(NewsNation) — “I think it’s the race to get news out first, without necessarily checking it,” John Bolton, former Trump administration national security adviser, told NewsNation’s “On Balance” while discussing the confusion over the status of Iran’s religious police.

The attorney general in Iran suggested this weekend that the nation’s so-called “morality police” are being disbanded. He said the agency had nothing to do with the country’s judiciary and claimed the same institution that established it has now abolished it.

The story was false. However, a number of U.S. outlets picked up the story.

“The notion that the morality police were being abolished might calm the demonstrators down. I could see the regime thinking that, so there are a lot of things that were at work here,” Bolton said. “Key media in the West just ran with the story like, well, the regime has come through again.”

Bolton added that “this is not a dispute about a dress code for women. This rejection of the order, the regulation that women dress this way, is a direct assault on the legitimacy of the ayatollahs’ regime because it challenges their right to tell people what to do.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.