text: Unlike several of President Trump's early national security officials like National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Bolton campaigned to press President Trump for a complete withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran (the JCPOA) and rejected the idea it could be fixed. Unable at the time to directly present his position to President Trump, Bolton published his proposal on how to withdraw from the Iran deal in an August 28, 2017 National Review Online article. After he was named to succeed McMaster as Nation Security Adviser in April 2018, Bolton pressed the President to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, a decision President Trump announced a month later. Bolton has been one of the biggest anti-Iran hawks in the Trump administration.
  Speaking to a meeting of Iranian exile group Mujahedin-e-Khalq in March 2018, Bolton said the Trump administration should follow the goal of regime change in Iran and that "before 2019, we here will celebrate in Tehran!"
  In 2019, Bolton, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo successfully sabotaged Trump's attempts to open diplomatic channels with Iran.
  On January 3, 2020, the high-level Iranian General, Qasem Soleimani, was killed in a U.S. drone strike, which considerably heightened the existing tensions between the two countries. In a tweet, Bolton called the airstrike a "long in the making, this was a decisive blow against Iran's malign Quds Force activities worldwide. Hope this is the first step to regime change in Tehran."