundations of the fissures within the regime.

Putin Must Go: Now Is The Time For Regime Change In Russia

October 04, 2022

By Ambassador John Bolton

This article was first published on October 4th, 2022, in 19fortyfive. Click Here to read the original.

“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” President Biden said of Vladimir Putin in March, a month after Russia’s second unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, in remarks the Washington Post called “the most defiant and aggressive speech about Russia by an American president since Ronald Reagan.”(https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/26/biden-ukraine-putin-speech/) Biden’s staff, however, immediately backpedaled, saying, “the president’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region. He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia or regime change.” Later, Biden himself dutifully resiled from regime change.(https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/31/opinion/biden-ukraine-strategy.html)

Why the angst? There is no long-term prospect for peace and security in Europe without regime change in Russia. Russians are already discussing it, quietly, for obvious reasons. For the United States and others pretending that the issue is not before will do far more harm than good.

Notwithstanding recent Kyiv’s military advances, the West still lacks a shared definition of “victory” in Ukraine. Last week, Putin “annexed” four Ukrainian oblasts, joining Crimea, “annexed” in 2014. The war grinds on, producing high Russian casualties and economic pain. Opposition to Putin is rising, and young men are fleeing the country. Of course, Kyiv’s civilian and military casualties are also high, and its physical destruction is enormous. Hoping to intimidate NATO, Moscow is again rhetorically brandishing nuclear weapons, and has sabotaged the Nordstream pipelines. Europe worries about the coming winter, and everyone worries about the durability of Europe’s resolve. No one predicts a near-term cease-fire or substantive war-ending negotiations, or how to conduct “normal” relations with Putin’s regime thereafter.

To avoid the war simply grinding along indefinitely, we must alter today’s calculus. Carefully assisting Russian dissidents to pursue regime change might just be the answer. Russia is, obviously, a nuclear power, but that is no more an argument against seeking regime change than against assisting Ukrainian self-defense. White House virtue signaling already empowers the Kremlin, accusing us of “satanism,” to claim America is trying to overthrow Russia’s government even though Biden is doing no such thing. (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/30/world/europe/putin-speech-ukraine-russia.html) Just to remind, the Kremlin has been doing this to us for many decades. Since we are already accused of subverting the Kremlin, why not return the favor?

Obstacles and uncertainties blocking Russian regime change are substantial, but not insuperable. Defining the “change” is critical, because it must involve far more than simply replacing Putin. Among his inner circle, several potential successors would be worse. The problem is not one man, but the collective leadership constructed over the last two decades. No civilian governmental structure exists to effect change, not even a Politburo like the one that retired Nikita Khrushchev after the Cuban missile crisis. The whole regime must go.

Actually effecting regime change is doubtless the hardest problem, but it does not require foreign military forces. The key is for Russians themselves to exacerbate divisions among those with real authority, the siloviki, the “men of power.” Disagreements and animosities already exist, as in all authoritarian regimes, exploitable as dissidents set their minds to it. Boris Yeltsin standing on a tank outside the Russian White House in 1991 evidenced the fracturing of the Soviet ruling class. Once regime coherence and solidarity shatter, change is possible.

Inside Russia’s military, intelligence and internal security ministries, there is almost certainly shock, anger, embarrassment, and despair about Moscow’s performance before and during the current invasion of Ukraine. As in many coups in third-world countries, the likely leadership for regime change will not come from the top flag officers and officials, who are too personally invested in the Putin regime, nor from the ranks of enlisted personnel or lower-level bureaucrats. It is from the colonels and one-star generals, and their civilian-agency equivalents, where the most-likely co-conspirators to take maters into their own hands. These are the decision-makers whom the dissidents must identify, persuade and support to facilitate regime change. Obviously, the desired interim outcome is not an outright military government, but a transitional authority that can hold the ring while a new constitution is formed. This stage alone is very risky business, but unavoidable given Russia’s current domestic political structures.

Outsiders can assist in many ways, including augmenting dissidents’ communications internally and with their diaspora, and significantly enhanced programs to transmit information into Russia (complicated by the long decline in US information-statecraft capabilities). Financial support, especially given Russian economic conditions, and not necessarily in large amounts, can also be critical. What Washington says publicly about regime-change should be concerted with the dissidents and other foreign allies. Keeping our actions covert may be impossible, but there is likely no need to ballyhoo them.

Some will object that foreign involvement would compromise the dissidents, affording Putin propaganda openings. The short answer is that he is already making this point, and will continue, whatever we say or do. Our metric should be whether the dissidents themselves value outside help. Most likely, their cost-benefit analysis will welcome the assistance more than they fear Putin’s anti-American rhetoric. Russians have heard it all before.

What follows the Putin regime is ultimately the most critical question. Russians are already considering their options, as they should, since it is primarily their task to form a successor government.(https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/30/alexei-navalny-parliamentary-republic-russia-ukraine/) Enough mistakes were made after the Soviet Union dissolved that humility in future planning this round is fully warranted, and highlights why immediate research and planning is necessary.

Washington’s obvious strategic objective is having Russia aligned with the West, a fit candidate for NATO, as we hoped after the Soviet Union’s breakup. Others may be unhappy about such a new Russia. China can hardly welcome the collapse of a regime that is turning into Beijing’s junior partner, if not an outright satellite. Chinese efforts to support Putin, even militarily, cannot be ruled out.

While Russian regime change may be daunting, America’s goal of a peaceful and secure Europe, episodically pursued goal for over a century, remains central to our national interests. This is no time to be shy.

Ambassador John R. Bolton served as national security adviser under President Donald J. Trump. He is the author of “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.” You can follow him on Twitter: @AmbJohnBolton.

