All Episodes Plain Text
March 12, 2026 - Bannon's War Room
48:56
Episode 5209: Mixed Messaging With The War With Iran; Russian Intel And Leaks To Iran

Stephen K. Bannon, Jim Rickards, Eric Bowling, and Bo French dissect the U.S. war with Iran as a strategic failure caused by mixed messaging and lack of planning. Rickards argues that despite flawless military degradation of Iranian defenses, the administration failed to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, dismantle the IRGC controlling 40% of Iran's economy, or organize an uprising among 85 million dissidents. The discussion highlights Iran's shift to horizontal escalation via Gulf attacks, rising oil prices, China's support, and risks of sleeper cells entering the U.S. through open border policies. Ultimately, the episode suggests the conflict has become a religiously motivated struggle where American resources are dangerously diverted from Asia while domestic issues like SPR release and deportations dominate the political landscape. [Automatically generated summary]

Participants
Main
j
james rickards
10:42
s
steve bannon
r 14:25
Appearances
a
anderson cooper
cnn 00:45
b
bo french
02:40
b
brett mcgurk
cnn 01:21
d
donald j trump
admin 01:47
e
eric bolling
02:21
j
jesse watters
fox 01:57
m
matthew miller
01:47
n
newt gingrich
02:59
r
richard haass
00:52
w
will ripley
cnn 01:15
|

Speaker Time Text
Dangerous Moment Without Planning 00:10:16
donald j trump
Operation.
Epic Fury!
Is that a great name?
Well, it's only good if you win.
You know, you can only.
And we've won.
Let me say, we've won.
matthew miller
I think we're at a very dangerous moment.
It is clear that the White House did little to no strategic planning for this war.
You can see that in the shifting objectives, where at first this was a regime change war, then it wasn't.
It was to re-obliterate the Iranian nuclear program, and now that's not one of the objectives they list.
You can see it in the failure plan to get American citizens out of harm's way in the Gulf to evacuate our embassies that were put in harm's way.
You can see this in the fact that they were surprised that the Iranians have launched attacks against Gulf nations, even though the Iranians have threatened that multiple times over the years.
And you see that, I think, most of all in the White House's lack of any plan for Iran closing the Strait of Horrors.
Something that everyone that's worked in the national security community can tell you has always been their number one kind of point of leverage.
unidentified
That's their agenda.
That's the edge card that they have.
matthew miller
And so now what you see is a president who clearly gets that this is a political problem for him.
You can see a couple days ago, he started trying to talk about how we, you know, we're getting close to ending the war, although then an hour later he'll come out and say, but we still have weeks to go.
You can tell he feels the problem.
What I worry about now, look, I think the president is likely to end the war sooner rather than later.
I think the military campaign probably has two weeks or so to go until it reaches its objectives, but the president may decide to stop the bombing.
That doesn't mean Iran is going to end the war.
They may decide that they have lost all of their other deterrent measures.
They've lost their proxies that they had throughout the region.
Their missile program has been decimated first in the attacks last June and then over the course of the last almost two weeks.
The one deterrent they have is the economic pain that they can cause us.
And they may decide that they want to ramp the pain up, even if the president wants the war to end, to send a message to Donald Trump in the future and to future American presidents and future Israeli prime ministers that they do have leverage and they're willing to use it.
jesse watters
You can disagree with the war, but not the war effort.
We are accelerating these bombing runs and their offensive output is collapsing.
You have to look at it honestly, like these two colleagues to my left said.
Everything that the Iranians have tried has failed.
They tried to have a war of attrition, hunker down, let us run out of munitions and interceptors.
That didn't work.
They tried to hit the Arab allies.
All it did was force them into America's arms.
And then they tried to jack up the price of oil so the base felt the pain at the pump and the market could pressure Trump to take a knee.
That didn't happen.
The market is stabilized.
Oil's down to 80 bucks a barrel.
And right now the strait's open.
It's not completely, but they are moving tankers.
And we have things we can do there.
We can use ships as sentries.
We could do escorts or we could seize Carg Island and just like turn off their revenue with a little spigot.
When Trump and Heg Seth say that we're only just getting started or, oh, they ain't seen nothing yet.
That's not saying the war is going to last forever.
That's a psyop to the Iranians to say we're holding a lot back.
We could be hitting their electrical grids, bridges, oil depots.
What we're doing is that they act stupid.
We're going to reserve those targets for that punishment.
Right now, we're almost executing this war compassionately.
This thing could be much, much bigger.
The timing of the war is really intelligent because if you see the volley of these drones and ballistic missiles, imagine five years from now how much blood and treasure the American alliance would have to spend busting down these barrages to take out the nuclear program.
Their goal was to build a shield around it so we couldn't even consider the strike.
People have to be a little bit more patient.
We took 10 years to nail bin Laden, two years for Milosevic, eight months for Gaddafi, nine months for Saddam.
Hitler died after six years.
We got this guy in 50 seconds.
You have to acknowledge how great that was.
unidentified
Years that way.
And if they try to hit us back, have you been briefed about how many Korean sleeper cells there could be inside the U.S. right now?
donald j trump
I have been, and a lot of people came in through Biden with this stupid open border.
