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Bannon`s War Room

Episode 5238: Markets Shift As Talks With Iran Begin

23 Mar 2026

Transcription

Chapter 1: What are the implications of the U.S.-Iran negotiations on global markets?

0.031 - 3.816 Unknown

Everybody's been killed from the regime. They're really starting off.

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3.836 - 31.294 Steve Bannon

There's automatically a regime change. But we're dealing with some people that I find to be very reasonable, very solid. The people within know who they are. They're very respected. And maybe one of them will be exactly what we're looking for. Look at Venezuela, how well that's working out. We are doing so well in Venezuela with oil and with the relationship between the President-elect and us.

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32.376 - 62.91 Steve Bannon

And maybe we find somebody like that in Iran. The Press The Press The Press No, we have a very serious chance of making a deal. That doesn't guarantee anything. I'm not guaranteeing anything. I'm not going to come out here in a week or two weeks and have you all say, oh, you said I didn't say anything. All I'm saying is we are in the throes of a real possibility of making a deal.

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63.01 - 70.636 Unknown

And I think. If I were a betting man, I'd bet for it. But again, I'm not guaranteeing anything. They want to make a deal very badly.

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70.857 - 76.911 Steve Bannon

Thank you. What changes would you like to see in DHS under Mark Wayne Mullen? Well, he's going to be fantastic. He'll make his own change.

Chapter 2: How is Venezuela influencing U.S. foreign policy towards Iran?

76.931 - 92.338 Steve Bannon

He's already given me a list of people he wants to bring. He's a fantastic guy. I think he's just the right guy. You all know him. He's a very open, smart guy, very successful, actually, in business, which people don't know. And he's a friend of mine. I think Mark Waid is going to be fantastic. Thank you.

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92.559 - 102.133 Unknown

Are these direct cops you're on? Terrible. They made a mistake. It's a dangerous business. That's terrible. Thank you.

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102.173 - 125.736 Steve Bannon

President of the United States. boarding Air Force One to go to Memphis. We've got Brian Glenn. We have Brian Glenn on the ground there. We'll go to Brian Glenn momentarily. We've restructured the entire show because of breaking news in the last couple of hours about President Trump negotiating and all of this.

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125.716 - 140.238 Steve Bannon

With the clock ticking down, as we talked over the weekend, the clock ticking down on this ultimatum he gave that was going to basically expire sometime late this afternoon, early this evening about the Strait of Hormuz being open and free to navigation.

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Chapter 3: What are the potential outcomes of the current diplomatic efforts with Iran?

140.278 - 160.835 Steve Bannon

The Iranians push back. Now, there's a lot of confusion of exactly what's going on. President Trump's talking about. And we'll play this again, the first part of it momentarily. President Trump, who's actually negotiating with some of the official statement from the from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, said, hey, he's not negotiating with us.

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161.176 - 181.432 Steve Bannon

Nothing's changed and we will destroy any oil and gas. Water assets that the Arabs have are in the local community. Here's what we're going to do here in the war room. It's Monday, 23 March, year ruler 2026. We've got an amazing cold open. We're going to blow the first break. Eric Bolin is going to talk to us about markets. We're going to get all of this done this morning and much, much more.

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181.452 - 184.258 Steve Bannon

Let's go and play the cold open on this Monday morning.

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184.593 - 205.825 Unknown

conflicting accounts between President Trump and Iran. President Trump this morning said the U.S. has had productive talks with Tehran and that he had postponed military strikes on Iran's power plants. But shortly after, Iranian state TV cited the country's foreign ministries saying there is no dialogue.

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205.805 - 222.312 Unknown

We were about to take a step, an escalatory step, David, that many in the region and across the world feared could not be walked back. I'm curious, what are you hearing right now about the president's decision to take a step back and talk about these negotiations that he says have been going on?

223.135 - 248.502 Steve Bannon

So, Joe, he's obviously exploring the diplomatic possibilities. If you read his statement, he's not describing a deal. He's just describing the tone of negotiations. Here's what I know about the diplomatic side. Qatar had been involved in extensive mediation efforts along with Oman over the last week, and those came to a sudden halt.

248.482 - 258.176 Steve Bannon

when the Israelis attacked Iranian gas facilities at South Pars and that negotiating channel suddenly ended.

Chapter 4: What changes are expected in the Department of Homeland Security under new leadership?

