President Donald Trump personally shut down a fierce debate among his aides in April 2019 on additional exemptions for countries such as India from US sanctions on Iran oil purchases and ordered wavering officials to “go to zero”, and he had “not been sympathetic” to India’s case as made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, former National Security Adviser John Bolton writes in his book, “The Room Where It Happened”.
These deliberations took place around April 18, and the United States announced on April 21 the end of waivers from secondary sanctions for countries that continued to buy Iranian crude, forcing India, a net importer of crude, and others impacted to look for new suppliers.
It was not an easy decision, according to Bolton, who gives the first peek at behind-the-scene discussions that preceded and is known for his hawkish stand on Iran.
Trump was “vibrating increasingly” on the end-the-waivers side of the scale, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was “wobbly”, writes Bolton. State department officials were afflicted by “clientitis”, a phrase he uses to imply they were loyal to countries in their assignment portfolios, and not the US.
“But India is so important,” he writes, citing state department officials. Or, “Japan is so important.” Bolton says he could understand India’s case that it will not easily find an alternative supplier at the same low price Iran was charging. But its position was inconsistent with America’s, he argued.
{{/usCountry}}“But India is so important,” he writes, citing state department officials. Or, “Japan is so important.” Bolton says he could understand India’s case that it will not easily find an alternative supplier at the same low price Iran was charging. But its position was inconsistent with America’s, he argued.
{{/usCountry}}Trump ended the discussions on April 18. “Go to zero,” Bolton quotes the President as saying, and goes on to add that “in a phone call with Pompeo, Trump had not been sympathetic to India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying, ‘He’ll be okay’.”
Iran was the second largest supplier of crude for India at the time and the sanctions significantly disrupted India’s oil supplies. Indian investments in Chabahar port in Iran, which provides India crucial trade routes into Afghanistan and Central Asian countries, were left untouched. India was indeed “okay” with the Trump administration’s decision, thus, and has since found other sellers, including the United States.
India and a bunch of other countries, including US allies Japan and South Korea, were granted waivers from the first round of sanctions that came into effect in November 2018, following President Trump’s decision earlier in the year to withdraw the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) signed in 2015 by the US, UK, France, Russia, China and the European Union with Iran. The pact ended United Nations-led sanctions, bolstered by US add-ons, in return for Iran mothballing its nuclear weapons programme.
Bolton’s book is based on his 16 months as Trump’s third National Security Adviser. The print edition is slated for release on Tuesday, but pirated editions were available online over the weekend.
The former NSA has been surprisingly dismissive of the February-March 2019 tensions between India and Pakistan after the capture of an Indian Air Force pilot by Pakistan. The United States had waded into the issue to prevent an escalation between the two nuclear-armed countries.
“After hours of phone calls, the crisis passed, perhaps because, in substance, there never really had been one,” Bolton writes nonchalantly of the crisis.
“But when two nuclear powers spin up their military capabilities, it is best not to ignore it,” he adds in the book, but essentially to reprise his well-known reservations about Trump’s outreach to North Korea’s Kim Jon Un.
On the other sanctions issue, stemming from the Countering American Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) that targets Russia and seeks to punish it by scaring away its major defence purchases with the threat of secondary sanctions, Bolton says the President asked him to look into an article that said India was buying Russian S-400 missile defence system because it found them better than the American Patriots.
The US has offered Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) systems and Patriot Advance Capability missile defence system as an alternative to the S-400. But India is sticking with the Russian deal for now.
The book also confirms Trump was dismissive of the $3-billion Indian assistance in Afghanistan, as reported earlier. “India builds a library and advertises it all over,” Bolton writes, quoting Trump. India has built and repaired many structures as a part of its reconstruction efforts, but a library is not among them. The President might have been referring to the Afghan parliament India has constructed on the outskirts of Kabul.
The book has already generated a fair amount of interest and controversy, as reported by Hindustan Times earlier, with Bolton claiming President Trump pleaded with President Xi Jinping of China to help him win a second term, and backed his repressive measures in Hong Kong and the concentration camps for Uyghur Muslims.
Bolton also writes that Trump’s closest and loyal aides mocked him behind his back, such as Pompeo, who, the ex-NSA writes, passed him a note during a meeting with Kim, saying Trump is “full of s…”. Pompeo has denied it and called Bolton a “traitor”.