But we know where most of them are.
We've got our eye on all of them, I think.
unidentified
It's a dozen.
donald j trump
They came in through the open border policies of sleepy Joe Biden, one of the worst and the worst president in the history of our country.
Had we got our eyes on all of them, but the war itself is being prosecuted at a level that nobody's seen before.
It's pretty amazing to work.
anderson cooper
I mean, if the U.S. were to stop, why do you think the Iranians would continue?
richard haass
Might be in part for expression of domestic politics.
This is a regime that since 1979 has defined itself in part as it's anti-Zionist, but also anti-American, the great Satan.
Nothing that's happened, shall we say, in the last two weeks has changed any of that.
They also want to show that they've got the ability and will to push back.
They may want reparations.
They certainly are going to want the relaxation of sanctions.
So by continuing to act against energy to make it impossible for tankers to go through the straits, this gives them an awful lot of leverage.
My own sense is no matter what the president says, we are moving towards some kind of a negotiation with Iran.
And they want to have some leverage.
And by continuing the war, that puts pressure on the United States.
They read the polls.
They look at stock markets.
They look at the price of energy internationally.
They know that by continuing the war, that gives them an awful lot of leverage.
unidentified
Try to eat the parking five oil heaters at the means to keep the oil prices down.
donald j trump
I wanted to be in very good shape.
You see what's happening?
They are pretty much at the end of the line.
It doesn't mean we're going to end it immediately, but they've got no Navy.
They've got no Air Force.
They've got no anti-air traffic, anything.
They have no systems of control.
We're just riding free range over their country.
And now we're going to look very strongly at the Straits.
The Straits are in great shape.
We've knocked out all of their boats.
They have some missiles, but not very many.
I think we're in very good shape.
newt gingrich
Look, there are three huge challenges that this administration has tackled.
The first is that, and they should have frankly moved on this on day one, they have to keep the Strait of Hormuz open.
unidentified
Yes.
newt gingrich
I don't care what it costs.
If they can't keep it open, this war will in fact be an American defeat before very long, because the entire world, including the American people, will react to the price of oil if the strait stays closed very long.
So I lived through this with Reagan, as you did, in the late 80s.
Keeping the strait open is the number one job because it buys you time for the two other jobs.
The second job is we're going to discover that the Revolutionary Guard is tougher than we thought it was, better connected, and have at least 200,000 people who are true believers, and they have no future.
I mean, Trump can say unconditional surrender.
These folks know if they lose power, they have no future.
And the third challenge is, how do you arouse and organize the street, the 85 million or so people in Iran who do not want the current regime, but they're unarmed, they're unorganized, and that has to be solved.
These three problems are going to decide whether this was a stroke of genius or, frankly, a step into quicksand.
And I think that the president has to focus very hard on solving these three issues.
anderson cooper
Victory would also mean the enemy and its surrogates would no longer be pouring missiles into northern Israel.
But they are, again, tonight.
This is new video of it.
The president declared victory today, and then just a few minutes later, he kind of undeclared it.
donald j trump
We don't want to leave early, do we?
We got to finish the job, right?
anderson cooper
He said it several more times.
We've got to finish the job.
Yet this morning, he also suggested there was little left to do, telling Axios' Barack Ravi there was, quote, practically nothing left to target, a little this and that, and saying, quote, anytime I want to end, it will end.
Now, if you're not already confused about that or whether we've won or not, listen to the president also today on what to even call what we are or aren't yet winning.
donald j trump
And we did a little excursion.
We had to take this little couple of weeks, few weeks of excursion, but it's been incredible.
Our military is unbelievable, the job they're doing.
I would say, to put it mildly, way ahead of schedule.
So we had to take an excursion, but it's doing well.
The market's holding up well.
Oil will be coming down.
That's just a matter of war that happens.
You can almost predict it.
unidentified
You just said it is a little excursion, and you said it is a war.
So which one is it?
Well, it's both.
It's both.
donald j trump
It's an excursion that will keep us out of a war.
And the war is going to be, I mean, for them, it's a war.
For us, it's turned out to be easier than we thought.
will ripley
Publicly, President Xi Jinping's government is striking a more diplomatic tone, calling for restraint.
China's foreign minister, Wang Yi, says, this is a war that should never have happened and a war that benefits no one.
China's Deterrence and Lifeline 00:02:39
will ripley
China has long been Iran's economic lifeline.
Beijing buying most of their oil exports despite years of U.S.-led sanctions.
And now, U.S. officials say they're watching signs Beijing could soon provide more crucial financial support to Tehran.
The war is shaking global energy markets.
Oil prices surging to four-year highs.
Attacks threatening shipping routes in the Middle East.
For China, the world's biggest energy importer, that's a serious risk.
But strategically, Beijing may also see opportunity as the two superpowers compete on the world stage, with the CIA putting out these official recruitment videos, brazenly and openly luring Chinese officials to spy for the U.S.
Analysts say a prolonged war could pull American attention and military resources back to the Middle East and away from Asia, allowing China to flex its military muscle around Taiwan in the South China Sea and disputed islands near Japan without U.S. interference.
brett mcgurk
We have crossed the Rubicon here, Anderson.
