With John Bolton handed his walking papers, the title of White House national security adviser technically belongs to Charles Kupperman, who is holding down the fort until Donald Trump finds a new whipping boy. But at the moment, it’s not exactly clear whose hand is guiding Trump’s when it comes to foreign policy, particularly following a series of drone strikes on Saudi Arabian oil facilities, which the Trump administration has blamed on Iran. According to his Twitter account, Trump is waiting on the Saudis to tell him what to do. “Saudi Arabia oil supply was attacked,” the president tweeted on Sunday evening. “There is reason to believe that we know the culprit, are locked and loaded depending on verification, but are waiting to hear from the Kingdom as to who they believe was the cause of this attack, and under what terms we would proceed!”

Bolton is surely going out of his mind, watching his old boss outsource the powers of the presidency to Mohammed bin Salman. But one imagines he’s experiencing some acute FOMO too. Bolton, after all, has been hankering after a war with Iran for years—“To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran,” he famously declared in the New York Times op-ed page—while Trump has mostly shied away from foreign entanglements. Indeed, Bolton’s bloodlust was ostensibly a key factor in Trump’s decision to boot him from the White House earlier this month. As Axios reported over the weekend, Bolton allegedly offered his resignation after Trump suggested dialing back the administration’s “maximum pressure” sanctions strategy against Iran. (For what it’s worth, Bolton and his allies were often suspected of leaking news that made the president look bad, such as his efforts to bring Taliban leaders to Camp David.) Iranian president Hassan Rouhani celebrated Bolton’s departure, urging America to recognize that “warmongering and warmongers are not to their benefit.”

So what to make of Trump’s sudden post-Bolton belligerence? Trump might be bluffing to improve his bargaining position, or he might be getting manipulated by the Saudis. As with any news involving the Trump administration, the official position of the White House is to be taken with a shaker-full of salt. Houthi rebels in Yemen claimed responsibility for the weekend’s attacks, although U.S. officials said that the drones had come from the north-northwest, and could not have been executed by the Houthis without sophisticated military assistance—assistance, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo hinted, was from Iran. Several experts on the Revolutionary Guards told the Times that Iran was likely behind the attacks, even though the country’s leadership publicly denied any responsibility, as retaliation for U.S. sanctions on their oil exports. “Iran wants to show that instead of a win-lose contest, Iran can turn this into a lose-lose dynamic for everyone,” said Ali Vaez, head of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group.“Plausible deniability is a trademark of Iran’s pushback strategy.”

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