John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and national security advisor to President Donald Trump, urged his old boss to abandon the idea of reaching an accord with the Iranian government and pursue regime change instead during an appearance on Piers Morgan Uncensored.

After being asked what it would mean to “finish the job,” Bolton said he was unsure what Trump’s objectives are, and then argued that “there is no route to peace and security in the Middle East on any lasting basis until the regime in Tehran is removed.”

“Over the long term, even if the nuclear issue is the center of attention for Trump, and that’s understandable, there’s simply no secure guaranteed way to accomplish the objective that he says he wants until you get a regime in Tehran that flatly disavows any nuclear intentions,” he continued.

Eponymous host Piers Morgan went on to drill down on Bolton’s views:

MORGAN: Right, so what you’re talking about, this job finishing can only come if there’s a change of regime and they agree to hand over the enriched uranium or destroy it? Is that how you see it?

BOLTON: Well, I think that’s the only certain way to do it. And it’s not just on the nuclear side. It’s on the support for international terrorism and on closing the Strait of Hormuz. Right now I think the ayatollahs and the Revolutionary Guard think they’re in a position to open and close the strait like turning a light switch on and off. And that’s simply unacceptable, not just to the United States, but certainly to the Gulf Arabs-

MORGAN: How do you stop them? I mean, how do you actually stop them? I mean  I think that’s true, and I think there’s been this asymmetric war where you have a military war where America and Israel’s been pounding the military capability of Iran, and I’m sure massively damaging it. But they very quickly realized, the Iranians, that if they control the Strait of Hormuz, they can cause enormous global damage to the global economic market, particularly in relation to energy, and fertilizer, and so on. And they’ve been whacking their neighboring Gulf states in a way has been very damaging to their business models going forward. So if you’re Iran, and you think that the United States wants to get rid of the regime and decapitate your nuclear ambition as well, where’s the incentive to do any deal that takes away your leverage now that you’ve realized you’ve got this tremendous leverage?

BOLTON: I wouldn’t do a deal with the regime in Tehran. I don’t trust them, and I don’t think that simply doing a deal provides the kind of security we need.

MORGAN: So what would you do?

BOLTON: Well, let me make the predicate point, which I think is important. The regime didn’t wake up four or five weeks ago and say, “Amazing, why don’t we close the Strait of Hormuz? Nobody’s ever thought of that before.” Everybody knows, everybody who looks at a map knows that the Gulf itself, not just the Strait of Hormuz, is easily disrupted. In the U.S. Navy, they refer to sailing in the Arabian Gulf or Persian Gulf, you can take your pick, as like sailing in a bathtub. They don’t like being in there. And it’s not like Iran hasn’t tried to disrupt commercial trafficking, particularly in oil, in the Gulf and through the strait before. They did it in 1987 and ’88. Reagan reflagged Kuwaiti tankers as American tankers and we escorted them through. So this was obvious from the get-go, as was the possibility that Iran would attack the Gulf Arab states, which it did. And Trump knew that.

Watch above via Piers Morgan Uncensored on YouTube.

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