An Iranian Shahed drone shot down a US Apache helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz, with both pilots rescued by a drone-operated boat in what appears to be the first such rescue operation of its kind. The United States responded with strikes on twenty targets including air defense systems, radars, and sites on Qeshm Island, over Bushehr, Hamadan, Bandar Abbas, and the port city of Sirik near the mouth of the strait. CENTCOM described the response as defensive and proportional. The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had initially downplayed the incident in a Tuesday morning phone call, calling it not a big deal and noting the pilots were not seriously injured, before changing his mind after Defense Secretary Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dan Caine provided updated information and recommended military action at a White House briefing.
John Bolton, former assistant to the president for national security affairs and author of The Room Where It Happened, joined Dan Proft on Chicago’s Morning Answer to assess whether a proportional response was the right call.
Bolton said it was not. He invoked the West Wing scene Proft played, in which Martin Sheen’s fictional president asks his national security team what exactly the virtue of a proportional response is, noting that the adversary knows what you are going to do and has already evacuated the targets. Bolton said that fictional president had it right, and the real administration does not. His core assessment is that the Iranians can see every day that Trump is palpably desperate for a deal to open the strait, bring down gasoline prices, and improve Republican prospects in November. Every day that passes without significant American military force is a day the Iranian regime wins, because it confirms that the strategy of waiting Trump out is working.
He said Trump made a specific error earlier in the campaign by publicly stating that the United States would not retaliate against Iranian strikes unless Americans died. He said American service members are not tethered goats waiting to be killed before the administration decides whether to respond, and that the endangerment of the two Apache pilots was itself virtually an act of war regardless of whether the drone strike was deliberate or an accident of proximity. He said as long as Iran believes America is desperate for a deal, they will hold out until they get the terms they want, and those terms will not be good for the United States in either the near or long term.
On the argument that the Gulf States need to be kept onside because they will ultimately bear the enforcement burden of any deal after American forces draw down, Bolton agreed that a defenestrated Iran would be better for those Gulf states than a merely diminished one, but acknowledged Trump is clearly not interested in regime change. He said what the past two to three months of military operations have accomplished is another round of lawn mowing, meaning Iran’s capacity has been degraded but will be rebuilt once oil exports resume and revenues flow again. The nuclear program, missiles, drones, and terrorist proxy network will all be reconstituted, as they have been after every previous confrontation.
On freedom of the seas as a principle, Bolton was emphatic. American commitment to open international waterways predates the United States as a major power, going back to when the country was thirteen colonies along the East Coast. He said arguing that Kuwait should be responsible for its own defense against a ninety-two million person neighbor is equivalent to arguing that Belgium and the Netherlands should have handled Nazi Germany on their own before World War II. Alliances are mutually beneficial. Gulf oil flowing freely through the strait under conditions of security benefits the United States and American allies globally, not just the Gulf states themselves.
On the signal abandoning that commitment would send to China regarding Taiwan and the South China Sea, Bolton said it would tell every adversary around the world that anything goes, and once that signal is transmitted, anything will. He said the United States benefits from free global commerce and that the idea of sitting back and remaining immune to what happens elsewhere in the world ended a long time ago.
On Iran’s own desperation, Bolton acknowledged the economic squeeze is real and the Treasury Department’s move against Iran’s eight-billion-dollar crypto ecosystem, targeting exchanges that account for roughly seventy-two percent of Iranian crypto inflows, is a good and important step. But he said the fundamental asymmetry remains: the Iranian regime does not care about the wellbeing of its people. There is no index of consumer confidence in Tehran that the Supreme Leader monitors with anxiety the way American politicians watch economic approval numbers. The regime cares about regime preservation and plays the difference between their indifference to popular suffering and American politicians’ sensitivity to voter sentiment as a strategic asset.
His specific advice to the president at this juncture has two tiers. Ideally, he would end the ceasefire, which he said has been essentially beneficial to Iran. He acknowledged there is essentially no chance Trump does that. Short of that, he would use American military force, ideally alongside UAE and Saudi Arabia who have already struck Iran independently, to physically open the Strait of Hormuz. He would maintain the blockade against Iranian exports while using the opening of the strait by force to reestablish deterrence. He said the reason this matters beyond the immediate economics is that if Iran agrees to open the strait under a diplomatic deal, they will treat it as a light switch they can turn on and off in any future confrontation. Opening it by force establishes a different precedent, one that says do not try this again.