South Korea Can Play a Vital Role in the Indo-Pacific

September 28, 2022

By Ambassador John Bolton

Taiwan may be Asia’s most imminent flashpoint, but the threats facing South Korea are no less perilous. North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic-missile programs continue advancing amid constant rumors of another nuclear test, which would be North Korea’s seventh. Particularly significant for South Korea’s emerging strategy in response is the growing realization that threats across the Indo-Pacific aren’t discrete and unrelated but ultimately emanate from one actor: China.

In Seoul, speculation about Pyongyang’s next nuclear detonation centers on the days just before America’s elections. The Chinese Communist Party’s 20th Congress, expected to enshrine Xi Jinping as China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, begins on Oct. 16. Kim Jong Un won’t risk spoiling the Chinese congress during its session, but the ensuing weeks will offer a dramatic opportunity to flaunt his nuclear capabilities. Mr. Kim’s recent announcement of his first-strike nuclear policy, together with blunt warnings he won’t negotiate away the nuclear program, publicly codifies North Korea’s longstanding nuclear doctrine.

Seoul has always understandably concentrated on Pyongyang’s threat. Now, however, it sees Beijing’s belligerence toward Taiwan, interference in South Pacific Island states, and critical support for North Korea as interrelated parts of an overall Chinese Indo-Pacific strategy. This assessment points to what should be obvious: Beijing is ultimately responsible for Pyongyang’s nuclear threat. For too long, the U.S. has allowed the Chinese government to pretend (through the Six-Party Talks, for example) that it is genuinely committed to finding a solution on nuclear proliferation. This fantasy is increasingly difficult to sustain, since North Korea never threatens China. Instead it threatens South Korea, Japan and America.

More-comprehensive policies countering China’s Indo-Pacific threats, previously seen as unconnected, are slowly developing. President Biden enhanced the profile of the Quad (Japan, India, Australia and the U.S.) and approved the Aukus partnership to provide Australia nuclear-powered submarines. He also met with South Korea’s President Yoon Suk-yeol and Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, a potential step to “trilateralize” Washington’s ties with Seoul and Tokyo. Nonetheless, the administration’s overall China policy remains fragmentary and opaque if it exists at all.

Significant U.S.-South Korea military exercises (canceled by Donald Trump as an unreturned favor to Kim Jong Un) are resuming, with the USS Ronald Reagan carrier-strike group arriving in Pusan for joint maneuvers. The Reagan’s deployment (the first carrier visit since 2018) sends Pyongyang a strategic signal, but it is unaccompanied by any evidence the White House is prepared to jettison the failed 30-year diplomatic minuet with North Korea. Repeated administration offers to engage the North have elicited no interest.

Mr. Yoon is working to improve relations with Japan, meeting informally with Mr. Kishida last week in New York, and their foreign ministers discussed problems blocking closer linkages. Improving ties with Japan is only a first step toward broader South Korean involvement in East Asia, but it is a critical one. Japanese opinion views a potential Chinese attack on Taiwan as tantamount to an attack on Japan, a view Seoul doesn’t share. Beijing’s menacing stance toward Taiwan, however, is inexorably bringing South Korean leaders a fuller understanding of China’s many interrelated efforts to control its periphery. Greater cooperation between Taiwan and South Korea is critical to thwarting China’s ambitions.

The Quad should become a “Quint” by making South Korea a full member. Seoul’s perspective and capabilities would measurably enhance the grouping’s potential to address Beijing’s use of North Korea as a surrogate, its threats in the South China Sea and to Taiwan, and its aggressive behavior in the South Pacific. Moreover, Seoul-Tokyo engagement in a Quint context could more easily encourage bilateral patterns of cooperation than if the two were limited to stewing in contentious bilateral issues.

A Quint would demonstrate broader resolve in the face of China’s attempts to keep the U.S. and its allies off balance through divide-and-conquer tactics. South Korean participation in wider regional structures would help eliminate strategic ambiguity about Taiwan’s defense in the event of a Chinese attack. Biden staffers have apparently rebuffed suggestions to make South Korea part of the Quad. If so, this mistake needs prompt reversal.

The tempo of Indo-Pacific challenges is increasing, with threat levels rising. But as the U.S. confronts critical tactical decisions, such as how to arm Taiwan effectively to deter Chinese belligerence, it must be careful not to ignore larger strategic issues. South Korea and its new president are ready for regional defense cooperation beyond the existing hub-and-spoke bilateral alliance with the U.S. All the concerned countries in the Indo-Pacific would benefit. Let’s not miss this opportunity.

Mr. Bolton is author of “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.” He served as the president’s national security adviser, 2018-19, and ambassador to the United Nations, 2005-06.

 As China targets the South Pacific, the U.S. urgently needs to push back

September 13, 2022

This article first appeared in the Washington Post on September 12th, 2022. Click here to read the original article.

John R. Bolton served as national security adviser under President Donald Trump and is the author of “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.”

Few areas of the world seem more distant from the United States than the island states of the South Pacific. World War II reminiscences have faded, and the words “South Pacific” now resonate more as a Broadway musical title than a geographic locator. For U.S. national security, this needs to change, sooner rather than later.

Get the maps out; Chinese leaders, diplomats and the military have theirs nearly memorized. Hemmed in by what it calls the “first island chain” (stretching from the Kuril Islands, through Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia), China has longed to break free into the broader Pacific Ocean. Beijing is interested in this wider horizon because its aspirations extend not merely to hegemony along its immediate Indo-Pacific periphery, but to far wider objectives, already reflected in its pursuit of economic interest in Africa and the Western Hemisphere.

Taiwan is thus important to China not just because of nationalistic fervor, but also because dominance over Taiwan would irretrievably pierce the first island chain. Another breakout strategy over the tyranny of geography is to leapfrog the close-in islands and stake out positions across the Pacific — which is precisely what Beijing appears now to be attempting.