We're in a very difficult situation.
I believe it's important to carry out what is left of the military campaign.
I can't put a timeframe on that.
I'm sure within CENCOM they have a sense and they're probably briefing the president.
But if we cut this short and Iran has reconsolidated its hardline elements within the system, which they appear to have done, although we don't know exactly, and they can still reconstitute because they have enough of the capability on the missiles and the drones and maybe even the nuclear, we could be in an even worse position.
And a final point: you know, Iran has had a strategic policy for decades, Anderson, to spread the revolution through terrorism, through proxies, and to deter any blowback inside their own borders.
And they've done that through what they see as deterrence.
They used to have very good air defense systems, Hezbollah, very strong, used to be very strong on Israel's border with hundreds of thousands of missiles and rockets and missiles, drones.
So there was a deterrence against an attack.
It's one reason no president has ever actually done this.
If you've taken out those deterrent elements, but they have now restored their deterrence because they control the vital artery of the world and they've now demonstrated they can use it and it really bites.
You might actually come out of this where Iran might be weaker, but they have deterrence against any future attacks.
So I'm looking at this strategically.
It's a really precarious moment, Anderson.
And I think the president's mixed messaging is not helping.
Precarious Strategic Messaging 00:14:32
steve bannon
It is Thursday, 12 March, in the year of our Lord 2026.
We're going to get to the bottom of all this, break it all down for you so you can see every element of it and come to your own conclusion, which is most important right now.
We need MAGA and we need particularly the MAGA grassroots folks that would be this audience to really think this situation through.
You're in the war room.
We're going to start with Jim Rickards.
We have Jim up in a moment.
We've got Eric Bowling here.
Eric Bowling called shot yesterday about the release of the first off the IEA petroleum reserve, which I think they said there's going to be 400 million barrels released.
Also, the strategic petroleum reserve.
Anyway, we'll talk about oil, the straits, the Gulf.
We will compare and contrast what you just heard.
Jim Rickards, one of the best geopolitical strategists and capital market strategists, we'll start with.
We're absolutely packed this morning.
You're here in the war room.
Take your phone out and text Bannon B-A-N-N-O-N at 989898.
Get the ultimate guide for investing in gold and precious metals in the age of Trump.
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And you get to get to Philip Patrick.
And Philip Patrick will be on the show this evening.
We'll go through all of this.
Short commercial break.
Natasha Owens will take you out.
Jim Rickards is going to bring you in.
unidentified
It's Charlie too hard to save.
What about when you took your shot at the one you called?
Where's your song for justice?
Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon.
Okay, welcome back.
steve bannon
Philip Patrick tonight, Jim Rickards this morning, so you can't get two better thinkers about this.
I'm going to play Newt Gingrich and bring Jim on.
We've got to hear this Newt again because when you lose Newt, of course, Newt's a regime change guy.
Guardian newspaper has a story this morning, very well sourced from Israeli intelligence and Israeli political class about how they admit they were not ready for and they wanted regime change.
They basically said it was a hope and a prayer, do some bombing and people are going to rise up.
That's why Netanyahu went public yesterday with you have to rise up and overthrow the Ayatollah, the Mullahs, the Revolutionary Guard.
That's not happening.
And that's because of their many reasons.
But the bombing on Saturday night, the firebombing of Tehran made this a Persian nationalist situation.
So now we're in it.
So everybody's talking about, hey, why did we get in this?
Yes, there'll be plenty of time later for that, but we're in it now.
We're in it.
And we need victory.
Now, we got to define victory, to be very precise about it.
But this is as dark as it possibly gets.
Let's play Newt Gingrich and bring Jim Rickards in.
newt gingrich
Look, there are three huge challenges that this administration has tackled.
The first is that, and they should have frankly moved on this on day one, they have to keep the Strait of Hormuz open.
I don't care what it costs.
If they can't keep it open, this war will in fact be an American defeat before very long, because the entire world, including the American people, will react to the price of oil if the strait stays closed right long.
So I lived through this with Reagan as you did in the late 80s.
Keeping the straight open is the number one job because it buys you time for the other two other jobs.
The second job is we're going to discover that the Revolutionary Guard is tougher than we thought it was, better connected, and have at least 200,000 people who are true believers, and they have no future.
I mean, Trump can say unconditional surrender.
These folks know if they lose power, they have no future.
And the third challenge is, how do you arouse and organize the street, the 85 million or so people in Iran who do not want the current regime, but they're unarmed, they're unorganized, and that has to be solved.
These three problems are going to decide whether this was a stroke of genius or, frankly, a step into quicksand.
And I think that the president has to focus very hard on solving these three issues.
steve bannon
I gave a speech in June and said the problem we have is not in Tehran.
The problem we have is in the streets of New York City.
Mendami today in a budget crisis.
I think they're $4 or $5 billion short.
And they're supposed to have testimony today.
His director, I think, of his OMB can't testify because he's fasting for Ramadan.
If you've seen these photos coming out of New York City and New Jersey over the last couple of days, you understand they're in a war of conquest here through soft power.
We're in a crisis, folks.
Hope you take your number two porn cell out and write that down.
Jim Rickerts, your thoughts and observations, sir.
