John Bolton
© AP Photo / Patrick Semansky
This is not the first time the ex-Trump administration official has criticised his former boss. He recently released a tell-all book about his days as national security adviser, depicting POTUS as purportedly being incompetent in matters of foreign policy.

Former National Security Adviser John Bolton has once again stepped up his criticism of Donald Trump's foreign policy. This time he took aim at the president's approach to Iran, which it slapped with heavy sanctions in 2018 and whose top general, Qasem Soleimani he ordered to kill in January 2020.

In an interview with the Kurdish network Rudaw TV, Bolton stated that all these measures against Iran were insufficient to force the country into abandoning its alleged ambition to acquire nuclear weapons - an aspiration that Tehran strenuously denies. Still, the former official said that the Iranian government didn't give "any sign whatever" that they had decided to drop the development of a nuclear programme and hence, in Bolton's opinion, it should be toppled.

"I think they believe the nuclear capability will help keep them in power, which is the principle reason I think they need to be removed from power and get in place a government that really will renounce the search for nuclear weapons", the ex-official said.

Bolton alleged that Trump doesn't want to change the regime in Iran despite it, in the former official's opinion, being "very unpopular" among the country's people. He argued that instead of what Trump has been doing all these years, the US should have worked on bringing down the country's leaders, ayatollahs, and "restoring" democracy in Iran.


Comment: Just like we did with the war in Iraq, huh? That worked splendidly, didn't it?!


I think one of the things that we should look for in Iran is the overthrow of the regime. I think it should be US policy to overthrow the ayatollahs and restore the government to the people of Iran", Bolton said.

The former national security adviser is well known as a hawk and strong opponent of the current Iranian government, advocating its overthrow long before he joined the Trump administration. He is an avowed supporter of the People's Mujahedin of Iran, an opposition group that in the past was labelled a terrorist organisation by the European Union, Canada, the US, and Japan.