TEHRAN — Former U.S. national security adviser John Bolton has criticized U.S. President Donald Trump for not adopting the policy of “regime change” in Iran.
In an interview with BBC Persian broadcast on Tuesday night, Bolton claimed that the Islamic Republic’s current situation is vulnerable, saying the way to change the establishment is through unrest.
The Iran hawk further said it is a great tragedy that the U.S. and other countries have failed to help Iranian people “overthrow the regime.”
He also claimed that as long as the current government is in power in Iran, the region will not experience peace.
Trump ousted Bolton on September 10, 2019. Bolton was infamous for his ultra-hawkish stance toward Iran.
Bolton ditches questions about his ties with MEK
Speaking at the National Press Club on Tuesday about his promise to celebrate regime change in Iran in 2019, Bolton dodged a question about his ties with the terrorist Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) group, and called for “regime change” instead.
“I didn’t hear the excerpt from my speech but I can tell you what I did say in 2018 was that the objective of the United States’ policy should be regime change in Iran before the 40th anniversary of the 1979 revolution,” he said.
“The Trump administration never adopted a policy of regime change,” he claimed. “I think that’s a mistake.”
Bolton and some other former and current officials of the Trump administration have attended the MEK’s meetings. Bolton has praised the terrorist group as a “democratic alternative” to the Islamic Republic.
The MEK was established in the 1960s to express a mixture of Marxism and Islamism. It launched bombing campaigns against the Shah, continuing after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, against the Islamic Republic. Iran accuses the group of being responsible for 17,000 deaths.
Based in Iraq at the time, MEK members were armed by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to fight against Iran during a war that lasted for 8 years in the 1980s.
In 2012, the U.S. State Department removed the MEK from its list of designated terrorist organizations under intense lobbying by groups associated with Saudi Arabia and other regimes opposed to Iran.
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