TEHRAN, April 01 -The Pentagon is gearing up to face friction with the White House following US President Donald Trump's pick of John Bolton as his national security advisor.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC)-The Pentagon is gearing up to face friction with the White House following US President Donald Trump's pick of John Bolton as his national security advisor.
Citing a source familiar with the situation at the Pentagon, The Hill reported on Saturday there is skepticism that US Defense Secretary James Mattis and Bolton will get along.
“I don’t think they will get along... I think they’ll be at odds,” said the source.
Bolton, an outspoken advocate of military intervention who served in the administration of former US president George W. Bush, has argued for attacking Iran and North Korea.
In a February op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, Bolton made the "legal case for striking North Korea first" to stop what he described as an "imminent threat" from the nation's nuclear program. He also argues that the “only diplomatic option left is to end the regime in North Korea.”
But Mattis, despite having warned North Korea that it faces destruction if it does not stop its pursuit of nuclear arms, has stressed that any conflict with Pyongyang would be “tragic on an unbelievable scale.”
“Our effort is to work with the [United Nations], work with China, work with Japan, work with South Korea to try to find a way out of this situation,” Mattis said last May.
Bolton is also strongly opposed to the Iran nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). According to The American Conservative magazine, Bolton "has been obsessed for many years with going to war against the Islamic Republic." He had also advocated for the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.
According to retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis, Bolton's views will cause problems for the US administration.
Pentagon officials are “afraid that [Bolton’s] going to make the president lean more towards the military options in ways that the military don’t support. There are stakes set, I think, for some conflict there,” the daily quoted Davis as saying.
On Thursday, Mattis told Bolton that he is the “devil incarnate” after greeting him at the Pentagon.
Source:Press TV
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