Transcript
Steve Bannon (0:12)
This is the primal scream of a dying regime. Pray for our enemies because we're going medieval on these people. I got a free shot. All these networks lying about the people. The people have had a belly full of it.
Unidentified Caller/Guest (0:28)
I know you don't like hearing that.
Steve Bannon (0:29)
I know you try to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it. It's going to happen.
Unidentified Caller/Guest (0:33)
And where do people like that go
Steve Bannon (0:35)
to share the big lie?
Dr. Bradley Thayer (0:37)
MAGA MEDIA I wish in my soul,
Steve Bannon (0:40)
I wish that any of these people had a conscience.
Unidentified Caller/Guest (0:44)
Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose?
Steve Bannon (0:47)
If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.
Trita Parsi (0:54)
War ROOM here's your host, Stephen K. Banner.
Steve Bannon (1:01)
It's Friday the 20th of February in the year of our Lord 2026. So every Friday at this time, I normally come off the five o' clock show and toss to Rome to our anchor, Ben Harnwell, who runs international for us, our international bureau. Today we're doing a little differently. I'm in Texas, I am hosting. We're going to go to Australia in a moment. Our own Dr. Bradley Thayer and our own Ben Harnwell there. But I wanted to finish with Trita Parsi Trito one more time because what was leaked to the Wall Street Journal and they have very strong access to the White House was, when I read it, it was, I think, kind of Trumpy. And President Trump did not want to do a regime change war on the 12 day war. He was very specific. He totally obliterated the nuclear weapons program. What he said in Venezuela had a very sophisticated JSOC exercise, but it was a takeout. Maduro and the wife leave the rest of the regime there, work some deal out and see if they can't run it by themselves here. It was incremental. He was going to do some sort of kinetic activity and see if he couldn't get the ayatollah and the mullahs and their advisors to reach his goal. Do you think that that is a strategy that works, sir?
Trita Parsi (2:18)
I don't think that will work. And I think part of the reason why it won't work is because I think the Israelis have convinced Trump that Iran is much weaker than it actually is. Iran undoubtedly is weaker than it was two years ago, but they have essentially convinced him that you can do these incremental attacks and the Iranians won't respond. Reality is the Iranians have their backs against the wall. They see no way out of this. But any incremental thing that they don't respond to eventually will weaken them so much that they will lose any. And once they have no defenses, the Israelis are going to go and blow that place up. That's their expectation. That's exactly what the Israelis did in Syria. As soon as Assad fled the country, they just went in and bombed everything. So their best shot, paradoxically, is actually to strike back and strike back hard in order to hope that even though they are weaker, the United States has a lower pain tolerance because the population is not behind this. And if they inflict significant damage on the US on the ships in the Persian Gulf, or whether it is going after oil installations in the region and close the Strait of Hormuz, shoot up oil prices, shoot up inflation in the United States and globally. The calculation is there is chance of getting out of this is to actually destroy Trump's presidency before they lose the war. So their incentive structure is not to play along and accept being hit incrementally. It is actually to escalate fast in that type of a scenario, despite the fact that they clearly are the weaker party. The question we have to ask ourselves, how does any of this serve US Interests? Why do we have to do this in the first place? There can be negotiations, there are negotiations, but those negotiations have to be based on a much more realistic understanding of where the Iranians are and where the US Are. Not the kind of red lines that have been sold to Trump by the Israelis who are doing this because they want him to go to war.