The Pacific’s insular nations are small in land mass and lightly populated, although huge when their ocean territories are included. Xi Jinping has marked them as vulnerable, seemingly intent on going island-hopping, using intimidation, bribery or whatever it takes to achieve China’s ends.

The immediate crisis is in the Solomon Islands, where U.S. forces won a critical victory in 1942-1943 on Guadalcanal, a World War II turning point. In August, senior administration officials Wendy Sherman and Caroline Kennedy, whose fathers fought in the Solomon Islands, led a U.S. delegation to mark the 80th anniversary of the battle at Guadalcanal. Signifying growing Chinese hegemony, however, and perhaps issuing an insult at China’s behest, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare failed to attend the ceremonies near Honiara, the capital. Weeks later, a U.S. Coast Guard vessel was denied permission to make a port call, another apparently intentional discourtesy. Most recently, elections scheduled for next May were postponed until 2024, a move that opposition leaders consider an ominous sign of China’s influence.

A Chinese base in the Solomons would directly menace Australia (about 1,200 miles away), harking back to the Japanese threat during World War II. I was recently in Sydney, and found that Australians need no persuading about China’s rising regional threat. What they seek is a more visible, vigorous U.S. presence in the region, and rightly so. The Solomons are in jeopardy now, and while “domino theory” inevitability might not yet obtain, other island states are clearly vulnerable.

America has for too long paid insufficient attention to the South Pacific. In 1945, the United States assumed Japan’s former League of Nations mandate over the new United Nations’ Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. After plebiscites in 1983, one island chain became the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, thereby remaining part of the United States, adjacent to Guam, long a U.S. territory. Three other island groupings — Palau, the Republic of the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia — chose independence. (American Samoa is a separate territory.)

These three new nations all signed “compacts of free association” with the United States, which provide that Washington supervises their foreign affairs (short of declaring war), including prohibiting the presence of foreign military forces without U.S. permission. The compacts have been extended once and are now up for renegotiation because they expire over the next two years.

This is not a moment to falter or for shortsightedness. Fortuitously timed as the renegotiation is, the White House should take full advantage of the opportunity to cement long-term strategic relations with this trio of nations to keep China out. The costs of enhanced U.S. involvement are trivial in the context of global aid budgets; and the sea and land expanses involved are only somewhat smaller than the continental United States itself.

When I briefed President Donald Trump just before his meeting with the three leaders of these freely associated states in 2019, he asked, “Why am I meeting these people?” His successors should not need to ask.

South Pacific responsibilities need not rest on the United States alone. Australia, New Zealand and Britain all have contemporary relationships and regional histories, dating back to naval coaling or whaling stations. France retains three extensive overseas territories (New Caledonia, French Polynesia, and Wallis and Fortuna), represented in France’s Parliament, and whose territory is deemed part of the European Union.

Countering Chinese aggressiveness in the South Pacific should be a matter of urgent bipartisan agreement and action, rare as they might be today. The faraway island of Bali Hai, celebrated in a certain musical, is closer than we thought.

Hard questions for King Charles III

September 12, 2022

By Ambassador John Bolton

This article was first published in The Hill on September 12th, 2022. Click Here to read the original article.

As the reality of Queen Elizabeth II’s passing sinks in, and international mourning continues, Britain’s unmatched flair for dignified pageantry is affirming the continuity and stability of the nation and its sovereignty. Notwithstanding the ceremony, however, no one is blind to the hard questions King Charles III and the monarchy itself will face in short order.

Inevitably after 70 years of one person’s reign, Charles will face close scrutiny to see if he matches the expectations, accumulating for decades, about the sovereign’s behavior. Equally inevitably, beginning perhaps during the preparations for Charles’s coronation (likely next year), there will be a surge of republican sentiment from Britain’s left advocating elimination of the monarchy itself. 

Accordingly, how the new king comports himself in the coming months could be decisive not merely on some “performance” level but, constitutionally, in handling both near and long-term challenges he and Britain face. 

Since the origins of the United States lie in repudiating the monarchy, many here too readily dismiss its deep-rooted significance for our United Kingdom cousins. Given our (history’s oldest, continuously-in-force, written) Constitution, Britain’s historically derived, unwritten and now almost unique form of constitutional order is even more remote. 

Unquestionably, however, the evolution of Great Britain’s governance structures over centuries has produced a monarchy that is not simply a decoration, an appendage that can be easily excised with few collateral consequences. Even so, early missteps by Charles will complicate his reign; full-blown debate over abolishing the monarchy can only complicate it more.

Doubts about the monarchy’s utility underlie much of the coverage of the ongoing royal transition. Some commentators stress the turmoil, stress and uncertainty Britain faces, led by both a new sovereign and a new prime minister, but such assessments are overwrought.

We are not in World War II. That was stress. Other pundits have excoriated Britain’s imperial past, as if the monarchy alone is responsible for the alleged misdeeds. It is not, nor is it responsible for the enormous benefits stemming from Britain’s empire-building, “mother of parliaments” that it is, not that many today will mount that defense.  

Properly analyzing the monarchy requires assessing its unique function in the UK’s constitutional system, not every aspect of British international policy. Nonetheless, as the living symbol of Britain’s nationhood, the new king will face many more broadside attacks.  

In the first days defining his new role, under unprecedented media attention, Charles has delivered in unexpected ways. Arriving at Buckingham Palace, his new home, rather than just inspecting the flowers and mementoes left to honor the queen, he greeted well-wishers gathered across the palace’s frontage, an image that surely stunned and likely captivated Britons who rarely see such a personal royal touch or public access. Even while mourning his loss, Charles reached out to the British people, and they responded. It was a masterstroke.

