Going to guess you mean John Bolton, the infamous warmonger who loudly started calling for immediate, "far stronger" US response yesterday. He's a draft dodger who has admitted he joined the National Guard and then went to law school just to avoid going to Vietnam. "I wasn't going to waste time on a futile struggle," he has written, adding "I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy… I considered the war in Vietnam already lost". Yet the whole time he advocated for keeping other US soldiers fighting in the war. He didn't fight in the war of his time, he won't ever go to war now that he's old, but by damn is he ever sure that the US should send people to fight everywhere from Iran to Cuba.

In 2019, Democrat Seth Moulton, who actually served 4 tours in Iraq, called both Bolton and Trump "chickenhawks" because they're hawkish for war but completely unwilling to fight it themselves. (Trump reportedly "avoided service in the Vietnam War after his father called in a favor with a doctor, who wrote a note saying that Trump had bone spurs on his feet, making him ineligible for the draft.") To use the popular Franklin D. Roosevelt quote - "War is young men dying and old men talking."

John Bolton

Bolton.

Trump’s administration also had a lot of old Bush folks that wanted to antagonize Iran.

John Bolton, warhawk whispering (and often yelling) nothing but "WAR WAR WAR" for decades. Trump sacked him in 2019 when US was already 5 minutes from attacking Iran, but Iran shown that it wasn't easy target and are determined to defend itself, so US did U turn from war in like 2 days, Bolton was pretty slow with realigning there, so got sacrificed. He then wrote very salty book accusing Trump of things like having tiny bit of common sense left, not being absolute berserker and even being able to notice an ocean on map. Pretty funny and ironic actually.

Of course the rep warhawks needed to be appeased after such a serious setback and to have last word US assassinated general Soleimani short time after.

John Bolton?

Fucking over saudi Arabia has been my motivation for years now.

Yeah, loathe as I am to say anything kind about the Iranian regime, this is still a remarkably constrained response given the circumstances. Isreal blew up their embassy, killing two of their top generals. Obviously, in an ideal world you'd work out a purely diplomatic solution, but then in an ideal world Isreal wouldn't have blown up that embassy in the first place. The Iranian government know they have to show strength or else the backlash among their people would be insane. They were put between a rock and a hard place and picked a pretty smart way out.

And they know damn well that this whole thing kicked off in the first place because Netanyahu is trying to engineer a war. He knows he's losing international support with his genocide in Gaza, and a war with Iran would effectively reset the field. As soon as its "ally vs enemy" all the other questions go out the window. Isreal gets a clean slate, and probably wipes out or at least seriously damages several enemies in the process. The only question is how he can make it happen in a way that will draw the US in.

Yeah well considering how Russia and Iran are buddy buddy, that makes sense. But I would say Russia vs Ukraine is the oil, and Israel was the spark as soon as they deliberately hit the Iranian embassy in Syria.

Na, that's just a large interstate.

Throw in Chinese expansionist policy, Trumps divisive attitude and a healthy dose of resource shortages... now were looking at world conflicts

Yeah, when it comes to WWIII I'm more worried about what NATO/EU is going to do if Ukraine starts collapsing than Israel vs. Iran. If Russia takes Ukraine and starts eyeing other Eastern European countries, or strongly anti-Putin EU countries decide they are willing to go to war to stop him then things could get messy FAST. That's why it's so important that the US doesn't stop funding for Ukraine (like a some politicians, especially Republicans, seem to want). Ukraine is legitimately the bulwark against Russian aggression that could bloom into something much worse.

Israel vs. Iran would be bad, but I don't think enough countries would join in on Iran's side to make this a world war. I'd expect more of a new Gulf/Iraq/Afghanistan War than WWIII.