During an appearance at Duke University Monday night, Bolton was asked about a Trump tweet saying he was tougher on Venezuela than his former adviser. In response, Bolton referenced his upcoming book, saying, “I say things in the manuscript about what he said to me. I hope they become public someday.”

“He tweets but I can’t talk about it,” Bolton added. “How fair is that?”

Bolton’s comments come as one of his aides teold NBC News that it’s unclear if his book about his time in the Trump White House — “The Room Where It happened” — will publish next month as planned. The aide said a White House national security review of the manuscript could push back the book’s March 17 publication date.

Bolton himself addressed the review Monday, saying, “I hope it’s not suppressed.”

“I didn’t think I was obligated to go through prepublication review. When my first book came out I didn’t. But we’re in the process now,” he said, adding, “and for now I’m going to let it go.”

He and the White House have been at odds for nearly two months over publication of the book. The White House has said it includes classified information. But Bolton, who also wrote a book about his time in the administration of President George W. Bush as the US ambassador to the United Nations, has maintained that there is nothing classified in his book.

When Bolton submitted his book to the White House for a standard national security review in December, his attorney, Charles Cooper, wrote in a letter that he was not required to do so but had gone ahead out of an abundance of caution.

After parts of the book leaked to the media, Bolton’s team said the White House review process had been corrupted.

“We continue to believe that the manuscript contains no legitimately classified material,” Sarah Tinsley, a senior adviser to Bolton, recently said in a statement. She expressed concern that the review process “is more about suppressing Ambassador Bolton’s book than about classification issues.”

One possibility is that the White House will retroactively classify information in the book or has already done so.

Bolton, a longtime fixture in the Republican Party, recently became a target for Trump and his allies following revelations that he would directly link the president to the White House’s pressure campaign on Ukraine. The New York Times has reported that Bolton writes in his book that Trump sought his help with the Ukraine campaign.

Bolton offered to testify in the president’s impeachment trial, where he would have provided a firsthand account of Trump’s decision to withhold US aid to Ukraine in exchange for its government’s announcement of an investigation into his political rivals. But Senate Republicans rejected the idea and acquitted Trump of charges that he abused the power of his office by pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to announce a corruption investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter.

Biden is running in the Democratic primary to challenge Trump in November.

When asked Monday night whether he agreed with the president that the call with Zelenskiy was “perfect,” Bolton responded, “you’ll love chapter 14.”

Bolton said the Ukraine parts of his book are “the sprinkles on an ice cream sundae,” adding, “we’ll have to see what comes out of the censorship.” He declined to comment further.

Bolton left the White House in September on contentious terms with Trump. He said he resigned, while the president said he was fired. He served 17 months as Trump’s national security adviser.

Bolton is also scheduled to speak Wednesday at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.

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TEHRAN (Iran News) – Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov named US policies against Iran and reliance of EU countries on the US as the main causes for a low chance of JCPOA survival.

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Public support for President Donald Trump impeachment has tracked steadily higher over the past few weeks, as a US House of Representatives committee held a series of televised impeachment hearings, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Tuesday.

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In a statement on Thursday, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Abbas Mousavi roundly condemned the announcement by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo saying that US approach to Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank is that they are not “inconsistent with international law.”

The Iranian spokesman also described the declaration as a testimony to the US government’s partnership in the occupation of the Palestinian territories, in Israeli crimes against Palestine, and in occupation and violation of the sovereignty of Palestine’s neighboring countries.

The US officials’ measures and remarks on Palestine amount to a clear violation of international law, Mousavi added, urging international organizations to oppose and counter them.

Palestine belongs to Palestinians, the spokesman reiterated, saying, “The Zionist regime is a usurping and occupying regime and the only solution to the Palestinian crisis would be holding a referendum involving the (genuine) people of the Palestinian land.”

He went on to advise Pompeo to set himself free from the “18th century-style thoughts” according to which owners of power placed themselves above the law and international regulations.

“In the 21st century, neither is the US a dominant power, nor would anyone accept a violation of international law by owners of power,” the Iranian spokesperson concluded.

In comments on Monday, Pompeo rejected a 1978 State Department legal opinion that considered the Israeli settlements in Palestine “inconsistent with international law.”

“Calling the establishment of civilian settlements inconsistent with international law has not advanced the cause of peace… The hard truth is that there will never be a judicial resolution to the conflict, and arguments about who is right and who is wrong as a matter of international law will not bring peace,” said Pompeo.

