FT:

Iran deal at risk due to John Bolton’s extremism

...It is important in the present context to recall Mr Bolton’s record of reckless extremism. This national security adviser does not believe in arms control treaties. Astonishing though it still seems, he was undersecretary of state for arms control and international security in the first George W Bush administration in 2001-05. In that guise, Mr Bolton helped rip up the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, a landmark in arms control negotiated in 1972 with the then Soviet Union by Richard Nixon.

He helped persuade Mr Bush to cancel the so-called Agreed Framework, worked out by Bill Clinton’s administration with North Korea in 1994. That framework had renewed North Korea’s commitment to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty — another cornerstone of arms control Mr Bolton holds in contempt. It sealed North Korean nuclear facilities and placed inspectors on the ground, in exchange for fuel supplies, two light water reactors and a US pledge not to invade. Pyongyang cheated on uranium enrichment (which Iran would later be allowed within tight limits under its agreement). Washington’s repudiation of the whole deal was histrionically muscular, Mr Bolton’s stock-in-trade. But it led North Korea to restart its nuclear weapons programme — with results that are now plain.

Mr Bolton was also a risibly optimistic advocate of the Iraq invasion, which not only incubated the Sunni jihadis of Isis but an Iran-aligned, Iraqi Shia paramilitary equivalent to Lebanon’s Hizbollah, except three times bigger. Not deterred by these smashing successes, Mr Trump’s national security adviser continues to push for regime change in Iran (as well as North Korea).

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