On Friday, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced the indictment of nine Iranians for conspiring to hack and defraud American universities and businesses on behalf of the Iranian government. Rosenstein vowed harsh repercussions for the Iranian hackers, including their extradition to the United States and imprisonment if convicted.

The strongly worded presser stood in stark contrast to the Trump administration’s approach to hacks by Russia, a far more pervasive threat to the United States. Since 2014, Russia has hacked the State Department, the Department of Defense, the Democratic National Committee, the Republican National Committee, the personal emails of millions of Americans, and most notably, critical infrastructure including the power grid. Despite a Senate ruling of 98-2 to impose sanctions on Russia for their aggressive actions, President Trump has instead mollified the Kremlin, refusing to meaningfully target Russia’s oligarchs and not even discussing the cyberattacks (or, for that matter, Russia’s recent chemical attack on U.S. ally U.K.) in his call this week with President Putin.

While the contrast between the Trump administration’s treatment of Iranian and Russian hackers is alarming in its own right, the most troubling aspect of the announcement may be the timing. Less than 24 hours before the indictments were revealed, Trump appointed notorious warmonger John Bolton as his new national security advisor, effective April 9. Bolton has been seeking to invade Iran for at least 15 years.

Much as he backed the Iraq War long after its premise was proven to be fraudulent, Bolton has insisted, without evidence and in defiance of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s assessment, that Iran is not honoring its commitment to constrain its nuclear program, and that military invasion is necessary. He has repeatedly insisted that the U.S. should abandon the Iran deal completely, appearing on FOX News–Trump’s main repository of policy advice–to argue that Trump should “just get out of it.”

But while Bolton decries the idea of Iran bearing nuclear weapons, he has no such aversion when it comes to the U.S. using theirs. In the fall of 2017, as tensions between the U.S. and North Korea ran sky-high, Bolton repeatedly called for a pre-emptive strike, one that would likely lead to nuclear war. Bolton differs here from Trump only in his experience and bureaucratic prowess: Trump has fantasized about using nuclear weapons for over 30 years – “If we have them, why not use them?” he famously said–and has proposed massive spending on a new nuclear arsenal. Trump is the only person in the White House authorized to order the use of nuclear weapons, but his hawkish cabinet has abetted his desire. In January, the Pentagon announced in its updated nuclear posture review that nuclear strikes were a legitimate response to nonmilitary attacks if they involved “extreme circumstances”, citing a major cyberattack as an example.

Nuclear weapons experts denounced the plan as reckless, but until Friday it seemed unlikely to be put into action: after all, Russia has been aggressively hacking us for all of Trump’s tenure and received sycophancy instead of strikes in response. But the Iranian indictments, combined with the implementation of Bolton, may change that. If the Iranian hacks–which, according to Rosenstein, caused $3.4 billion in damage–are considered “extreme circumstances” by the White House, nuclear strikes may be on the table.