John Bolton: Countries That Once ‘Hailed’ Obama as a ‘New Messiah’ Now Realize His Policies ‘Endangered’ Them

Barack-Obama-Berlin-Germany-AP
Associated Press

Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, who has formed a Super PAC to support candidates committed to American economic and national security, joined SiriusXM host and Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon on Breitbart News Daily.

Bannon asked if President Obama’s current world travels amounted to “the road trip from Hell,” given his unpopularity everywhere from Europe to the Middle East — a mirror image of the rock-star reception he received in those quarters as a presidential candidate, eight long years ago.

“Back in the 2008 election, he went and made a very big campaign speech in Berlin, and the Europeans and others around the world were so eager to see the back of George W. Bush, they hailed him as almost a new messiah,” Bolton recalled of Obama’s early popularity.  “He won the Nobel Peace Prize within eight or ten months of being in office.  He was going to change the United States in ways that would make everything better.”

“But, in fact, they see — I think people all around the world, in the countries of Europe, where he’s visiting Saudi Arabia, in Israel in particular, but really all around the world — that his policies have now endangered what minimal order and stability there is in the world,” Bolton continued.  “The kind of United States that Obama’s created, the kinds of policies he’s followed, have left not only America less stable, but our friends around the world less stable, too.”

Bolton was not surprised that Obama’s trip to Saudi Arabia included a few of what Bannon called “uncomfortable silences.”

“By agreeing to this nuclear deal with Iran, he has legitimized Iran’s path to deliverable nuclear weapons,” Bolton said.  “Now it’s really only a matter of time.  The Iranian ayatollahs never had any intention of giving up their nuclear weapons program.  What they wanted was their assets unfrozen and the sanctions lifted.  They’ve now got that.  And they’ve now actually provoked an arms race, to the least.”  

“So when Obama says, as he did just a couple of days ago, in an interview before leaving on this trip, ‘You know, the Saudis and others have to learn to live with Iran in the region,’ it’s like telling Poland, ‘Look, you’ve got to learn to live with Nazi Germany; you’ve got to learn to live with the Soviet Union.’  They’re engaged in a struggle for hegemony, and Obama’s acting like it’s a playground dispute,” Bolton marveled.  “The oil-producing monarchies on the Arabian peninsula, they think Obama’s basically lost his mind.”

Bolton argued that the rift between the Saudi alliance and Iranian axis goes beyond the Sunni-Shiite religions schism, reflecting “historical animosities,” such as the Iranian view of the Kingdom of Bahrain as a province of Iran.

“It has the resonance as Saddam Hussein and Iraq thinking that Kuwait was a province of Iraq, right before they invaded them back in 1990,” Bolton explained.  “These struggles have long historical roots, and they can change.  When the Shah was in charge of Iran, we had good relations with Iran and his government.  We had good relations with the Saudis.”  

“But underneath is, what we’re seeing now is, a fundamental struggle that the United States has helped adjust in our interests — in our interests, not in anybody else’s,” he insisted.  “And when we withdraw from that struggle, our interests suffer, as do the people that we’ve tried to prevent from being dominated — in this case, by the religious fanatics who run the government of Iran.”

Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00AM to 9:00AM EST.

You can listen to the full interview with John Bolton below:

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.