Where are we?
Is Jesse Waters right or is Newt Gingrich right?
james rickards
I take it Jesse Waters is a nice guy, but he's on another planet.
I listened very carefully to the opening of the show and what he was saying in particular.
I mean, he got about everything wrong, but in fairness to him, he's suffering the same confusion that I think most analysts and commentators are suffering.
We'll talk about that in a second.
As far as Newt Genwich is concerned, he was exactly right.
So he said three issues.
Keep the straight open, disable the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps, IRGC, and encourage an uprising in the streets.
So that's the right analysis.
But the United States is 0 for 3.
The straits are not open.
There are a lot of reasons for that.
They're not mined.
There's no Iranian Navy, but the insurance companies won't underwrite the cargoes and the vessels.
The owners of the vessels, Norwegians, Greeks, whatever, they want that through the owners of the cargoes, Chinese and Asians.
They don't want them blown up.
The naval escort, fine, but Iran still has a lot of land-based power.
No Air Force, no Navy, got it, no mines, but they've got a lot of land-based power.
But what Iran has done, they've started blowing up tankers near Basra in Iraq.
They're not in the Straits of Hamuz.
You can't even get to the Straits of Hamuz.
The point is, it's not, yeah, the Straits are a choke point, obviously, geographically, but it's not just the Straits.
They're blowing up tankers in the Persian Gulf all the way up to Iraq.
And as long as that's the case, then that traffic is closed.
No one's going to fill up a tanker.
No one's going to set it underway.
Jesse Waters said, you know, price of oil spiked to $120, which it did for about a minute.
There was panic buying on Monday and it's back down to 80.
Well, he said 80.
Right now it's 95.
I checked my ticker a few minutes ago.
So oil is $95 a barrel.
But regardless, it was $60 a barrel a month ago.
So even if you go 60 to 90, that's a 50% increase.
So, okay, forget 120.
That was a super spike.
But even at 90, you're going to shut down the global economy and you can't even get the oil.
Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps, get rid of them.
Yeah, good idea.
They control 40% of the economy.
They're not just an armed force and a Praetorian Guard.
I mean, you know, they perform functions like that.
They control 40% of the economy.
The oil industry, the transportation industry, et cetera, go down minerals and mining, et cetera.
And they have for years.
So they're a military force in one sense, but they've really taken over the Iranian economy.
So you're talking about shutting down Iran.
As far as an uprising is concerned, they had an uprising about two months ago, and the Ayatollah killed 5,000 people, just gunned them down in the streets.
So, you know, you want to be the first one to come out of your apartment and start waving a banner?
I don't think so.
And it reminds me of Dick Cheney saying that when we, you know, in the Gulf War, well, 2003, when we get to Baghdad, they'll be lining the streets with flowers and American flags and greeting us.
Not what happened.
What you had was hundreds of thousands of people killed.
They didn't have guns.
They were using electric drills to drill people in the head to turn shoes.
So we're repeating all the sentiments.
steve bannon
Jim, but hang on, let me just ask you this.
If we started, and the proposition was, and we hear this from Admiral Cooper and General Kane every day on the military, and Captain Finnell comes on here and helps us walk through the degradation.
If we started with the nuclear program of whatever reality it was, if you start with the radars, if you start with the air defense systems, if you start with degrading their ability to project power against Israel and their Gulf neighbors as the starting proposition, and you weren't for regime change, like we weren't.
The issue is, and the problem is, is that the game has changed.
The game has changed from Saturday night when you, when you, because there was this thought that the Iranian people would rise up, not the 30,000 that were killed a couple of months ago, but or a month ago, but even more to overthrow this radical and detested Islamic theology.
But since the Revolutionary Guard and these guys have punched, they focus on two things.
This is why I said in the first couple of days, folks, the center of gravity in a Klaus Vitsian sense is not Tehran, what they're bombing.
It's the Gulf.
They're going after our Gulf allies, and they're hitting desalination plants, water, and they're hitting their oil storage and refineries.
And that's why Lindsey Graham comes on here after five-minute drill-ups on TV and says, Hey, Saudi Arabia, we'll offer you a pact in perpetuity, right?
But you've got to step up here.
You've got to start attacking.
And why the Gulf nations are not attacking Iran?
What they're doing is calling the president of the United States and saying, you've got to get us out of here.
We never signed up for this.
Plus the fact that with drone technology, I was there at the beginning of this thing 47 years ago.
My kid brother was a helicopter pilot on the Reasoner, USS Reasoner, during the tanker wars that you talked about with Reagan, the 86, 87, 88 tanker wars where American Navy had to escort these ships through, as Captain Finnell laid out the other day.
The difference is you didn't have drone technology that can swarm.
The Navy goes in to stop the speed boats from coming along like they did the coal, although that was anchored.
The speedboats from coming and dropping a torpedo.
And they had some radars, but the radars is very tough in the Persian Gulf and the Straits, as you know, Jim, for those radars.
Now you have this swarm technology of these cheap drones that are just all over the place.
The Navy said today, the Secretary of Energy said from the White House this morning that the Navy is not going to be prepared to even escort the ships to the end of the month.
And I'm telling people, that's not a panacea.
