John Bolton (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)

Tensions between the United States and Iran have skyrocketed in recent weeks following American military movements in the Persian Gulf and resumed uranium production by Iran. Decades of animosity worsened by the collapse of the 2015 nuclear deal have sparked a major standoff, as both nations review strategy while denying any desire for war. Experts fear that an error on either side could spark a regional maelstrom that would dwarf the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in scope and lethality.



But while many members of Congress are seeking a way to prevent the potential conflict, others are pressuring the administration to maintain its aggressive stance. In a recent interview with PBS, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said the U.S. could end a potential war with Iran in two strikes, “the first strike and the last strike.” While he said he doesn’t want to go to war, he insisted that the U.S. would retaliate massively if provoked. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) demanded Monday that the U.S. “respond militarily and in an overwhelming fashion” if Iranian forces or proxies harm the United States or its allies in the region.



There may be more than genuine concern behind such aggressive stances towards Iran. Dozens of government officials, from Congress to the White House, have received financial support from an expansive network of interest groups, political action committees, foreign lobbyists and wealthy donors pushing for the hardest line possible against Iran.



At the heart of the rising hostility is National Security Advisor John Bolton, known throughout the political world for his hawkish foreign policy views and support for intervention in North Korea, Venezuela, Syria, Cuba and Iran. Rising to prominence during George W. Bush’s administration as the State Department’s undersecretary for arms control, Bolton has been a central figure in provoking the conflict between the U.S. and Iran. He recently sparked fears of war by suggesting that Iranian leaders wouldn’t “have many anniversaries left to enjoy” in a video posted by the White House and personally ordered updates to military plans that would send over 120,000 troops to the Middle East.



Bolton’s PAC and super PAC serve as the central financial mechanism of the wide-ranging influence network. Founded by Bolton in 2013, these groups quickly began to attract prominent megadonors who shared his aggressive view of foreign policy and his apprehension towards Iran. Over a five-year period up until when Bolton took office in 2018, the groups raked in more than $24 million in contributions, the vast majority of which came from a handful of large backers aligned against the Obama administration’s efforts to seek a diplomatic solution with Iran.

Chief among Bolton’s backers is Robert Mercer, the reclusive billionaire who was Donald Trump’s top donor in the 2016 presidential election. Over the course of the 2014, 2016, and 2018 election cycles, Mercer donated $5 million to The John Bolton Super PAC, a quarter of the super PAC’s lifetime receipts and one-sixth of Bolton’s combined contributions from both groups. OpenSecrets previously reported that Mercer was a primary funder of a secretive nonprofit that targeted swing voters with three disturbing anti-Muslim videos during the 2016 election.

Another prominent supporter is Bernie Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot and ardent critic of nuclear diplomacy with Iran. Marcus donated $530,000 to Bolton’s super PAC over its lifetime. Marcus has publicly scoffed at the prospect of conducting diplomacy with Iran, saying in a 2015 interview with Fox Business, “When you do business with the devil, you’re in deep trouble, and I think Iran is the devil.”

He also notably donated $3.5 million to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington think tank that has decried the Iran nuclear deal and submitted a memo to the Trump White House in 2017 outlining ways to stoke domestic unrest in Iran with the ultimate goal of regime change. The FDD’s suspected close ties with the Trump administration were further confirmed when Bolton selected a senior adviser at the organization to be his assistant in January 2019.

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Bolton’s connections to hardliners don’t end with the committees. Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, the top individual political contributors for the 2018 midterms and major Trump donors, personally lobbied the president to select Bolton as deputy secretary of state. While this effort ultimately failed, Bolton eventually joined the administration as national security advisor- that move came after Sheldon Adelson supported publicity campaigns against Trump’s first national security advisor, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, that claimed McMaster was anti-Israeli in an effort to open the position for Bolton. Adelson is also a prominent supporter of major anti-Iranian lobbying groups, having donated more than $1.04 million to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee since 2007 and $1.5 million to the FDD between 2008 and 2011.



