Former White House national security adviser John Bolton on Monday accused President Trump of being “afraid” of making a bad deal with Iran as the end of the two-week ceasefire approaches “because he’ll look like” former President Obama.

Bolton told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that Trump is “really desperate to get out” of the conflict with Iran. The former Trump administration adviser said the president is worried about the conflict’s impact on energy prices, which have skyrocketed due to Iran cutting off the Strait of Hormuz to export vessels since the conflict began, and its political impact.

“But he‘s afraid of not making a deal because things will continue and he‘s afraid of making a bad deal because he‘ll look like Barack Obama,” Bolton said. “And that can lead to, uh, mood swings, shall we say?”

This is an apparent reference to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which was negotiated under former President Obama. The deal required the Islamic Republic to dismantle its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. Trump pulled the U.S. out of the deal during his first term in 2018.

Bolton expects that the Iranian government will “really feel they’ve got the upper hand” if Trump extends the ceasefire deadline, which the former Trump adviser called a “mistake.” He argued that the Trump administration should “punish” Iran militarily to avoid allowing it to close the Strait of Hormuz.

“Well, I think the dominant mood for Trump is he wants out and he will find a way out,” Bolton said. “I think it will be unsatisfactory but he will declare victory and hope he can get away with it. That’s what I fear.”

He previously said on Sunday that he expects another extension to the “two-week breather,” adding that it gave Iran time “to recover, regroup, get ready for the next phase of the war. We never should have let up on them.”

Vice President Vance, U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner are expected to fly to Islamabad, Pakistan, to hold the second round of talks with Iranian negotiators before the deadline. Iran, however, stated that it has “no plans for the next round” of negotiations, citing the U.S. blockade in the Strait of Hormuz.

Both sides have made new threats to attack and fight back if threatened. Trump told the New York Post that the U.S. is “loading up the ships with the best weapons ever made, even at a higher level than we use to do a complete decimation.”

Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Qalibaf on Monday accused Trump of violating the ceasefire with the blockade in the strait. He claimed that Trump “seeks to turn this negotiating table… into a table of surrender or to justify renewed warmongering.”

“We do not accept negotiations under the shadow of threats, and in the past two weeks, we have prepared to reveal new cards on the battlefield,” Qalibaf wrote on the social platform X.

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