Steve Bannon Warns Middle East War Is 'Metastasizing' and Must End 'Now'

Steve Bannon said on Monday that the war with Iran is spreading beyond Washington's control. He urged that it be ended immediately, before a collapse in Saudi Arabia drags the United States into decades of combat in the region.

The remarks, on Bannon's War Room podcast, are among the sharpest warnings yet from a leading MAGA voice about a war the Trump administration is running. They came as polling shows the conflict is deeply unpopular, three weeks before the midterms.

"If we wanna extract, and I keep saying it's a sideshow to a sideshow, now you're gonna get sucked in because this war is metastasizing," Bannon said. "It has to be brought to an end. It has to be brought to an end now."

"You don't bring it to an end. It's gonna get worse and worse and worse," he added.

Steve Bannon's Saudi Arabia Warning

Bannon built his argument around a hypothetical: that the Saudi monarchy could fall. Introducing his guest, Jim Rickards, an author and the editor of the Strategic Intelligence newsletter, Bannon said that "the House of Saud Falls and that's gonna be a big old domino in the Persian Gulf, we may have a conflict that metastasizes out of control."

He then laid out what that would mean for U.S. troops. If there was "even a scintilla of chance that the Saudis could fall," Bannon said, renewed strikes on Iran mean "you're going to be in a combat position in the Middle East for a couple of three decades."

you're now sucked into a vortex that you can't extract yourself from," he said.

Rickards agreed that the kingdom has "always been vulnerable." He said, "Trump doesn't have an exit in Iran," and argued that Russia's leverage with Tehran offered the best route to a settlement. He also claimed he had worked with the Nixon White House in 1974 on a plan to invade eastern Saudi Arabia and seize its oil fields. (British intelligence files declassified in 2004 show that London judged the U.S. might be prepared to invade Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi to seize oil after the 1973 Arab oil embargo.)

The Saudi-collapse scenario is speculation from Bannon and Rickards, and neither offered evidence that the monarchy is at risk.

What Is Happening in Yemen and the Red Sea

The pressure on the kingdom is real, however. In September, the Iran-backed Houthis took control of Yemen's Red Sea coast, including the town of Mocha and Perim Island in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

Saudi Arabia is planning an offensive to break that chokehold, led by Yemeni ground forces it oversees and backed by Saudi airstrikes, The Spokesman-Review reported on October 2. Pakistan has sent air defense systems and drones to Aden, the seat of Yemen's Saudi-backed government.

Rickards argued that Aden "itself is in jeopardy" and that the Houthis "will close the Red Sea. They're already doing it. And the Saudis can't fight."

Polls Show the Iran War Is Unpopular

Bannon's alarm tracks with the public mood. A Pew Research Center survey conducted from September 28 to October 4 found that 65 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump's handling of the military action in Iran. In March, 61 percent disapproved. Republican approval fell from 69 percent to 63 percent over the same period.

An Associated Press-NORC poll released at the start of October found that 69 percent of adults say the war has not been worth fighting, up five points since July.

Overall, Trump's standing is underwater as well: 37.7 percent approve of his job performance and 59.4 percent disapprove, according to PolitiKool's polling average.

A Warning About the War, Not a Break With Trump

Bannon did not criticize Trump by name. In the same segment, he praised the president for having "the patience of Job" with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Rickards opened by giving Trump "credit where credit is due" for a diesel deal with Russia.

Bannon's quarrel is with where the war is headed. Later in the episode, he argued that the threat lies at home, not abroad. "What's happening in downtown Tehran is irrelevant to the safety and security and national security of the United States in America," he said, before naming Democrats including New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani as "where the fight is."

He also took a swipe at Israel. "Of course, they've got an election in Israel in a couple of weeks. Maybe get regime change in Tel Aviv," Bannon said.

He is not the only voice on the right to object to the war. Tucker Carlson recently called Florida Senator Rick Scott a "lunatic" over his claims about Iran. Whether that dissent reaches the White House before November is still an open question.