It's not as simple as saying, oh, we're going to put a Navy combatant on every ship.
It doesn't work like that.
It's quite difficult to legit, it's quite difficult on the military evolution to actually escort the ships.
And it's very difficult today.
And the Revolutionary Guard knows how to play that game.
Jim Rickards.
james rickards
Well, that's exactly right.
If you want to lose the war and lose the American people and lose MAGA all at the same time, just have a U.S. Navy destroyer struck or badly damaged.
It doesn't even have to sink.
The Navy said, we're not going to escort these tankers because we can't secure the Navy, which comes first.
The key thing to all this, Steve, you have to separate the military performance from the strategic vision.
People mush them together.
You got to separate.
The military performance has been about flawless.
We sank the Iranian Navy.
We sank their mine layers.
We've eliminated practically all their S-300, S-400 anti-aircraft systems.
We've achieved air supremacy, which is one notch higher than air superiority.
We've blown up a lot of their missile launchers, not all of them.
We wiped out their leadership.
If we want to go into Carg Island with Special Operations Command, we haven't done that, but that's feasible.
So the military performance has been brilliant.
You could say mission accomplished.
The problem is there's no strategic vision.
Now, about four or five days ago, President Trump said, I demand unconditional surrender.
There are only two presidents in U.S. history who have demanded unconditional surrender.
One of them was Ulysses S. Grant in the Civil War.
He wasn't president at the time, but he got the nickname Unconditional Surrender Grant, and he achieved it.
The other one was FDR in World War II, who, along with Churchill, said, We insist on unconditional surrender of the Nazis and the Japanese.
And we got it.
They were both successful in that.
So those are powerful words.
It's a big ship.
steve bannon
Hang on one second.
I want to get into all this in the next break.
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unidentified
Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon.
steve bannon
Okay, Bowling, who had a called shot yesterday, as he has been on this situation of oil, as the traitor's mentality.
Bo French, also running to head the railroad commission in Texas, which is about the oil and gas industry, not about the railroad industry.
And are on deck, and Jim Rickerts are with it.
Jim Rickerts, continue on.
Global War Escalation Risks 00:09:59
steve bannon
Unconditional surrender.
Abraham Lincoln had his instrument to destroy the Confederacy in the Army of Northern Virginia.
That was Ulysses S. Grant, who understood that it had to be unconditional surrender or the Confederacy would have fought on forever.
Same with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
You got to tell them there's no way out of here.
President Trump put that message out a week ago.
Continue on, sir.
james rickards
Well, Trump put that message out.
And again, the word is very powerful.
You're talking about Grant and FDR.
Then four days later, he says it's an excursion.
You know, and technically it might be expeditionary force.
Well, excursion, you know, in 1916, General Blackjack Pershing, one of only two six-star generals in U.S. history, invaded Mexico to chase Pancheville.
And then he got, you know, then they came back.
That's an excursion.
But my question for the president is, which is it?
Is it unconditional surrender or is it an excursion?
I can debate both of those, and maybe you can even defend both of those.
But my point is, they're projecting confusion.
I mean, you don't say those two things within three days of each other and expect people to think that you have a coherent strategy, which they don't.
So this is the problem.
Now, in terms of the other thing that Americans don't understand, the White House does not understand, and I don't know why they don't understand it.
This is a radical theocracy.
They don't understand the religious aspect of this.
Samuel Huntington laid it out in 1991 in the Clash of Civilizations.
He said, take a map of the world, put a transparency over it, and draw the line where blood is being shed, every battle in the world.
Take another transparency and draw a line where the religious divides are.
Overlay one on the other.
They're the same, whether it's Shiite, Sunni, Christian, Islam, et cetera.
Now, the Muslim, these particular Shiite Muslims, they welcome death.
They welcome it.
They consider it the divine will of Allah.
They're going straight to paradise.
There's even a thesis, which I don't have any strong evidence, but it's interesting that they gather, the Ayatollah and the head of the Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Defense Minister, they gathered intentionally, knowing they were going to be hunted down and killed so they could all die at once and be martyrs.
That's a mentality that is so distant from what people in the United States and the White House think.
They don't understand what they're up against.
And the second, so going down the list, regime change, failure.
We've had a leadership change, but we haven't had regime change.
Now we've got the mini Ayatollah, his Moshtaba, is the son of Ayatollah Khomeini.
He's clearly a puppet.
He's going to do what the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps tell him.
He's not a distinguished scholar.
He's got some mid-level religious credentials, but nothing very similar.
He's just going to do it.
He's going to do what he's told.
He's a puppet.
The Guard Corps are running the country.
So there's no uprising.
The Guardian.
steve bannon
Because they're not into hereditary.
So by the show's continuity.
But what are they into?
Because now we were all for, hey, you get over there, get your stuff done, get your punch list or what the Navy and the Air Force are doing with your degradation and then get an offer and let's get the hell out of here.
However, the shift to go against the Gulf allies, which trust me, they ain't allies.
Okay.
We pretend they're allies because they're all bailing out and going after the Straits of Hormuz, although as, you know, it doesn't really affect right now the supply of oil.
It disrupts it and the speculators get in there.