Immediately thereafter, the king’s first speech was entirely on target constitutionally.  Duty, service and constancy are obviously Charles’s priorities, as they were Elizabeth’s.  Still, this is just the beginning.

The paramount question is whether Charles can maintain his mother’s distance from day-to-day politics. In these first remarks, he signaled a withdrawal from the political arena: “It will no longer be possible for me to give so much of my time and energies to the charities and issues for which I care so deeply. But I know this important work will go on in the trusted hands of others.”

In Britain’s constitutional system, the king’s duty – and it is a duty of constitutional dimensions, not mere symbolism – is to be the nation’s voice when necessary. His role decidedly does not involve nattering on about current events. 

At moments of grave crisis, such as wartime, the king can exercise a steadying presence, and provide a much-needed sounding board for the prime minister, a presence who should have no agenda other than discerning the national interest and how best to protect it. 

As crown prince, Charles was outspoken on issues such as the environment and climate change, obviously popular for many, but complicated and politically controversial.

A king’s proper stance, by contrast, requires remaining above the specifics of legislative or policy programs at Westminster or 10 Downing Street. He is not a political actor or commentator. Resisting the allure of short-term political acclaim must be a top royal priority, a task requiring sustained effort and discipline to succeed. 

Here, Charles III’s military experience, in both the (appropriately named) Royal Air Force and Royal Navy, marks potentially the most important constitutional role he can play. Although the King’s authority as commander in chief is fully delegated to parliamentary ministers, national defense is existential, and the monarch embodies British nationhood not just sentimentally, but constitutionally. 

Thus, King George VI’s determination to stay in Britain during World War II no matter what, in the face of a feared Nazi invasion and after Buckingham Palace itself had been bombed, compellingly demonstrated the will to survive as a nation.

On another practical level, the king’s constitutional persona as head of the Commonwealth of Nations is potentially quite significant. There are untapped possibilities for the United Kingdom and the West more broadly in the Commonwealth, and Charles’s long international experience provides a foundation for prime ministers to build upon. 

Beyond the Commonwealth, the king could play a significant role representing British national security policies generally. For example, an early visit by the new king to Ukraine would carry enormous weight. Newly liberated from the European Union, global Britain could make full use of the monarchy, probably its best-known national institution.

There are other perils clearly ahead for Charles. Media and critics will scrutinize all things financial and the inevitable efforts of many to take advantage of his new role.  Although he has already endured such a spotlight, the new extent of the attention will be extraordinary. 

Elizabeth was spared much of this pressure, but Charles will have no such luxury.  Success in the monarchy is ultimately a test of character, and therefore will rest only on the king himself.

John Bolton was national security adviser to President Trump from 2018 to 2019, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006 and held senior State Department posts in 2001-2005 and 1985-1989. His most recent book is “The Room Where It Happened” (2020). He is the founder of John Bolton Super PAC, a political action committee supporting candidates who believe in a strong U.S. foreign policy.

American presidents can only dream of what the Queen accomplished

September 09, 2022

By Ambassador John Bolton

This article first appeared in The Telegraph on September 9th, 2022. Click Here to read the original article.

Queen Elizabeth’s seventy-year reign makes her the only British monarch almost all American citizens (not to mention the entire world) have ever known. For audiences over here, the coming memorials will rival the distantly remembered ceremonies for Winston Churchill, and those more recently held for Margaret Thatcher. 

Since the U.S. constitutional system has always vested both the “head of state” and “head of government” functions in the President alone, processing the Queen’s role, and therefore her significance and the consequences of her passing, is harder work for the cousins on the far side of the Atlantic. But there will now surely be considerable discussion of it, and hopefully better understanding for the future.

In theory, the Queen stood above partisan politics and the sausage-making of government in ways utterly impossible for an American President. Her separation from the often-unpleasant reality of day-to-day affairs of state, again in theory, allowed national divisions of opinion, even deep and bitter ones, to be subsumed under a unifying figure that had only the British national interest at heart.

While a President can certainly be a unifying figure, he is always at risk of accusations that he is putting party priorities above those of the nation as a whole, invoking its sacred symbols not for higher purposes, but for those very crass partisan interests that are always getting in the way. The tension is inherent in the job. And it is the theoretical and (largely) actual absence of that tension in the monarchy that makes understanding its role so hard for many in the land where our last King, George III, caused us so much dismay.

Elizabeth, nonetheless, year after year, fulfilled her constitutional and theoretical responsibilities in a truly remarkable fashion. Especially as the role of the media in Western society has grown to the point where it will report almost anything, at length, and then have commentators analyse it at even greater length, the Queen carried on her duties undistracted and seemingly unperturbed. Notwithstanding the ceaseless pounding of press attention on her family, which was revealed to be completely human, to the surprise of some and the delight of others, Elizabeth, in public, simply persevered in her duties.

At Portsmouth for the June, 2019, 75th-anniversary celebration of the launching of the D-Day invasion forces, the Queen praised the spirit of that time. Perhaps ad-libbing her own thoughts, she said “the wartime generation – my generation – is resilient.” Note the present tense. In the United States, we refer to that crowd as “the greatest generation.” And the Queen was very much part of it. So perhaps her performance was not remarkable at all, but only what her duty required, as she saw it. She knew what her job was, and she did it, period.

Such diligence, so unlike the common run of politicians in democratic societies, was virtuous and appealing, in its own way compelling evidence that the Queen’s interest was only the national interest. After all, why else would she put up with the public spotlight on her family’s travails, the commentariat’s second-guessing, and especially the animosity of those who see no place whatever for a monarchy in Britain’s constitutional system. 

