Steve Bannon blasted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for trying to drag the United States into his country’s rapidly escalating war with Iran as President Donald J. Trump mulls whether to join the attacks.
Trump has been under intense pressure from the Israeli leader and U.S. neocons to commit the nation to another war in the Middle East, one that could claim the president’s MAGA coalition as collateral damage.
“Today, it’s Tel Aviv. Tomorrow, it’s New York. Look, I understand ‘America First’. I don’t understand ‘America Dead,’” Netanyahu told ABC News, conjuring up an apocalyptic scenario similar to those used to sell the Iraq war more than two decades ago.
BANNON: Who in the hell are you @netanyahu to lecture the American ppl? The American ppl are not going to tolerate it. Finish the job. You’ve got plenty of things to say.—it’s time we finished. Then go finish it. Quit coming to us to finish it. pic.twitter.com/9h6VZaLGuR
— Grace Chong, MBI (@gc22gc) June 18, 2025
The former White House strategist accused Bibi of shifting the goalposts from the destruction of Iran’s nuclear program that could be used to produce weapons to an all-out regime change, one that he will need America’s help to pull off.
“Who in the hell are you to lecture the American people? Who are you to lecture the American people?” Bannon said on Wednesday’s edition of his “War Room” podcast. “The American people are not going to tolerate it, not going to put up with it. Who are you to jam us into this situation, which you knew you couldn’t finish the job, or if you can, go finish it.”
“Go finish it!” Bannon continued. “Quit coming to us to finish it.”
“President Trump may come to that conclusion, but it’s not something he would just say… ‘Oh yeah, let’s go bomb ’em and take care of it.’ He’s going to do it because he’s got to weigh the options now that you’ve gotten us into it,” he added. “That’s reality, that’s the truth.”
“That’s exactly where we are, and people should be truthful with each other, particularly in these tough decisions,” Bannon said. “That’s what allies do. Allies don’t manipulate and don’t inextricably draw people into situations of which the other party has to get them out of.”
“This entire military effort that they’ve done — now it’s left to the United States to have to come in and finish it? The Israelis have to finish what they started,” Bannon said during a Washington D.C. breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, according to ABC News.
“There’s no hurry to rush — for the United States to be into a military solution. I realize that the president is looking at a range of alternatives. He’s looking at a range of alternatives, and he has gone out of his way to negotiate,” the conservative commentator added.
“I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday.
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