We've allowed the Iranians to change the nature of this conflict, correct?
And that's why Newt Gingrich, when you lose Newt Gingrich, when you lose Newt Gingrich, they've changed the nature of the conflict.
And so now the Gulf and keeping the Gulf open becomes paramount, doesn't it?
james rickards
That's exactly right.
Theoretically, there are two kinds of escalation.
And, you know, President Eisenhower, I rank him maybe top five presidents.
I mean, he's brilliant.
He once said, when you can't solve a problem, enlarge the problem.
Make the problem bigger, and then you might see the solution.
Now, in terms of escalation, vertical escalation, if you want to call it that, is, you know, my weapons are bigger than your weapons.
You send a bomb.
I send a bigger bomb, et cetera.
We keep going up.
That kind of is the dynamic that was in play between the Soviet Union and the U.S. during the Cold War.
What the Iranians have done is not vertical escalation.
They can't do that.
They can't match this weapon for weapon.
This is horizontal escalation.
They spread out the problem.
They enlarge the problem, as Eisenhower would put it.
Yeah, so now they're blowing up oil tankers, not in the Straits of Hormuz, but in Iraq.
They're bombing Dubai.
I know people who were moving a lot of wealth from Singapore to Dubai in recent months.
They're like, hey, Singapore is a little too close to China.
Dubai looked pretty safe, not anymore.
I've been there many times.
They're places that are burning.
They disabled to a great extent.
People don't know the Fifth Fleet.
The United States Navy Fifth Fleet is based in Bahrain.
They've disabled those port facilities.
Those vessels might have to go to Diego Garcia, which is four days each way.
And so they, but they've been doing this with drones.
They still have some ballistic missiles.
Yeah, they've been substantially degraded, and we have air supremacy, but they've widened the war very inexpensively, by the way.
As you know, these drones are about $10,000 a piece.
So, yeah, they're driving a wedge between the Gulf states.
steve bannon
But here's the question, though.
For those of us that were adamantly opposed to regime change, right?
Regime change, is Newton saying it the reality?
Because of their ability to have a vote in this, they've now forced the issue around the Gulf in the Straits of Hormuz that you almost have to have a regime change.
I'm not saying I support that, but I'm saying just strategically, otherwise they're going to continue on.
And Iran's going to say, hey, for all the great American effort, for all the great American military, for all the Israelis bombing us, we control the Gulf.
Saudi Arabia doesn't control it.
Big, tough-talking MBZ doesn't control it.
The Americans don't control it.
We control it.
Your thoughts, sir?
james rickards
Well, I think that's exactly right.
And by the way, we've been talking, we talked about the military aspects of this where our performance has been great, but we're losing.
And then we talked the strategic aspect of it, which is a muddle.
The White House just says not had a clear message from day one, and they still don't.
We haven't talked about the economy.
I mean, obviously, everyone understands the importance of oil.
You're going to drive the entire global economy into a global recession at best, and maybe a market panic.
Because it's not just what we've been talking about, but natural gas.
Gutter has declared force majeure.
It's a technical legal term, but it says, you know, all those contracts we signed, they're negated.
You can't sue me.
No damages, no contractual lawsuits.
I'm just not performing because a greater force, force majeure, has come into play.
Well, this is like 40% of the world's natural gas.
The U.S. has a lot.
Australia has some, but not enough to make up the difference.
Europe is going to have to buy natural gas from Russia.
Think about that.
The last four years, Russia is horrible.
steve bannon
Oh, no, we're giving Russia.
And Russia's playing both sides.
They're giving targeting information to the Iranians and telling us how they're buddies and they're going to play in India.
The military performance, the valor of our arms, the courage of our troops, the tenacity of our war-making capabilities in Korea and in Vietnam, in the global war on terror, in Iraq, the march-up country in Iraq, in Afghanistan originally with those volunteers, unparalleled.
Can't be questioned because you see the results of what these folks did in Korea and Vietnam of the global war on terror.
And guess what?
We lost in Korea.
We lost in Vietnam, and we've lost the global war on terror.
You've got Mandami sitting on rugs, having what the Iftar dinner or whatever it is, sitting on rugs with a portrait of Washington in front of you.
You've seen that in New York City.
You got that?
We're going to Brandon Hall on here from Texas on the state education board.
You see what they're doing to change the history books in Texas?
Understand what I've been saying about it ain't in Tehran where your problem is.
They're coming here and they're winning here.
They control New York City.
And today, in the midst of a budget crisis, the director of the budget can't talk because he's fasting for Ramadan.
Suck on that.
unidentified
Right.
steve bannon
Korea and Vietnam and the global war on terror.
We're here where we are today.
Yes, we've got a military and this training.
And the kids, the young men and women that do it are the best that we got, like they were the best in Vietnam and like they were the best in Korea.
And look, since World War II, we haven't had definitive victories.
Go ahead, sir.
james rickards
We lost the war in Vietnam, but we never lost a battle.
We never lost a single battle in Vietnam, but we lost the war.
And something like that is playing out in Iran today or in the Persian Gulf.
Look at what the Marine Corps did in Hawaii after the Tet Offensive.
I mean, that was door to door, street to street.
