He has been described as “a hawk of US foreign policy” and “a Republican with a special vision”. But one thing is clear: former US national security advisor John Bolton has strict views on the world’s crises, including the current Israeli wars on Gaza and Lebanon.

Bolton was a member of the administrations of both former presidents George W Bush and Donald Trump, which had important impacts on the politics of the Middle East. He was instrumental in the decision of the Trump administration to pull out from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear deal with Iran, in 2018 that was signed under the Obama administration in 2015.

Bolton also called for regime change in Iran.

Though long out of office, Bolton remains close to decision-making circles in Washington and influential think tanks. Speaking to Al-Ahram Weekly, he said that the parameters of international relations are now being reshuffled.

In the light of the current global arms race and the increasing number of military alliances, where is the world going from your point of view?

Well, I think the world’s certainly becoming more dangerous. We can see we have war in Eastern Europe. There’s obviously war in the Middle East. There’s the threat of war in East Asia because of China’s aggressive posture with respect to Taiwan and in the South China Sea.

And I think the threat overall that is most concerning is the increasing axis between China and Russia. And they have their outriders in that axis, which is still forming, in that they have North Korea, Iran, Syria, Belarus, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

So, it’s a concern, I think, in all the different regions in the world, especially as some of these conflicts might be connected to the way China’s assisting Russia in Ukraine financially and by purchasing more oil and gas. So, it is a more threatening world, I think, for a lot of reasons across the globe.

What would the Middle East look like if either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris won the US presidential elections?

Well, I think it’s hard to predict. I think Harris is actually easier to predict.

I think she would follow basically the Biden administration policies for at least the first year or year and a half of her presidency if she won. She doesn’t have much national security experience, and what she does have, she learned in three and a half years of attending National Security Council meetings under the Biden administration.

So, I think predicting what she would look like for a year or so plus or minus is a pretty safe bet, but, you know, she’ll have her own advisors. Other events will shape her decisions, but at least in the near term, it will look a lot like the Biden administration.

Trump is impossible to predict because he doesn’t have a philosophy of national security. He doesn’t think in terms of what we refer to commonly as policy.

He makes ad hoc independent transactional decisions that really focus on whether they benefit Donald Trump politically or economically.

So, I don’t think the pattern of Trump’s decisions in his first term is necessarily a good indicator of what a second term would look like. I think it’s very uncertain.

Do you think that the two-state solution is still applicable in Israel and Palestine?

I don’t think the two-state solution is going to work as long as we have anything like the current conflict underway. 

I think, you know, the ultimate threat to peace and security in the entire Middle East is the regime of the mullahs in Tehran. And as long as that remains in place, and they are funding terrorist proxy groups like the Houthis or Hamas or Hizbullah or the militia groups in Iraq and Syria, I think the region will remain in turmoil. It’s something that right now we see playing out against Israel through what Iran calls its “ring of fire” strategy.

But that same ring of fire, which includes Iran’s conventional and would-be nuclear capacity as well, I think threatens many of the Gulf Arab states as well. So, it’s very dangerous, and I think one reason people could see the Abraham Accords [normalisation agreements between Israel and some Arab countries] coming was because many in the Gulf view the Iranian threat strategically, much like Israel does.

Former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice made a famous statement about “creative chaos” and the new Middle East. Are we witnessing a new Middle East?

Well, I think everybody would hope for a Middle East at peace, but, as I say, I think as long as the government of Iran is held by people who have hegemonic aspirations in the region and within Islam, which I think is what the ayatollahs want, I think they’re going to be a very disruptive force, and we’re seeing that play out right now.

As I said before, though, while Israel is the focus, we know that the Houthis in Yemen supplied with Iranian missiles and drones have attacked civil airports in Saudi Arabia and the UAE and oil infrastructure in both countries, too.

So, it’s just very dangerous as long as the regime in Tehran continues what is really very belligerent, threatening behaviour.

It has been a year since the start of the Israeli war on Gaza. Where do you think Israel stands today?

Well, the conflict is obviously still underway, but I think even now we can say that Israel has largely dismantled the Hamas military capability and is in the process of trying to do the same thing with Hizbullah.

I think if Hizbullah, for example, were removed as a military force in Lebanon, there’d be a much greater chance to have a representative government that wasn’t controlled by this Iranian-backed militia group.

And I think that the destruction of Hamas and Hizbullah, that’s if that’s what the end result is here, will mean a substantial lessening of Iran’s power in the region as a whole — not the end of it, that’s for certain — but considering the billions of dollars that Iran has spent over decades arming and equipping Hizbullah and Hamas, that investment is disappearing in front of our eyes.