It is tempting to reach for the chronology of events that occurred to Britain and the world during Elizabeth’s reign to characterise or embody her performance. Many historians will be hard pressed not to speak of a “second Elizabethan Era,” but it is a mistake to take such a description at face value. The Queen’s direct influence on affairs of state is limited by design. Nor is it fitting to say she “set the tone” for life in the United Kingdom, since in many cases her manner was distinctly contrary to the tone of contemporary Britain, albeit quietly and with dignity. “Setting the example” is what she did instead, not conforming to tendencies she surely rejected and was right not to embody, however popular they might have been. Her impact was unquestionably positive, beneficial to all Britons, although its full extent must await the historical accounting. 

Beyond Britain, Elizabeth embodied the Commonwealth, whether its members also regarded her as their head of state or whether they were republics (or something else at times). As an organising principle for British strategy and diplomacy, the Commonwealth has had clear benefits for successive Prime Ministers’ foreign policies. Its virtues are hard to quantify in an age of statistics, but the benefits of the monarchy in making the Commonwealth work are undeniable, and may yet hold unrealized potential, especially in a post-Brexit environment.

It was also entirely appropriate that the Queen’s last official acts sealed the transition between the fourteenth and fifteenth Prime Ministers of her reign. Head-of-government transitions in democracies are inherently messy and sometimes unpleasant. In America, after Thomas Jefferson defeated incumbent President John Adams in the 1800 election, Adams left Washington on Inauguration Day in 1801 without attending the swearing-in. We just went through it again on January 20, 2021. Having the Queen be ceremonially central to a transition at the head-of-government level provides a greater sense of continuity and stability than encounters between fractious politicians can ever be.

Americans will deeply miss Queen Elizabeth character, perseverance, and, yes, resilience. Our prayers and best wishes to Charles III.

John Bolton is a former US National Security Adviser

Liz Truss May Be Just the Prime Minister America Needs

September 06, 2022

By Ambassador John Bolton

This article first appeared in the Wall Street Journal on September 6th, 2022. Click Here to read the original article.

When there’s a leadership vacuum in Washington, a resolute Britain is crucial to Western interests.

Frissons of disapproval shook the State Department last year when British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss first met Secretary of State Antony Blinken. She was “blunt” and “assertive” and took “maximalist positions,” anonymous U.S. sources asserted. The horror: a British official as plainspoken as an American!

As prime minister, an assertive Ms. Truss could be a force multiplier for the U.S. Boris Johnson, in his farewell to Parliament, advised colleagues to “stay close to the Americans.” These words are strange to American ears because we seldom hear them, even from our closest friends. But Mr. Johnson meant it, and there is no doubt Ms. Truss agrees. In the crises and conflicts ahead, her reward for pro-U.S. inclinations will be criticism that, like Tony Blair during the post 9/11 Iraq war, she is Washington’s “poodle.” Critics don’t grasp that Washington appreciates London’s unvarnished advice and candid criticism as proof of the alliance’s strength. Besides, I’ve never encountered a British poodle.

For America, bilaterally and globally, the transition from Mr. Johnson to Ms. Truss will likely be smooth. At a time when U.S. leadership is hesitant if not flatly wrong, such as in the tragic decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, British resolve is critical to sustain and advance Western interests.

Mr. Johnson bequeaths to Ms. Truss the essentially completed job of liberating the U.K. from the European Union, thus enabling her to focus on new priorities. As a former “Remainer,” Ms. Truss is, ironically, well-suited to the post-Brexit imperative of making a success of Britain’s new international reality. This requires abandoning a Eurocentric focus in economics, striving instead to expand British trade and commerce world-wide, and in politics advancing global British interests. While serving as Mr. Johnson’s trade secretary, seeking bilateral deals with the U.S. and other countries, Ms. Truss’s post-Brexit focus was marked by determination and perseverance. The philosophical direction of her policies seems clear.

The Ukraine war has proved that when it comes to defending continental peace and security, the U.K. can be a better “European” outside the EU than key EU members like France and Germany. While President Biden has stuttered in delineating clear objectives for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and in delivering military assistance to Ukraine, Mr. Johnson’s government never wavered. Ms. Truss has spoken about ensuring that Vladimir Putin “loses in Ukraine” and suffers a “strategic defeat.” By contrast, Mr. Biden and his more timid advisers appear to be dragged along by Congress, more forward-leaning officials and events on the ground. Especially if Ms. Truss keeps Defense Secretary Ben Wallace in place, London is likely to remain resolute even if Washington continues to falter.

Finland’s and Sweden’s fortuitously timed moves to join NATO will make it easier to keep decision-making on defense and security within the alliance and resist France’s constant push to expand EU involvement in those realms. Ms. Truss will have no difficulty insisting that NATO is the epicenter of Western politico-military debates, rather than indulging the fanciful notion that the EU can or should be.

Because Ms. Truss is freed from EU parochialism, she appears up to confronting China’s aspirations for Indo-Pacific and then global hegemony. During the just-concluded Tory leadership campaign, she was reportedly ready to reopen Britain’s national-security strategy to declare China, like Russia, an “acute threat,” rather than merely a strategic competitor. As in America, bureaucratic resisters in key departments, such as Treasury and the Foreign Office, resist even acknowledging the struggle with China, but Ms. Truss has no illusions. Her leadership as foreign secretary in establishing the Aukus partnership to build nuclear submarines for Australia proves the point. During the campaign, Ms. Truss’s support from Sino- and Euro-realists like former party leader Iain Duncan Smith and Sir Bill Cash indicates that she is committed on the China issue.