That was urban fighting, and they prevailed.
It was brutal, but they prevailed.
We won that battle, but we lost the war.
And in Iran, like I said, we sank the Navy, disabled the anti-aircraft systems, wiped out the leadership.
If we found Mini Khomeini today, I mean, I'm not being glib, it's his name, Mojaba.
Let's say we killed him, and that may happen.
That could happen tonight.
Energy Dominance and Reserves 00:10:50
james rickards
They'll just pick somebody else.
The point is, that's not regime change.
unidentified
He's a puppet.
steve bannon
They don't even believe in hereditary.
They did that to get in Trump's grill.
He's kind of a nobody.
They did it to show continuity.
They don't even believe in hereditary.
It's kind of against their thing.
They did it to say, suck on this.
Here's how much we fear you.
Suck on this.
Because they're dead ends.
Okay, we got to bounce.
Jim, go ahead, sir.
Go ahead.
james rickards
I was just going to say, they'll keep doing it.
We could kill five more of our supreme leaders and they'll pick another ones.
That's not regime change.
steve bannon
Jim Rickards, strategic intelligence.
Give me a minute on why people should care and why should they go to your site?
Why should they go to rickardswarroom.com?
Why should they subscribe, sir?
james rickards
Thanks, Steve.
When you go to Rickardswarroom.com, you can subscribe to our flagship publication, Strategic Intelligence.
It comes out once a month.
We put a ton of work into it.
But what's behind it are predictive analytics.
We have the best systems.
And when I say that, we're using base theory, behavioral psychology, history, complexity theory, et cetera.
When I say we have the best systems, we have the track record to back that up.
We called Brexit in 2016 when it was 70% Remain.
We called Trump's victory in 2016 when it was 92% Hillary.
We were the only forecaster, the only one that said 312 electoral votes in 2024, including Michigan's seven out of seven swing states.
You know, Nay Silver, all these other big names, and not disparaging anyone.
We were the only ones who got that right.
So we have the track record to back it up.
But what we say to our readers is we don't tell you what happened.
We tell you what's going to happen next.
That's our hallmark.
That's our claim to fame.
But we have the track record to back that up.
steve bannon
Thank you, sir.
I appreciate you.
Jim Rickards, Rickardsworm.com.
And he throws in a free book on fiat currency and artificial intelligence just to make your night even tougher.
I've got about a minute here.
Bowling, I don't have time to play what you did, but dude, you're so good.
You told us, hey, the IEA strategic reserve of 400 million, what is it, barrels, the strategic petroleum reserve, if you do it, it's going to go up.
We did it.
And I think oil went up eight bucks at one time.
unidentified
Tell us again.
steve bannon
Give me 30 seconds for a break.
eric bolling
Yeah, yeah, I'll give you 30 seconds.
So last night we've been talking about how useless tapping into SPRs are, whether it's domestic or international.
Steve, you texted me last night with a headline.
Axios, by the way, great call on that pipeline.
Axios headline saying Trump said he's going to tap our SPR.
And my answer to you was: terrible idea.
It's never worked and it doesn't solve the problem.
It just puts a piece of gauze on a hemorrhage.
And sure enough, oil went straight up.
I'll just very quickly the reason why, Steve, oil traders are smart.
They realize there's no real plan to solve this thing.
Tapping an SPR is very, very temporary.
steve bannon
Hang on for one second.
Bo French running to head the Railroad Commission in Texas.
That means the top oil and gas guy, Eric Bowling, in the pits with amazing insights and a called shot yesterday right here in the war room.
Short commercial break back in the moment.
unidentified
We rejoice when there is no more.
steve bannon
For those of you old enough to remember back to the early 70s, the Arab oil crisis, remember the lines of cars around the corner and one of the things that brought down, one of the many things that brought down Carter's presidency.
but also with Nixon, there was this big issue that all of a sudden with the Middle East, which we had never really paid that much attention to, all of a sudden became had an impact in everybody's life where that cartel that kind of met in Geneva of these Arab nations, the oil-producing nations, based their cartel nature around a relatively obscure institution in the great state of Texas, and that would be the Railroad Commission.
It is not about the railroads, it is about the control of oil and gas.
Bo French is running for that.
It's a the head of it's a publicly elective office.
Bo, you're in the middle of this.
Why is the railroad commission important?
Why should people pay attention?
And most importantly, today, when we talk about what's happening in the Straits of Hormuz and we're to Carg Island, we're going to send the 82nd Airborne in to seize their assets.
We're taking incoming from drones.
Why is the position you're running for one of the most important positions in the United States of America, sir?
bo french
Steve, thanks for having me on.
You're absolutely right.
Texas produces almost half of the oil and gas for the United States.
And as President Trump rightly recognizes, energy is national security.
And so given the focus here in Texas, given President Trump's focus on Venezuela, his focus on Iran, his recent announcement two days ago of the new first in 50 years refinery that they're building in South Texas, I think this just shows that he recognizes how important it is.
And so I'm running for this position because I'm running against an incumbent who performed the worst ever for an incumbent in an election, which is why we're in a runoff.
And because he's straddled the industry with, Or, excuse me, saddle the industry with new regulations, environmental regulations, increased cost on operators, which is just the wrong direction.