Are we about to witness strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities in the light of William Burns, the head of the CIA, saying that Iran would need just one week to make a nuclear bomb?

Iran could have a nuclear weapon right now. We don’t know. One of the flaws of the 2015 nuclear deal is that we really don’t have transparency about what Iran’s doing.

So, I’ve assumed that they could contract with North Korea, and a lot of work could be done under mountains in North Korea that nobody would ever know about that could benefit Iran.

But leaving that aside, it’s certainly a threat to everybody in the region that Iran’s nuclear programme has gone unchallenged effectively for almost three decades now.

I think Israel’s in the process of deciding how to respond to the 1 October ballistic missile attack. We will just have to see what Israel’s decision is on how it retaliates for the 1 October attack.

If you were representing the US in the talks on a truce in the war on Gaza, would you be able to achieve better results?

Well, I don’t think so. I mean, I think the positions of Israel and Hamas were irreconcilable through most of the truce talks.

What Israel was willing to do was have a limited ceasefire of two or three weeks, something like that, four weeks, in exchange for the release of Israeli hostages and a release of Palestinian prisoners.

What Hamas wanted was a ceasefire that effectively meant the end of the war and the withdrawal of all Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip, and that’s not a small disagreement.

That’s a huge disagreement. And it’s not really one that’s subject to compromise. I don’t think it was a question of a lack of diplomatic skill or something like that. I just think those two positions were irreconcilable.

Do you think these talks were a strategic deception on the part of Israel while it was planning and executing the assassination of the Hamas and Hizbullah leaders?

I don’t think it was a strategic deception. I think when they saw an opportunity to get [Ismail] Haniyeh, they did it, when they saw an opportunity to get the Hizbullah leader, they did it. And I think that’s something that once the Hamas attack of 7 October had taken place, really all of this was foreseeable.

I hear people talk all the time about trying to avoid a wider war in the region. Honestly, I think the region has been in a wider war since 7 October. Some fronts of that war are more active than others at different times, but it has been a fully-fledged regional war since then.

Do you think there are real disagreements between Israel and the US?

I think the Biden administration has been focused on trying to limit the hostilities because it very much fears that if actual military activity increased, there would be a spike in international oil prices. That would affect what we call the price at the pump at gasoline stations in America, which would be very negative for President Biden, had he continued in the [presidential elections] race, or for Vice President Harris now.

And I think seeing a world in turmoil, the Middle East, the war in Ukraine, is disadvantageous to President Biden and Vice President Harris because it looks like on their watch the world has become more unsafe. 

So, I think these have been the concerns that have dominated the Biden administration policy.

How do you see Egypt’s role in the pursuit of de-escalation in the Middle East?

Well, I think Egypt obviously has an enormous stake in what happens to Hamas, which is effectively a subsidiary of the Muslim Brotherhood, at least up to the point when Iran became its principal supplier. And it is very worried about what might happen in Egypt, if this terrorist group were pushed out of the Gaza Strip and ended up in Cairo, obviously.

But I think the concern now is that the Houthis for almost a year have substantially closed the Suez Canal-Red Sea maritime passage, and published reports indicate that the Suez Canal revenues to Egypt are down by 50 per cent or more. Frankly, that sounds low: I wouldn’t be surprised if they were down 75 or 80 per cent, given the lack of shipping that’s going through.

This is something where I really think the United States should have done more to open up the Suez Canal-Red Sea passage. Freedom of the seas has been a principle of American national security since before we were a country, so even leaving the Iran-Israel conflict out of it to have the Houthis close the Bab Al-Mandab Strait is just unacceptable, and we shouldn’t have allowed it to go on as long as it has.

Do you think the Ukraine war will end if Trump wins the November elections?

Well, I’m very worried about what Trump has said during the campaign that his view has tilted towards Russia, and that if he’s elected that he could in effect help create an outcome that favoured the Russian side, which I think would be a mistake, given that the war began with unprovoked aggression by the Russians. 

Could the long-range weapons supplied to Ukraine ignite a nuclear war with Russia as Moscow has warned?

Well, I think that’s unlikely. I think the Kremlin has rattled the nuclear sabre several times over the course of the past two and a half years, but there’s never been any evidence they’ve actually moved their nuclear forces into a position for use.

So, I think you always take the risk of nuclear weapons seriously, but I think you have to assess them accurately because if you simply succumb to the threat, then in this case the Kremlin gets what it wants for free.

Do you think the United States has managed to contain China?

No, I don’t think so. I think China remains a threat along its Indo-Pacific periphery. I think Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Southeast Asian countries, Vietnam, and India are all very worried about Chinese belligerence. I mean particularly in Taiwan in the South China Sea.

I think this is going to be a major, major issue in the 21st century, obviously.