Bolton and Adelson share strikingly similar beliefs: in 2013, Adelson publicly suggested that the U.S. drop an atomic bomb in the Iranian desert as a warning to the government to abandon its nuclear programs. In 2015, Bolton followed suit, writing an op-ed in The New York Times entitled “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran”, in which he advocated for a pre-emptive strike on Iranian military facilities to stymie potential nuclear weapons development.



Also among Bolton’s financial backers is the Mojahedin-e Khalq (M.E.K.), an Iranian opposition group with a history of violence towards Iranians and Americans alike. Founded in 1965 by left-leaning Iranian students in opposition to the Shah, the group committed dozens of terrorist acts throughout the 1970s that killed thousands of Iranians and numerous American citizens.



Supporting Ayatollah Khomeini’s forces in the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the group quickly came to blows with the new government, conducting the 1981 bombing that killed Iranian president Mohammad Ali Rajai and prime minister Mohammad Javad Bahonar as well as six other senior officials. They fought alongside Saddam Hussein in the 1980 Iran-Iraq War and formed a close alliance with the dictator over the next two decades, killing thousand of Iranian soldiers in combat and launching brutal campaigns of repression against the Kurdish people of northern Iraq.

The group was long-labeled a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. government, with numerous Congressional transcripts showing the group was responsible for decades of terrorism. The group, whose philosophy is heavily influenced by Marxism and Islamism, has been described by many researchers as a cult, with women being forbidden to marry and all followers pledging near-fanatical support to the group’s leader, “Iran’s future president” Maryam Rajavi. The group’s goal has remained constant since its inception: overthrow the Iranian government.The M.E.K has dramatically expanded its presence in American policy spheres, attracting prominent political fans and spending millions on lucrative speaker fees to gain allies in Washington. The M.E.K.’s political arm, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), led a multimillion-dollar influence campaign beginning in the latter half of the 2000s that lobbied dozens of congressmen to push the State Department to remove the group from its designated terrorist organizations list. Three of Washington’s top lobbying groups — DiGenova & Toensing, Akin Gump and DLA Piper — were paid over $1.5 million dollars in 2012 to lobby for the delisting and protection of the group’s members in Iraq. The effort was ultimately successful, as then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton removed the M.E.K from the list in 2012.



Their lucrative speaking deals have attracted some of the biggest names in American politics, among them former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, former FBI director Louis Freeh, and former Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Robert Joseph.

The M.E.K’s influence extends to many members of the current government. Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao was paid $50,000 to give a five-minute speech to a meeting of the NCRI in 2015. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich spoke at the group’s 2016 gala in Paris, commending the group’s dedication and promising to tell the Trump campaign about their demands for regime change in Iran.

But Bolton has always been the star of the show. Records show that the M.E.K has paid Bolton at least $180,000 in speaker fees to attend the group’s annual Paris conference for more than a decade. At the 2017 annual summit, Bolton declared that the president’s review of Iranian policy should conclude that the Ayatollah’s government shouldn’t survive into its fortieth year, promising the crowd in attendance that they would meet again in 2019 to celebrate their victory in Tehran.



The M.E.K is finding themselves welcomed by many on Capitol Hill who have been funded by Bolton’s political action committees and allies. Cotton, described by some as the loudest voice advocating for escalated conflict alongside Bolton, also received thousands of dollars in contributions from Sheldon Adelson and $5,000 from John Bolton PAC in 2014 and spoke at a 2015 event run by the Organization of Iranian American Communities, which is closely aligned with the M.E.K.



Cotton was joined there by Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who, in addition to being backed by $1.37 million in independent expenditures from Bolton’s super PAC, journeyed to Albania in 2017 to meet with Rajavi and express admiration for the former terrorist group’s “struggle for democracy and human rights in Iran.” Joining him in Albania was Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), current chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee and another Bolton beneficiary.



Overall, 28 sitting senators have received sizable contributions from John Bolton PAC during the election cycle, as have nine representatives on the House defense, foreign affairs, and homeland security subcommittees.





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