You know, we need energy dominance here in Texas and in the United States.
And so, you know, look, I think that when you, when you talk about energy, when you talk about what's happening in the world, you know, there's lots of criticisms to be, you know, thrown around about how things are prosecuted militarily around the world.
But I think at the end of the day, what we have to do is, and I think this is really important.
I never judge President Trump on what he says.
I always look at what he does.
And so we'll see how this ends up in Iran.
But, you know, control of the first largest oil reserves in the world in Venezuela, the third largest oil reserves in the world in Iran.
Clearly, this is an important issue.
You know, when just a little military action over there around the Straits of Hormuz, you know, spikes oil prices, I think consumers recognize how important the flow of free flow of oil around the world really is.
And so, given how much we produce here in Texas, we need to be producing more here in Texas.
We need to be drilling more.
We need to free up our operators to produce more oil.
unidentified
Okay, that's why I'm running.
steve bannon
So I hear that.
But if we want full spectrum energy dominance, I think a lot of people thought, well, heck, we're there.
You're saying we're not.
So what is give me two or three things you're going to do immediately to get us back to full spectrum energy dominance from the state of Texas?
bo french
Yeah, you're exactly right.
The first thing is we're going to roll back the new Biden-era EPA type environmental regulations that they saddled the industry with just this last July.
So we really haven't even felt the effects of those yet, which means we can reduce the break-even point for operators, which is good for consumers.
It's good for jobs in Texas.
The other thing we have to do is they've had this like bizarre obsession with DEI.
We're going to roll back all of the DEI contracts they've been awarding.
We're just going to eliminate that totally.
So those are the two big things I would say.
And then just as a statewide elected official, you know, I view that we need to have elected officials who fight for the values of America, right?
And so just having that platform, doing what I've been doing for the last couple of years, just being a fierce advocate, America first warrior for the values that make America great.
steve bannon
Bo, where can people find out more about you and your campaign?
Where do they go?
bo french
Yeah, Steve.
The best place is my website, BoFrench.com or on X. I'm there, prolific poster on X, Bo French TX.
steve bannon
Comes in a little hot, folks.
Go follow Bo French.
One of the most important positions, elective positions in this country.
Thank you, Bo.
Appreciate you.
bo french
Thank you, Steve.
steve bannon
A real warrior right there.
So yesterday, 24 hours ago, you did called shots on this petroleum reserves, and you also had some, you've had some ideas you've put forward to the White House.
So 24 hours later, Bowling, as we rolled you out of the rack, are you feeling better directionally of where this is going?
Hopefully to the sunlit uplands?
Or is Eric Bowling not feeling better, sir?
eric bolling
No, I'm feeling like we're heading to some bad lands.
A couple of things.
So, Steve, we talked yesterday about don't release SPRs, certainly not in America.
Ours is for emergency use only.
We don't have an emergency supply problem in America.
And then you texted me last night.
Trump just said he's going to release it.
And I said, this is a terrible idea.
Sure enough, overnight, oil traded on the Brent crude oil traded $100 a barrel.
We trade around $95 a barrel in West Texas Intermediate.
I would like to just tell you, there's a, and it won't work.
Releasing SPR oil never works.
It's a temporary.
And I think traders realize that if this is all we got, uh-oh.
So what happens just now with some breaking news right now?
Per Reuters, Trump announces that he's going to suspend the Jones Act, suspend the Jones Act, it's 100-year-old act law that will, when he suspends it, allow foreign tankers to help supply our ports.
Like right now, you have to have U.S.-built and manned tankers that pull into U.S. ports.
For 100 years, it's happened.
It's been suspended a couple times.
Here's the point: these SPR releases and suspending these Jones Act, they don't have any effect.
In fact, it was just announced, and oil is still over $100 a barrel for the Brent and $95 for us.
I'll tell you what's happening, Steve.
Like it or not, they've got the solution.
I sent it in via you and me talking about it to all.
They have it.
I'm just hoping that they're going to show him and they're not going to hold it back because they didn't come up with it internally.
Because the ideas that are coming up internally, unfortunately, are band-aids on hemorrhages, and it's going to get worse.
Oil prices are going to go up.
And I will tell you this: I said this to you.
I'm going to play this oil market to go down.
I hope it gets to $120 because it is going to be back at $80, $70, $80 in no time.
There are so many simple solutions that, for whatever reason, the administration seems to be ignoring.
steve bannon
Okay, let's take a short commercial break.
I'm going to keep Eric.
Ignored Simple Solutions 00:00:38
steve bannon
We've also got the Mass Deportation Coalition.
Huge story, one of the lead stories in Politico today.
Because why?
Let me hang on.
Wait for it.
unidentified
Oh, polling.
steve bannon
Just like the Brownstone guys and Dr. Jeffrey Tucker came out with their massive polling about the Make America Healthy Again movement in the reality where two-thirds of the American people support many things that Bobby Kennedy's working on.
So you're going to be shocked folks in this country support deportations.
Lots of them.
The math is there.
unidentified
It's going to be presented.
steve bannon
Eric Bowling, Rosemary Jenks, Mike Howell next in the war room.
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