Administration

Bolton: Iran ‘senses weakness,’ is going to ‘push and push’

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by Ryan Mancini - 04/10/26 1:14 PM ET

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by Ryan Mancini - 04/10/26 1:14 PM ET

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Former national security adviser John Bolton on Thursday said Iran’s government “senses weakness” and will “push and push” President Trump until the Middle Eastern country is able to get concessions from him.

Iranian officials will hold negotiations with a U.S. delegation comprising Vice President Vance, special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner in Islamabad. The negotiations come after the U.S. and Iran agreed to a ceasefire on Tuesday, though both sides have accused one another of not upholding their respective sides of the agreement.

Bolton told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that Trump “so obviously wants a way out of this current situation that I think Iran senses weakness.”

“And it’s going to push and push until it sees how far it can get,” he added. “And particularly before the face-to-face talks in Islamabad scheduled for this Saturday, they’re going to see what they can get by forcing Trump to make concessions without them having to bargain for them.”

Cooper asked Bolton if Trump backing off his threats risked “adversaries just not believing him.” Bolton replied that it was what TACO, or “Trump always chickens out,” means.

“They watch what he does, and he thinks he’s bargaining and they think he’s just blustering, so they wait for him to bluster away and then see if they can move him down into some other position without having to give anything up,” he added.

Bolton called the negotiations “a very interesting test” for Vance, who is leading talks with Witkoff and Kushner and with whom Bolton said the Iranians preferred to negotiate.

“They wanted Vance to lead the delegation, and they got him,” he said.

Trump on Friday threatened to resume strikes on Iran if an agreement cannot be reached in Islamabad. The president told the New York Post that the U.S. is “loading up the ships with the best weapons ever made, even at a higher level than we use to do a complete decimation.”

Israeli strikes on Lebanon amid the ceasefire also prompted Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf to announce that there will be no negotiations until there is a ceasefire in Lebanon and that the block on Iran’s assets is lifted. These two measures that have been “mutually agreed upon between the parties have yet to be implemented.”

The fragile ceasefire kicked off with Iran reopening the Strait of Hormuz and submitting a 10-point peace deal to the U.S. on Tuesday. The Iranian government, however, shut down the strait due to Israel’s barrage of attacks on Lebanon. The points in their ceasefire agreement extended to Lebanon.

The Trump administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this condition was not part of the agreement, but Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif insisted this condition was part of the deal.

“The Iran-U.S. Ceasefire terms are clear and explicit: the U.S. must choose—ceasefire or continued war via Israel. It cannot have both,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Wednesday on the social platform X. “The world sees the massacres in Lebanon. The ball is in the U.S. court, and the world is watching whether it will act on its commitments.”

Israel’s attacks on Lebanon carried on even after Netanyahu said Thursday that his country and the Lebanese government will negotiate for peace. He positioned the negotiations as being focused on “disarming Hezbollah and establishing peace between Israel and Lebanon.”

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