Former National Security Adviser John Bolton has argued that the United States should maintain and escalate military strikes against Iran rather than seek a negotiated exit. Every bomb falling on the country underscores the regime's inability to defend itself, Bolton wrote, and as this reality grows clearer to Iranian citizens, so does the conclusion that the clerics' days are numbered.
Bolton made the case in a guest essay published by The New York Times, "Hvylya" reports.
Trump has said that regime change in Iran has already happened, but Bolton called him "badly mistaken." Even Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared to recognize that reality almost immediately after Trump's remarks, Bolton noted. "The faces at the top have changed, but the regime's extreme ideology is possibly even stronger in them than it was in their predecessors," he wrote.
Bolton pushed back against the idea of a dramatic final blow followed by withdrawal. The United States should avoid creating self-imposed deadlines and instead pursue more targets at its own pace, he argued. Ongoing military attacks are "the best way to continue to thoroughly destabilize the regime," allowing Iran's opposition and potential defectors to exploit the crumbling authority.
American strength and leverage over events in Iran are growing, not diminishing, Bolton wrote. That argues strongly for maintaining a strategic perspective rather than responding to short-term economic or political pressures - even after the loss of two American planes.
Trump should continue destroying Iran's instruments of state power, primarily the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and its subsidiaries: the Quds Force, which threatens America and its allies abroad, and the Basij militias, which suppress the Iranian people at home.
Also read: "Hvylya" examined why Iran's deterrence collapse has made nuclear weapons more attractive to other aspiring states.