Trump’s Iran Dilemma: What Steve Bannon Told Me at Breakfast

Will he, or won’t he?

That is the question that everyone is asking about President Donald Trump, including Donald Trump himself.

The question refers to whether he will join Israel in eradicating Iran’s nuclear threat by destroying the Fordow site with America’s GBU-57/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb. This question dominated yesterday’s invitation-only breakfast with Steve Bannon, longtime Trump adviser and MAGA pureblood, which was hosted by The Christian Science Monitor and held in Washington, DC. I attended with some 20 other reporters because I believe it’s important to meet politicians, policy makers and political strategists in person to get a sense of them as human beings, not just creatures inhabiting various media spaces.

Before the breakfast started, of course, we all knew Bannon’s position: He is fiercely against the United States intervening in Iran and will do whatever he can to convince Trump not to. He showed up, looking as polished as possible: Gone was the bleary-eyed, shaggy look. His gray hair was swept back, not perfectly coiffed but not rumpled either, and he was clean-shaven. In place of his signature layers of collared shirts, Bannon was well-attired in a black suit jacket over a black button down (with three pens attached) and a black T-shirt peeking out. He was already expressing his opinion as he walked into the room, talking loudly about how his daughter who graduated from West Point had served in Iraq, and how he didn’t want to see another “forever” U.S. military intervention, this time in Iran.

He was charming and friendly and careful not to criticize Trump, but there was plenty of Bannon’s trademark bluster and anger on display. He was furious at “the media apparatus of the old Republican Party, the National Review, Fox News,” and all the “forever war types” and “country club Republicans.” Much of his fury though was directed at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for daring to go on Fox and say that Iran was 12 to 13 months away from developing a nuclear bomb. This is “something he’s been saying forever,” Bannon told us, adding that as far as he knows, “there’s been no new intelligence.” And although he declared himself Israel’s biggest supporter in the MAGA movement, he was angry that Israel was suddenly informing the United States that we need to come in and finish the job. “The Israelis have to finish what they started,” he said. Later he added: “If the [Israeli] government knew that they didn’t have the air assets to eliminate Fordow and that that was absolutely essential to get the job totally done, then why did they start without understanding that the United States would be brought into an active combat situation?” He made it clear that military options are being put in place in the Middle East to give Trump options.

When I asked Bannon if he thought that an Iranian nuclear weapon is an existential threat to Israel, he acknowledged that it was but returned to his stance that the United States should not trust Israeli intelligence. “The question you should be asking the Bibi Netanyahu government is, what specific intelligence, given your massive failure of intelligence on seven October that, let’s be blunt, has never been explained.” I pointed out to Bannon that his response was disingenuous considering that Israel had been hyperfocused on Hezbollah and Iran.

Many other topics came up over breakfast: Bannon’s belief in the “deep state,” that there are “one million alien invaders” in the United States, that America’s only real allies are those countries who fought with us in World War II,and that “we’re in the kinetic part of the third world war right now.” He compared the MAGA coalition to the one forged by FDR that lasted up until the past decade and discussed his goal of keeping that coalition together after Trump.

Bannon declined, when asked, to say when he last spoke with Trump. But the battle for Trump’s ear is ongoing. The president has many whisperers and is not a decisive person. As Bannon left (a little after the allotted time because he was enjoying himself), the question at hand remained unanswered: What will Trump do?

Top image: Steve Bannon and Christian Science Monitor Bureau Chief Linda Feldmann at June 19 breakfast.