The humiliating -- to George W. Bush, and to us, the citizens of the United States -- prospect of John Bolton becoming ambassador to the United Nations through a recess appointment is reason enough at this point to oppose the man. Such an appointment would signal contempt for both the constitutional advise-and-consent process and for the UN. And while neither of those may matter to officials of this administration, what should matter to them is the weakness it signals about them -- the biggest Republican majority in a Senate in a dog's age and they still can't get their man through.
But we have to work under the assumption that Bush will indeed make Bolton a recess appointment. There's nothing in his character to suggest otherwise. Furthermore, we have to assume that, while Bolton would certainly arrive on First Avenue a damaged package under those circumstances, he will go about asserting his prerogative without timidity. There's nothing in his character to suggest otherwise.
Given all that, it's worth thinking about what he might actually do on the job. Usually when this question is considered, the talk is of UN reform (or “reform,” depending on one's perspective). But maybe there are other items on the likely Bolton agenda; and if there are, we can bet that Iran is at the top of the list.
It's an open secret in Washington that many neoconservatives -- most outside the administration, like Michael Ledeen, but a few still inside -- want to “do Iran next.” What “do” means in this context is as yet unclear. It could mean “decapitation attacks,” or targeted air strikes against key Iranian facilities or leadership. It could mean facilitating, covertly and overtly, a “people power” movement that could someday topple the mullahs. Or, finally, in the neocons' wet dream, it could mean a ground war (other neocons, of course, are fantasizing about Syria).
I should stipulate here that I detest the Iranian regime as much as any neocon. As the estimable Stephen Kinzer has written in our pages, “Iranians fervently wish for change,” and Western liberals have to support that urge.
But there are ways, and there are ways. The way of the neoconservatives outside the administration, with Republican Representative Curt Weldon playing 007 with the discredited Manucher Ghorbanifar, as exposed exclusively by Laura Rozen and Jeet Heer in our pages, is at once dangerous and silly. And the administration doesn't seem to be having much positive impact there either, on the evidence of the election last week of hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Which brings us to Bolton. On April 18 of this year, The Washington Post's Dafna Linzer printed the stunning report that on 12 separate occasions, Bolton, as the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, blocked his bosses Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice from receiving information about Iran. Let's repeat that: Bolton got information about Iran from intelligence and other sources and sat on it. Twelve different times.
Linzer cites two especially interesting cases. In October 2003, Powell was prepping for an important international meeting on Iran. A memo had been prepared informing him that, in the Post's words, “the United States was losing support for efforts to have the UN Security Council investigate Iran's nuclear program.” Yet when Bolton was asked about this in a meeting, a source told the newspaper, he said that information about other countries' views could not be collected.
On a more recent occasion, the Post says, Bolton allowed Rice to go to Europe -- her first trip there as secretary of state -- without knowing about European opposition to Bolton's efforts to oust Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency. Rice has been publicly supportive of Bolton's nomination, but in private, she shut him out of everything having to do with Iran. The Post reported on June 20 that the Bush administration's shift toward more cooperation with Europe on the Iran question was tied directly to the sidelining of Bolton.
So here's what we know: In one area, and in only one area that we know of (Iran), Bolton kept information from his superiors and pursued an agenda that was more hard line than others in the administration were comfortable with. It also happens to be the case that the matters on which Bolton freelanced had to do specifically with the United Nations' handing of Iran-related issues.
It's hardly going out on a limb, given all this background, to suggest that UN Ambassador John Bolton might hit Turtle Bay with a certain agenda in mind with regard to Iran -- an agenda, his history on the topic indicates, that might not even square with that of his boss, the president. Small wonder that Ledeen told The New York Sun back on January 24, “I love John Bolton.”
The prospect of a Bolton recess appointment is sneaking under the radar right now. A formidable opposition that got Democratic senators to focus on Bolton in the first place, and then succeeded in raising such a clamor that the GOP-controlled Senate couldn't win him a cloture vote, seems to have turned its attention to other matters. Folks, let's not wake up next Thursday morning and find that this man is representing us at the United Nations. It's time to rev the machine back up.
Michael Tomasky is the Prospect's executive editor.