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Markus Leitner, the Swiss envoy whose country represents the US interests in the Islamic Republic, was summoned on Wednesday.

He received Tehran’s protest about the US government’s interference in the internal affairs of Iran.

The Swiss diplomat was summoned after US State Secretary Mike Pompeo voiced support for the rioters who have taken advantage of the protests in a number of Iranian cities over a hike in the price of subsidized gasoline in recent days.

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Seyed Abbas Mousavi had already condemned Pompeo’s meddlesome and hypocritical remarks, saying, “The dignified people of Iran are well aware that such hypocritical and spurious comments (from Pompeo) do not embody any sincere and affectionate sympathy.”

Mousavi has also slammed Pompeo’s comments as interference in the internal affairs of Iran, saying, “The Islamic Republic of Iran sees the US government in no position to sympathize with the Iranian nation and people. If they (Americans) are really concerned, they had better worry about tens of millions of hungry people living without a home and in extreme poverty across the United States.”

On Friday, Iran began rationing gasoline and substantially increased the price of fuel, saying the revenue would be used to assist the needy.

The National Iranian Oil Products Distribution Company (NIOPDC) said in a statement late Thursday that the price of a liter of regular gasoline had gone up to 15,000 rials (12.7 US cents) from 10,000 rials and the monthly ration for each private automobile was set at 60 liters per month. Additional purchases would cost 30,000 rials per liter.

The decision sparked rallies in a number of Iranian cities, some of which were marred by violence as opportunist elements tried to exploit the situation and ride the wave of peaceful protests against hiking fuel prices. Consequently, the demonstrations turned violent in some cities, with reports of clashes between security forces and certain elements vandalizing public property.

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“I think Ukraine is kind of a victim of US politics in this case because I believe they were pushed to do something that is not in the real Ukrainian interest,” said Igor Yarmak, 63, a tech professional in New York City who has voted Republican in the past but dislikes Trump. Iran News quotes the story.

The inquiry into whether Trump misused US foreign policy to ask Ukraine to target a domestic political opponent enters a critical phase on Wednesday when Congress holds its first public, televised hearings to question witnesses.

Others among the roughly 1 million people of Ukrainian descent living in the United States also expressed frustration at seeing Ukraine, which largely depends on foreign aid and protection from Russia, dragged into the impeachment fight.

“Once again, Ukraine is in the spotlight for its critical position in eastern Europe and I feel it’s being used by political powers for their own gain,” said Paul Jablonsky, a small business owner and the president of the Ukrainian American Community Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The inquiry comes three years into Trump’s unconventional presidency and as Democrats and Trump’s Republicans are gearing up for a brutal election battle.

Democrats are investigating whether there are grounds to impeach Trump over his July 25 request, in a phone call to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, that the latter investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a key political rival to Trump in 2020.

That call prompted a whistleblower complaint that led congressional Democrats to launch the probe into whether Trump abused his power by withholding nearly $400 million in security assistance to Ukraine to pressure the vulnerable US ally.

“(It is) really disheartening if it does come to pass that President Trump has been using his individual influence as president to further his political ambitions for the next election,” said 59-year-old Jablonsky, who considers himself an independent and agrees with Trump politically on issues including trade.

There are large populations of Ukrainian-Americans in Pennsylvania and Minnesota, which are seen as competitive in next year’s presidential election.

“Trump putting the screws and the pressure on Ukraine, which is the victim of US politics … to extort and grind a poor fledgling democracy, it’s beyond the pale of understanding,” said Ulana Mazurkevich, a business owner from the Philadelphia area and a Democrat who declined to give her age.

Ukraine’s Zelensky, a comedian and, like Trump, a political novice, won a landslide election victory in April promising voters an end to a conflict with Russian-backed forces in the Donbas region that has killed 13,000 people.

He has been walking a diplomatic tightrope to maintain good relations with both US political sides whose bipartisan support Ukraine counts on for aid and diplomatic cover against Russia following Moscow’s annexation of the Crimea peninsula in 2014.

“He might appear as a weak leader because he was trying to play ball with Trump or he was trying to avoid playing ball with Trump,” said Irina Medvinskaya, a US citizen who was born in Kyiv and emigrated to the United States at age 15.

But Medvinskaya, a Democrat, voiced hope that Ukraine could play a historic role if Trump were to be impeached and removed from office.

“If this becomes the death of him, I will be very proud of my motherland.”

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