Iran’s nuclear menace also remains a challenge to Britain and America. As a party to the 2015 nuclear deal, London has a key role, and there are signs Ms. Truss is more skeptical of the failed agreement than prior U.K. governments. Her vocal supporters certainly are. No longer part of the “EU-3” negotiating group with France and Germany, Britain can play a truly independent role. If Ms. Truss used the occasion of her first phone call as prime minister with Mr. Biden to urge that he scrap the deal and emphasize that all options are on the table, her government would be well-launched.

Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 selection as prime minister foreshadowed Ronald Reagan’s election as president. We can only hope for a reprise, and the sooner the better.

Mr. Bolton is author of “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.” He served as the president’s national security adviser, 2018-19, and ambassador to the United Nations, 2005-06.

Addressing the Mar-a-Lago affidavit challenge

August 22, 2022

By Ambassador John Bolton

This article first appeared in the Washington Examiner on August 22nd, 2022. Click Here to read the original article

The Justice Department’s decision to execute a search warrant of Mar a Lago has ignited a two-front war, legal and political. Legally, a Federal magistrate authorized a search based on an FBI affidavit that there was probable cause crimes had been committed and that pertinent evidence was at Mar a Lago. In the “normal” course, little more would be said publicly by anyone involved. Justice would proceed to conclusion: prosecute someone or close the file, in silence. On the legal front, Justice’s position is comparable to many thousands of routine search warrants executed annually.

Enter Donald Trump, who, predictably, has launched a political war, one Federal law-enforcement officials were utterly unready to fight. Trump complained of unfair treatment, certainly compared to Hillary Clinton. He didn’t have any classified documents, or, if he did, he had declassified them, or something. His lawyers are challenging the warrant, and he insists the entire court file, including the underlying affidavit, be made public. He tweeted his complaints, inspired his allies to complain, and did television interviews. And that was just in the first few days. For Trump, this was the rough equivalent of clearing his throat.

Attorney General Merrick Garland responded in a public statement defending his Department’s actions, which he seemed to be doing under duress. This is unsurprising since DOJ, especially in criminal cases, normally speaks publicly only through its court filings and courtroom appearances. There are good reasons for the absence of public commentary, most importantly fairness to those under investigation. If they are not ultimately prosecuted, it is long-standing Anglo-American practice that their files are closed, and the matter ended. Prosecutors prosecute or don’t; they do not make social commentary on their work or the people they investigate, however loathsome they may be.

Now the political battle (and, incidentally, the legal battle) is whether the underlying affidavit should be made public. Trump has publicly so stated, thereby potentially waiving any argument that disclosing the affidavit’s contents would cause him harm. In addition, media companies are in court seeking to have the affidavit made public. DOJ vehemently opposes this request, arguing that disclosure would endanger existing and potential witnesses, and jeopardize the entire ongoing investigation, which is still at a relatively early stage.

The magistrate ordered Justice to consider “redacting,” or blacking out affidavit language it considers sensitive so at least parts could be made public. Justice said it would have to redact

so much that what was left would be unintelligible. Nonetheless, the magistrate ordered Justice to submit proposals for redaction by April 25. There is little doubt Justice will fight every step of the way, including appealing to an Article III judge if the magistrate does not rule to its satisfaction. Meanwhile, Trump is very successfully fundraising off the controversy, and Justice is, in Watergate parlance, left twisting slowly, slowly in the wind.

Trump has a First Amendment right to say what he has, but Justice has no obligation to be a punching bag. Substantively, DOJ’s concerns are compelling, but it needs to recognize the exigent circumstances it faces. It should acknowledge past mistakes, like then-FBI Director James Comey’s misbegotten handling of Hillary Clinton’s case. It should be timelier and more aggressive in publicly communicating the facts about its positions and actions. It need not say anything it has not already said in court filings and appearances, but it needs to speak more often, in more different fora and media, and especially in more extensive contact with Congress.

On the affidavit itself, there is an alternative to all-out trench warfare over “redaction” versus “no redaction”: paraphrase where possible what the actual affidavit says. This would allow at least some additional information to be made public. Such paraphrasing, of course, would have to be approved by the magistrate to ensure it accurately, if more obscurely, reflects what the original text said.

For example, affidavit references to classified documents might contain actual sensitive information from the documents, or materials that could reveal sources and methods of gathering intelligence. Instead, phrases could be used like “information about American nuclear weapons,” or “information about Chinese ballistic missile capabilities.” There might be ways to refer to present or future witnesses that would not reveal their identities or make them easily identifiable. There could be more-generalized statements about the probable-cause narrative on what crimes Justice alleges have been committed. There are almost certainly cases where paraphrasing is impossible, in which case the magistrate will have to rule on full disclosure or no disclosure.

Like everyone else in this debate except DOJ personnel and the magistrate, I have not seen the affidavit. I do not underestimate how difficult or unusual is the suggestion I am making. If there are better suggestions, let’s hear them. Otherwise, important law-enforcement institutions are in for a firestorm of unanswered criticism.

Putin’s resolve hasn’t collapsed. He may be planning his most outrageous gambit yet

August 15, 2022

This article first appeared in The Telegraph on August 12th, 2022. Click here to read the original article.

Be prepared for Russia to halt hostilities and exploit European weakness in a brazen attempt to secure many of its objectives

Russia’s failure to capture Kyiv shortly after its February 24 invasion, kill or overthrow Volodymyr Zelensky, and seize all of Ukraine, will be a landmark case study for future political and military strategists. So will Russia’s subsequent decision to fight a World War I-style offensive, primarily in eastern Ukraine, grinding out a few miles or less in new territorial gains every day.

