thought. what does john bolton s absence mean for a decision like this on iran? john bolton was a big iran hawk. it means the hardest line voice in the administration who would urge probably maximumal response to provocation like this if iran carried out this attack, that hard line voice is now missing from the conversation. mike pompeo has been a hard liner on iran, it remains to be seen how this will play out within the administration. to answer the question about what happens next, the defense department and intelligence community should be in position of presenting the president with options to respond to this, may include military options, sanctions options, diplomatic options. in any normal administration, that s what would be happening now. in any normal administration is the key. the united nations general assembly is next week. should the president, i know it is unlikely after this, should
bringing various agencies, departments, all together to the table. so we used to sit in the window of the situation room with members of the national security council, secretary of state and secretary of defense, sit at the head of the table and ask everybody what their analysis was as member of the intel community and what their recommendation was for the president on a key issue, for example, like negotiating with the taliban or a draw-down strategy in afghanistan. that way the secretary of state to opine on the diplomatic track, secretary of defense could talk about drawdown options. secretary of treasurer rof treak about sanctions options. all then presented by the national security adviser to the president. that is the honest broker role. i will say, brooke, i d been with national security advisers asked for a personal opinion which they ve given. but the foremost job is
if you ve been following this for a few weeks, it can be confusing where the president of the united states stands. iran at once making excuses for them. on the other side, taking a remarkably tough stance. looking at military options and now look at sanctions options. reporter: the sanctions options appear and i would stress, appear to be a response to some of the events of the last couple of weeks because the white house and the president himself haven t been clear that these sanctions are in lieu of military strikes and they haven t said that military strikes are off the table. what s clear is they want to increase pressure on the iranian regime. we saw the last attempt to start a conversation didn t go terribly well. a message was conveyed by prime minister abe to the ayatollah. that was rejected then we have shooting down of that drone. here was that exchange. you said this is a response to events in the recent events.
lieutenant rick francona and terry blanken is here. the president will meet with his cabinet and national security team. take me inside the room of that national security meeting. the principles are meeting this morning. the president is meeting with them later today. what happens now? this will be john bolton s first test, a bit of trial by fire. right now they ll all have to figure out how they ll address the immediate situation, vis-a-vis the chemical attack. of course the president has also gone out on twitter and boxed himself in to a bigger response than the last response that they had. i think bolton s job will be to look at the scope of options, whether military, diplomatic, or sanctions options, and put to the a package for the president s consideration. i do think that another pinprick
this is the fault, we are where we are now because of kicking the can down the road. jimmy carter kicked the can, carter shifed president clinton in his going around clinton and doing things he shouldn t have been with the north koreans. h.w. bush, w. bush and barack obama all kicked it. you can t kick it any more. people need to get behind the president and give him a lot of support in dealing with this. he s been left with very few option. i don t disagree at all. laura, i would add not as if previous administrations weren t trying? things. and none of those things. north korea s attitude hasn t changed. the president said they re thinking about tougher sanctions, very high level. what do you think that means, and what sort of squeeze could be put on the chinese, or the north koreans. talking about that would affect a behavior change? i think it s really important that we look at additional sanctions options here. especially in terms of secondary sanctions on the chinese.