Mark Levin Defends John Bolton, Rebuffs Hysteria Over Trump Iran Policy

Mark Levin delivered a strident defense of the Iran policy of President Trump and his National Security Adviser John Bolton on the May 15, 2019 edition of the Mark Levin Podcast:

I want to talk briefly about Iran. You and I do not have the information that the president has that has caused him to act to move the USS Lincoln and other support ships into the Mediterranean and other parts of the Middle East. To move B-52 bombers into Qatar, our base there. To put our military personnel in Syria and other areas of the Middle East on high alert. And to remove out State Department employees from Iraq. We don’t have the facts.

Now, we can surmise as a general matter, we know what Iran is up to. Iran is looking to create war throughout the Middle East. Iran is looking to take over Iraq. Iran is looking to take over Yemen. Iran is looking to take over parts of Syria. Iran is backing Hezbollah, its terrorist, militant arm, among other terrorist organizations. And Iran is looking to build nuclear warheads and to put them on ICBMs. Iran is looking to go to war with, among others, Israel. So, Iran is a very, very dangerous country. It is run by Islamo-Nazis in Tehran.

The president, this president, unlike the past president, has really put an economic stranglehold on this country. We talk about our GDP going up 3.2 percent. Their GPD lost six percent. And the president put further sanctions in place as applies to oil and applied them worldwide. That is, our allies or people who do business with us and our companies. They are no longer free to purchase oil from Iran. So, he’s put really strong deterrents in place, economic deterrents and sanctions. But something has happened with this president, who’s no interventionist, he’s no interventionist, has great concern.

And as I’ve been reading the media and trying to figure out what’s going on, all I get is a lot of opinion and pablum that this is Iraq under George W. Bush. That this is another phony issue, like weapons of mass destruction, they argue, they write. That Trump is going to be dragged into a war thanks to neocons like John Bolton. That’s the genius Pat Buchanan there, among others. And that Trump’s going to send a hundred and twenty thousand troops. He didn’t say he’s sending a hundred and twenty thousand troops. Those plans are on the shelf just in case, for a president. As they are when it comes to China, Russia, and a whole lot of other scenarios. But I’m sitting here thinking to myself, we’ve got all these Code Pink Republicans, we have all these Code Pink Democrats, if Iran is indeed threatening our military personnel and our military assets, if Iran is indeed planning to cut off navigable international waters to prevent twenty percent of the world from receiving oil that comes out of the Middle East, if Iran is preparing a massive provocative reaction, both militarily and economically, why are these newspapers attacking Donald Trump? Why are these newspapers attacking John Bolton? Is it always politics at all times? Because it seems to be.

As I said, this president is not a radical interventionist. He’s not an interventionist at all. He’s taken a lot of troops out of Syria. He wants to take a lot of troops out of Afghanistan. That is his mindset. That’s what he ran on. Agree or disagree? But here he’s ramping up our defenses because, based on other accounts, our military has been threatened in a significant way and the economic stability of the world should oil be cut off is being threatened. How is this in any way a comparison to what took place with Iraq? He’s not looking for an excuse to go to war. He’s not looking for an excuse for military action. What’s happened to his supporters? So-called supporters. In the media. All of a sudden – all of a sudden they think he’s going to make an odd move or take a left turn or whatever it is.

If Iran is doing these things, Iran must be stopped. Iran must be confronted. We’re not the colonialists, we’re not the imperialists, we’re not trying to set up some kind of a – a caliphate in the Middle East. It amazes me how even some conservatives think of our country. We don’t conquer territory to hold territory. We’re not the imperialists. You have a terrorist regime that has killed God knows how many Americans over decades and wants to kill more and talks about it. You have a president that’s prepared to stand up to this. Unprovoked. You have a regime that’s not popularly elected. You have a regime that – that is repressive. Repressive against Christians and whatever a few Jews are left, repressive against dissidents, repressive against gays, repressive – look, it’s an Islamo-Nazi regime, like I just said. But when you start threatening in a serious way American military forces, personnel, and assets – you know, I remember when Hezbollah blew up the barracks, the Marine barracks and killed what? Over a hundred, over a hundred and fifty – I think it was a hundred and eighty-three, I could be off, Marines as they were sleeping? And I remember the Reagan Administration was criticized strongly.

Well, it sounds to me like this administration has learned the lesson of past administrations, including the great Reagan Administration of which I served, and has said, not again. That’s not going to happen. But we don’t have all the facts. So why all the knee-jerkers out there going on and on about how this is all weapons of mass destruction like Iraq? And we can debate that, but I don’t need to debate it now. That he’s being dragged into war by John Bolton. This president isn’t dragged into anything. He has a mind of his own. He looks at the facts, he makes a decision. So, the reporting on this is utterly unhelpful. It’s not factual. It’s mostly political and partisan in that respect. I have to hear these Code Pink Republicans and their knee-jerk reactions to everything and they don’t have all the facts either.