And so will the next phase of the war, as summer turns to fall. In all probability, it will depend more on political strategy than military affairs. Unquestionably, the military state of play is a critical variable, but in the coming months of the war, intangible, hard-to-measure, hard-to-predict political variables could have the dispositive role. Accordingly, Nato and other Ukraine supporters must start thinking now (and should have been thinking long before today) about how to prevent Moscow from seizing the diplomatic high ground and bring the conflict to at least a temporary halt on its terms, not Kyiv’s. The next ninety days is a useful time frame, especially in America, with nation-wide congressional elections looming on November 8.

At present, Russia is still fighting its excruciatingly slow and painful style of offensive operations, almost entirely in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. Absent dramatic changes in the next ninety days, there will be no daring Russian armor attacks, no effective use of air power, and no significant, newly-initiated, cross-border incursions. In American football, this ground-game strategy is called “three yards and a cloud of dust.” Moscow’s casualties have been high, debilitating logistical and personnel problems persist, domestic public opinion is mixed and uncertain at best, and international sanctions have strained (albeit not visibly altered) the Kremlin’s war effort.

Ukraine appears to be readying a “southern strategy”, perhaps aimed to retake Kherson and to punch through the current lines to reach the Black Sea near Mykolaiv, thereby severing direct Russian land access from the Donbas to Crimea and adjacent territories. US, UK, and other Nato deliveries of high-end weapons are finally entering into significant usage on Ukraine’s front lines, although not at levels and in time-lines Kyiv’s military would like. Ukraine has kept a generally effective lid on disclosing its actual military casualties, but these may well be higher than generally understood in the popular Western imagination. And casualties among affected civilian populations, not to mention property and infrastructure destruction in the most contested regions, have been substantial.

Accordingly, one entirely possible scenario, perhaps even the most likely, is that the war simply grinds on, with no discernible end point, certainly not in the next ninety days. This, however, is where Russia’s political calculations may be dispositive. Before and during the conflict, the West has repeatedly underestimated Russia’s long-term resolve and its cost-benefit analysis about its gains and losses. Eager to personalise “Putin’s war” to show its purported domestic Russian unpopularity, Western leaders have failed to see how widespread – and how deep – is Russian feeling that Ukraine and other former Soviet republics were illegitimately torn away from the rodina, the motherland. People may tire from reading Putin’s 2005 view, but this is his core belief: “The collapse of the Soviet Union was the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”

Minimizing the loss of “historical Russia”, in turn, leads to underestimating the Kremlin’s willingness to suffer what seem to foreign observers to be disproportionately high casualties for relatively modest territorial gains. It may also help explain why Russia’s war of attrition is acceptable to Moscow where it might not be in the West. In America’s Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant was harshly criticised (called a “butcher” by some) for his 1864-65 campaign against Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, as was William Tecumseh Sherman for his 1864 “march to the sea” from Atlanta to Savannah. Grant’s war of attrition against Lee and Sherman’s swath of destruction brought the secessionists to final defeat, the Union’s blunt strength crushing the Confederacy. Similarly, in the 1939-1940 “Winter War” with Finland, Moscow also bled profusely, but persevered to victory.

So, there should be no surprise that Russia’s resolve has not collapsed. Nonetheless, Putin can certainly see the risk that sufficient supplies of sophisticated weapons and other war materiel from Nato in Ukraine’s hands will jeopardise the gains Russian forces have made to date. Putin also knows that support for Ukraine in Europe, particularly in France and Germany, is not what Nato leaders make it out to be, and that President Biden’s actions (as opposed to rhetoric) during the conflict have hardly been consistent with deep resolve. Finally, signs of disagreements within Ukraine’s political leadership are now appearing – not as yet disabling, but increasingly visible nonetheless.

Russia thus has a difficult political decision to make. Putin will not want to lose opportunities to retake more Ukraine territory, especially since he is far from his initial goals. Even more importantly, however, he does not want to be caught with Russian forces in broad retreat, where any diplomatic effort would be taken as a sign of weakness. Westerners who believe Putin is inadequately aware of the human and material costs suffered by Russia’s military are kidding themselves; he knows all too well he needs a respite if he can get one on his terms.

In such circumstances, Russia’s best option may be this. In the next ninety days, Putin announces, with a straight face despite its obvious falsity, that the Kremlin has achieved its objectives. Accordingly, he has ordered all offensive military operations halted, demands Ukraine do the same, and calls for immediate ceasefire negotiations to establish an agreed line-of-control between the forces. Putin will have to grit his teeth to do this, but he knows that a cease fire will give Russia time, years perhaps, to rebuild its military, restore its economy, and perhaps reabsorb more pliant, weaker parts of the Russian empire, from Belarus to Central Asia.

Moscow will be calculating that it can catch Kyiv unaware. Obviously and understandably, Zelensky, left to his own devices, would flatly reject halting the conflict with Russia still holding perhaps 25 per cent of Ukraine’s territory. He knows full well that any purported “cease-fire line” could become the new Russia-Ukraine border. Unfortunately, Zelensky may not be in a position to give a “Snake Island” response.

Without a prior agreed-upon diplomatic strategy with Nato, optimally from now forward, Zelensky is vulnerable to political weakness in the United States and key European Union members, which Putin knows and is prepared to exploit. Winter is coming, as they say. Germany and much of Europe are deeply concerned about Russia’s considerable leverage over their energy supplies. And, let’s be honest, many Western Europeans are tired of this war. Continuing economic turbulence, whether inflation, recession or both, only reinforces the angst that, in just 6-9 months, this has become an “endless war” that needs ending. Proclaiming the need for humanitarian relief in war-torn Ukraine, they would seize the chance of a “cease fire” to return to pre-February 24 relations with Russia.

Ukraine and Nato need diplomatic agreement now against this pre-emptive Russian ploy, which may rapidly gain the initiative regardless of battlefield developments. Indeed, in the coming weeks, Russia’s inclination to spring a “cease fire in place” will increase as its prospects for substantial further military gains recede.

