Former national security adviser John Bolton said Tuesday that President Donald Trump, who claimed nobody expected Iran’s response to U.S. attacks, “was aware” that Iran would retaliate as it has. (Watch the video below.)

That’s because the potential scenarios came up in meetings that Bolton said he had with the president during his first term before Trump fired him.

Iran has fought back in the war by bombing American allied nations in the Persian Gulf ― which Trump said was not anticipated.

“They weren’t supposed to go after all these other countries in the Middle East,” the president said of Iran. “Nobody expected that. We were shocked.”

CNN host Anderson Cooper asked Bolton about the possibility that Trump was not briefed on potential repercussions.

Phooey, Bolton basically replied:

I know for a fact that he was aware of those potentials. I raised the option of regime change in Iran several times during the time I was national security adviser. I never persuaded the president to adopt that position. And one reason was that others had different views, and every time I raised it, they raised a whole long list of difficulties that are entailed by a regime change campaign. And that if you’re going to embark on it, you better have answers to them, and certainly closing the Strait of Hormuz was always one of them and so were attacks on the Gulf Arab states, particularly their oil infrastructure. So he knew about it in his first term. I find it hard to believe that he forgot about it in the intervening years.

A current U.S. official and other sources also insisted, though anonymously, that Trump was made aware of potential reactions, including the strikes against the likes of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and the Strait of Hormuz being effectively closed.

“It certainly was on the list of potential outcomes,” one source told Reuters.

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