Former American Ambassador to the United Nation John Bolton writes in a new book that expecting Iran to abandon its nuclear program is “the road to the Nuclear Holocaust.”
In “Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad” – due out on November 6 – Bolton asserts that the three years during which Europe tried to use diplomacy to halt Iran’s efforts to become a nuclear power were useless.
“Iran will never voluntarily give up its nuclear program,” he writes, “and a policy based on the contrary assumption is not just delusional but dangerous. This is the road to the Nuclear Holocaust.”
Bolton also discloses that in October 2006, during the first meeting between President Bush and Ban Kimoon, Bush told the secretary-general elect he should “get rid” of all the U.N.’s senior staff, specifically Mark Malloch-Brown of Britain, deputy secretary-general, whom Bush described as “anti-American.”
Ban did not renew Malloch-Brown’s contract and within months he was named Britain’s Foreign Minister for Africa, Asia and the United Nations.
“The revelation suggests that American unhappiness with Lord Malloch-Brown – who caused a rumpus by declaring that Britain should distance itself from the United States – extends to the very top of the Bush Administration,” The Times of London reported.
In another revelation, Bolton writes that Detlev Mehlis, the U.N. investigator who probed the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minster Rafik Hariri, told him that “of course” President al-Assad of Syria was involved in the killing.
Mehlis’ successor Serge Brammertz “seemed to have no basic disagreement” with that disclosure, Bolton writes – “a sentiment that will surely raise the ire of Damascus,” according to the New York Times.
As to why he gave up the fight for Senate confirmation of his nomination to remain in his post and instead left the administration at the end of 2006, Bolton states: “I didn’t like the direction of our policy on too many issues, particularly Iran, North Korea, and Arab-Israeli issues.”
Displaying occasional flashes of biting humor, Bolton writes at one point about a U.N. reform plan: “It was so bad that [Secretary-general Kofi] Annan and Jimmy Carter quickly endorsed it.” | 
