People criticizing President Donald Trump's decision to pull the United States out of the international Iran nuclear deal, more formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) are "180 degrees" wrong, as the agreement was not working, national security adviser John Bolton said Wednesday.
"This deal was giving Iran cover to get to the objective for decades, which was to make nuclear weapons," the former U.S. ambassador told Fox News' "Fox & Friends."
"It was conceived with the wrong view of consequences for the United States and Iran."
The JCPOA rests "on the notion" that if the nuclear problem was resolved, Iran's behavior would "change for the better," said Bolton, but "exactly the opposite has taken place."
Iran's behavior, he told the program, has "gotten worse" and "more belligerent, more supportive of terrorism, as we can see from what they are doing right now in Iraq and Syria."
He further commented that it is no surprise that Iran does not want to change anything in the existing deal, and that the country's only regret was that they didn't ask former President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State John Kerry for even more, "because they probably would have gotten it."
The deal was "fundamentally flawed," Bolton said, and "it was not in America's strategic interest to enter the deal and not in our strategic interest to stay in the deal. We're out of it."
Now that United States has pulled out of the agreement, "we are going to reimpose sanctions to the maximum extent possible. We're going to work with our European allies," said Bolton. "We are going to go after other objectionable aspects of Iran's behavior and try to reduce this threat in the region and around the world."
Bolton also pushed back at Democrats who say Trump's decision is sending the message to North Korea and its leader, Kim Jong Un, while plans are moving forward for their summit, that the United States can't be trusted to keep its end of reached deals.
"They are completely wrong," he said. "We had a rotten deal with Iran, and just as George W. Bush withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty because it was not in America's strategic interest, that's what the president has done here."
Bolton said instead, the action sends a "very important" message to North Korea, that "we're not in these negotiations with them just to get a deal, we're going to get the right deal."
That means the United States will ask North Korea to fulfill a promise made 25 years ago it would not pursue nuclear weapons and that it would give up uranium enrichment and pollutant reprocessing, said Bolton.
Bolton, also appearing on "CBS This Morning," said Trump's decision points out that the United States will no longer rely on "paper promises,' but instead will await "real performance" from Iran.
He also told the program that the Trump administration is continuing to work with European allies "about going after Iran's other malign behavior," as "we have an absolutely shared common objective which is to prevent Iran from getting deliverable nuclear weapons."
Meanwhile, the sanctions being imposed will create a "ripple effect" in Iran that will lead its leaders to give up its ballistic missile program, said Bolton.
He also insisted that Trump's decision won't push the United States closer to war with Iran, but instead, said Iran is the guilty party, and "bringing us closer to war with its belligerent activity in Iraq and Syria."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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