John Bolton is pushing for war with Iran - like thousands of days before

If National Security Adviser John Bolton wants anything, it's are with Iran.

But as Joe Cirincione explains in Bolton’s Big Iran Con DefenseOne 01/12/2019:

Trump’s mendacity may encourage Bolton’s, but he needs precious little prompting. As the secretary of state continues this week and next on his overlapping anti-Iran tour of the Middle East, we should brace for a stream of false claims every bit as strong as the ones coming from the White House.

In particular, we should spend at least as much time fact-checking their claims as we do those of the youngest member of Congress [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], whose exaggerations may prove embarrassing, but are unlikely to be fatal. Bolton’s and Pompeo’s falsehoods are paving the way for a Middle East war that will make the dispute over the wall with Mexico look like a border dust-up.

I would say his comparison in that last sentence understates the seriousness of what Bolton is pushing for. But there are various kinds of Middle East wars that don't necesssarily involve an invasion of Iran. The neocon plague of promoting war in the Greater Middle East has done way too much damage already.

And, of course, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been in Egypt pushing for war against Iran, too. (Paul Pillar, Pompeo In Cairo: Anti-Obama, Anti-Iran, And Little Else LobeLog 01/11/2019; In Cairo, Pompeo delivers Trump's vision: Confrontation with Iran Aljazeera 01/13/2019)

Pillar comments that Pompeo's speech "seemed written to please an audience of one—President Donald Trump - along with the domestic political base to which Trump’s own rhetoric is designed to appeal." He notes that a Pompeo's advocated "that nearly everything in U.S. foreign policy ought to be subordinated to confronting Iran."