‘TRUMP REJECTED PM MODI’S WAIVER CASE ON IRAN CURBS’
John Bolton writes in his book that Trump had pointedly ‘not been sympathetic’ to India’s case as made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi
WASHINGTON DC: US President Donald Trump had personally shut down a fierce debate among his aides in April 2019 on additional exemptions for countries like India from US sanctions on Iran oil purchases and ordered wavering officials to “go to zero”, former National Security Adviser John Bolton writes in his upcoming book. Bolton writes that Trump had pointedly “not been sympathetic” to India's case as made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. These deliberations took place around April 18, and on April 21, the United States announced 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 had not been an easy decision, according to Bolton, who gives a first peek at behind-thescene discussions that had preceded, even though it's tainted by his known hawkish stand on Iran.
Trump had been “vibrating increasingly” on the end-thewaivers side of the scale, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was “wobbly”, writes Bolton, and the 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.
Trump ended the discussions on April 18. “‘Go to zero,'” Bolton writes quoting the president, 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. But they left untouched Indian investments in Chabahar port in Iran, which provides India crucial trade routes into Afghanistan and up north Central Asian countries. 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 went into effect in November 2018 following President Trump's decision announced 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 EU with Iran. It had ended Unled
sanctions, bolstered by US add-ons, in return for Iran mothballing its nuclear weapons programme.
The former NSA has been surprisingly dismissive of the February-march 2019 crisis between India and Pakistan stemming from the capture of an Indian Air Force pilot by Pakistan, which the United States had waded into to prevent an escalation between two countries with nuclear arms.
“After hours of phone calls, the crisis passed, perhaps because, in substance, there never really had been one,” Bolton writes nonchalantly of the crisis and the outcome negotiated by the US in the middle of Trump's high-profile second summit with North Korea's Kim Jong-un. Trump had opened his post-summit news conference in Hanoi on March 2 saying he had some “decent news” that would end India-pakistan tensions. The captured pilot crossed over at the Wagah border hours later.
“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 Kim.