The most important element of a Western counter-strategy will be to make clear at once that all sanctions against Russia will remain in place until the full withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine’s territory. Eliminating the sanctions is central to any Russian expectation of reviving its economy and military, thereby to reinitiate hostilities at some future point. If sanctions looked to be effectively permanent until full Ukrainian sovereignty was restored, Putin’s gambit would fall at the first hurdle. Many other issues, including reparations, prisoners of war and accountability also need resolving, but the key point is to stop Russia from consolidating its territorial gains through a scam, unilateral “ceasefire”.

Will France and Germany agree to such a counter-strategy? Will Biden be so weak before the November elections that he will jump at the chance for a diplomatic “win” to enhance Democratic prospects on November 8? Achieving real Nato unity on a hardline political stance against Russian efforts to split the West and leave Ukraine in peril will require considerable heavy lifting. Now is the time to start, and underlines why a new government in London, as resolute on Ukraine as Boris Johnson, is so critical.

 Iran is stuck in Biden’s blind spot

August 15, 2022

By Ambassador John Bolton

This article first appeared in the Washington Post, on August 15th 2022. Click here to view the original article

John R. Bolton served as national security adviser under President Donald Trump and is the author of “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.”

It has been somewhat surreal over the past few days, I admit, to be speaking publicly about Iran’s plot to assassinate me and many other American citizens on American soil. Fortunately, as an alumnus of the Reagan administration’s Justice Department, I have seen once again the diligent, enormously competent and courageous work of FBI agents and Justice Department attorneys who uncovered and pursued Iran’s murderous plots.

And, thanks to President Biden, I again receive Secret Service protection, as I did when I served as national security adviser.

However, what gives surrealism an entirely new meaning is that the Biden White House, faced with Iran’s broad campaign of anti-U.S. terrorism, amounting to an act of war, is still obsessively grinding along to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps efforts targeting me reached the point where the Justice Department filed criminal charges against Shahram Poursafi, unsealed last week. Interestingly, the charging documents’ narrative of Poursafi’s criminal conduct ends in late April, just as Secretary of State Antony Blinken first publicly admitted Iran’s threats to current and former American officials in congressional testimony. A significant number of former public servants are also in Iran’s sights, including former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, former defense secretary Mark T. Esper and others not now appropriate to name, but whose peril has been widely reported.

Nearly four months passed between Blinken’s public corroboration of Iran’s threat and the filing of criminal charges. The only reasonable explanation is that the president feared revealing the accusations would imperil his all-consuming goal of reviving the Iran nuclear deal.

Iran’s malign efforts, however, do not stop with public officials. Consider naturalized American citizen Masih Alinejad, an advocate for women’s rights in Iran. Just weeks ago, an Iranian agent armed with an AK-47 arrived at her Brooklyn home, intending, in the FBI’s view, to kill her. On Friday, Salman Rushdie, long an Iranian target, was grievously wounded by an assailant immediately lauded by Hasan Nasrallah, leader of Iran’s terrorist surrogate Hezbollah, as “a Lebanese champion” who had “implemented” the “honorable fatwa” promulgated by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Agence France-Presse reported that pro-regime Iranian media hailed the attack, and quoted Mohammad Marandi, an adviser to Iran’s nuclear negotiators, tweeting, “I won’t be shedding tears for a writer who spouts endless hatred and contempt for Muslims and Islam,” while implying the attack was a U.S. false-flag operation.

The assassination attempts on Alinejad and Rushdie might or might not be coincidental. Along with the extensive list of present and former government officials at risk, however, this is no small matter, except apparently to the Biden administration. We face a concerted threat to America itself, not unconnected threats to random individuals. Iran does not fear U.S. deterrence.

Accordingly, continued pursuit of the nuclear deal signals U.S. weakness worldwide. Russia has invaded Ukraine; suppose the Kremlin was now trying to murder Americans, as in 2018 when it attacked defectors in Britain with chemical weapons? Would Biden still hope for climate change negotiations with Vladimir Putin, as John F. Kerry suggested before the invasion? Or, given China’s threat to Taiwan, would we still conduct trade negotiations if clandestine Beijing agents were similarly engaged? Too many Americans are already threatened with death on American soil by a foreign government. It’s time for Biden to reject business as usual.

In recent weeks, the White House has nonetheless heedlessly, zealously continued its policy of capitulation, reportedly making further concessions to Tehran. These include whitewashing long-standing Iranian obstruction of International Atomic Energy Agency efforts to pursue necessary investigations, and weakening the scope and effectiveness of U.S. sanctions against the very Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that is attempting multiple assassinations.

How to explain this manic quest for the Holy Grail of reviving the 2015 deal? Analytically, Biden is compartmentalizing Iran’s nuclear program in one silo and its terrorist activities in another, treating them as separable and unrelated. He is engaging in the classic diplomatic fallacy of “mirror-imaging,” believing his adversaries see the world the same way he does, sealed off into separate compartments.

The reality in Tehran is precisely the opposite. The ayatollahs’ malevolence is comprehensive, with nuclear weapons, assassination and terrorism all elements in their full spectrum of capabilities. By failing to grasp the wider scope of Iran’s menace, and plainly failing to deter it, Biden’s dangerous effort to resurrect the nuclear deal is threatening America’s larger interests. Substantive arguments against the 2015 agreement and the concessions Biden has made over nearly 19 months in office should already suffice to bury the deal, but the broader threat Iran now raises should be the final nail in its coffin.

Biden’s bizarre policy of “nuclear deal über alles” reflects an instinct for the capillary when it comes to Washington-Tehran relations. Iran’s nuclear program is only a symptom of the real problem: the regime itself. That is what the United States must focus on ending.

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