Most Replayed Moment: John Bolton on The Real Reason Why the Iran War Became a Such a Disaster

It seems that one of the reasons we got here was, or we, we got to this point, is because of a, a lack of preparation or a lack of planning that, that you spoke about yourself.

But one thing that I find very confusing is that every former government official says that there have been countless war plans for exactly this kind of operation, that this has been war gamed over and over again.

But at the same time, looking at the administration, they do seem to be genuinely surprised and unprepared with a lot of the developments and moves from Iran, like blocking the strait, like mining it.

W- how do you, how do you explain that?

Well, I think the, the people who've done the war games and the planning for these different contingencies are the people in the Pentagon.

That's what they do.

They plan.

And, uh, we've got great military capabilities, and we've got the best planners in the world.

They've got a plan for almost everything.

Uh, maybe not the invasion of Canada, but they've got plans that, uh, that's what they do.

They, they, they plan, and they train, and they exercise, and they're ready for it.

What's happened here is a failure of the political planning process, and I attribute that in large part, uh, to two factors.

One, Trump doesn't think systematically.

He doesn't think strategically.

He's been described as transactional.

That means every new decision is something completely separate from just when, before, even if it's only a few hours before.

The way that, uh, we've tried to take, uh, this planning process to a better, uh, level, uh, goes back to the 1947 National Security Act, which created the National Security Council process, and it is a, a, it is a, a bureaucratic process.

It certainly doesn't guarantee success, but what it's intended to do is provide a president all the pertinent information, give him options, uh, for w- what he might decide to do, uh, weigh the pros and cons of the options.

Ultimately, he makes the final decision.

Uh, and then the NSC, uh, makes sure it gets implemented.

Um, Trump has never liked the NSC process, and, uh, uh, it can be used to delay, to, uh, to fight bureaucratic turf fights.

I've been through any number of those things on different sides from different positions on, on the NSC.

Um, so it doesn't guarantee the right outcome, but what I...

What the failure to go through the process and think, "Well, if we do X, what does, what does Iran do? And if they do A, how do we counter that? And if they do B, what's the answer there?" There's no evidence any of that was undertaken, and I think that's because, uh, it's, it's Trump.

He's just incoherent in decision-making.