On Friday, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced the indictment of nine Iranians for conspiring to hack and defraud American universities and businesses on behalf of the Iranian government. Rosenstein vowed harsh repercussions for the Iranian hackers, including their extradition to the United States and imprisonment if convicted. The strongly worded presser stood in stark contrast to the Trump administration’s approach to hacks by Russia, a far more pervasive threat to the United States. Since 2014, Russia has hacked the State Department, the Department of Defense, the Democratic National Committee, the Republican National Committee, the personal emails of millions of Americans, and most notably, critical infrastructure including the power grid.
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While the contrast between the Trump administration’s treatment of Iranian and Russian hackers is alarming in its own right, the most troubling aspect of the announcement may be the timing. Less than 24 hours before the indictments were revealed, Trump appointed notorious warmonger John Bolton as his new national security advisor, effective April 9. Bolton has been seeking to invade Iran for at least 15 years.
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Bolton has insisted, without evidence and in defiance of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s assessment, that Iran is not honoring its commitment to constrain its nuclear program, and that military invasion is necessary. He has repeatedly insisted that the U.S. should abandon the Iran deal completely, appearing on FOX News–Trump’s main repository of policy advice–to argue that Trump should “just get out of it.”
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In the fall of 2017, as tensions between the U.S. and North Korea ran sky-high, Bolton repeatedly called for a pre-emptive strike, one that would likely lead to nuclear war. Bolton differs here from Trump only in his experience and bureaucratic prowess: Trump has fantasized about using nuclear weapons for over 30 years – “If we have them, why not use them?” he famously said–and has proposed massive spending on a new nuclear arsenal. [...] In January, the Pentagon announced in its updated nuclear posture review that nuclear strikes were a legitimate response to nonmilitary attacks if they involved “extreme circumstances”, citing a major cyberattack as an example.
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If the Iranian hacks–which, according to Rosenstein, caused $3.4 billion in damage–are considered “extreme circumstances” by the White House, nuclear strikes may be on the table.
Sarah Kendzior
Talk about inappropriate response. "That's the Chicago way."
For Bolton, the answer to any international crisis is always war, and the indicted Iranian hackers, presented with much fanfare by Rosenstein, give the administration an ostensible pretext. Needless to say, an administration that runs on “alternative facts” will simply invent an excuse where none exists, but the timing of the announcement seems geared to direct the nation’s attention to Iran as a major threat, laying the groundwork for Bolton to pursue military and even nuclear strikes–now justified in official documents by the changes in the Pentagon’s nuclear posture review–when he begins his tenure in April.
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Bolton will enter a White House with a gutted State Department, multiple officials under investigation for illicit Kremlin ties (which Bolton also shares) and illicit work with Cambridge Analytica (with whom Bolton also worked), and a support team of religious zealots, Islamophobes, kleptocrats, and mercenaries, all of whom would likely find a rearrangement of the Middle East power structure advantageous. It is an administration that has long abandoned accountability, violating both White House protocol and the constitution with impunity, and firing officials—like James Comey and Andrew McCabe—who attempt to investigate the corruption.
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