259.098 - 282.317 Steve Bannon

A new negotiating channel was initiated by Turkey and Turkey's foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, over the last, I'd say, three, four days. And there were statements yesterday suggesting from him that his meetings with Iranians implied Americans, others involved had been productive. Turkey is a key ally of President Trump in the United States, a NATO member.

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282.758 - 303.497 Steve Bannon

The one final thing I just would note that we didn't talk about earlier this morning, but over the weekend when Trump was making his fire and brimstone threat to take out all Iranian power plants, the Iranian foreign minister issued an interesting statement in which he said, the Strait of Hormuz is not closed.

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303.933 - 328.325 Steve Bannon

Chips hesitate because insurers fear the war of choice you, meaning Trump, initiated and then close freedom of navigation, which we cannot exist without freedom of trade. Respect both or expect neither. In other words, kind of an opening from the Iranian that may have coincided with the conversations that Trump is referring to. So we talked earlier about brinksmanship.

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328.385 - 336.218 Steve Bannon

It's dangerous, could lead still to a very bad result here. But for the moment, it does seem to have provided some space for negotiation.

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336.198 - 361.712 Unknown

Yeah, and I think this may be how exactly you define having a conversation. Certainly, there are no direct talks that we know of between the U.S. and Iran, although, as I understand it, according to people familiar with the matter, that there have been messages passed back and forth between countries like Turkey, like Egypt. trying to sort of get the read of either side.

361.852 - 384.61 Unknown

And of course, this is now significant. It's the first time that the president has actually said publicly that there are conversations. Up until now, he has not sounded all that open to any kind of negotiation that would end this conflict. And so that in itself, I think, is meaningful, as is the president's decision to postpone any attack on Iranian power plants.

384.63 - 408.322 Unknown

And this is part of what these messages that were passed back and forth over the weekend were about, were warning of the major sort of escalation and retaliation that that would prompt from the Iranians. Tehran had warned that it would strike energy facilities in the Gulf, even potentially desalination facilities in those countries that really rely on them for all of their fresh water.

408.362 - 429.216 Unknown

And so this is a significant step that the president has decided to open the window for some potential discussions to continue. But at this point, it is still entirely unclear about who exactly these conversations are with. Remember, the president had said in the past that all of the Iranian officials that he thought would be worthwhile talking to

429.196 - 452.571 Unknown

had been killed as part of this conflict we also don't know exactly what the president means when he says he's looking for a complete and total resolution to the conflict does that mean for example that iran would be able to keep the highly enriched uranium that remains buried underground at one of its nuclear facilities does it allow iran to maintain the ability

Chapter 5: How are market reactions shaping the economic landscape amid geopolitical tensions?

812.697 - 835.296 Steve Bannon

In addition to oil flowing, Imagine the economic activity and growth that will occur in the Middle East. Imagine a Middle East where even countries not just that opposed Israel, but opposed each other. Some of these Arab countries, they start to work together. They start to have more commerce together. They start to have more commerce with us and so forth and so on.

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835.597 - 850.653 Steve Bannon

Isn't that another way of looking at this? And if and if the enemy did get that nuclear weapon, that straight could be shut forever. And there couldn't be a damn thing we could do about it. Monday, 23, March, April 20, 26.

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850.953 - 871.799 Steve Bannon

I think over the weekend, what we talked about was this forcing function that was going to take place later this afternoon with the president saying, hey, if you if you have not opened up the straight or her moves to free navigation. I'm going to unleash hell. Of course, the Iranians came back and said, fine, we hear you. And we're going to unleash hell back.

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871.819 - 894.194 Steve Bannon

Capital markets, bond markets, equity markets, but particularly commodity markets, literally in free fall overnight. President announced today they've actually been in discussions with appropriate personnel on the Iranian side. Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff, Turkey may have a role in this. I would tell folks, buckle up this week. I think it's going to be a bumpy ride.

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895.037 - 920.198 Steve Bannon

Eric Bolling, let's get you in here first. You did a great job teeing us up on Saturday, the deadline at 5 clearly worked as a forcing function, particularly to the global capital and commodities markets. Last night was pretty brutal in Asia as the markets opened early evening New York City time, Eastern Daylight Time, and particularly oil.

920.619 - 939.226 Steve Bannon

Now, that's kind of reversed, but there's bounce backs from that as people try to sort this out. Just give us your assessment of where these – what are the markets telling us this morning about this new information they've gotten from the president of the United States? Well, I think the markets are telling us buckle up like you just said.

939.246 - 958.118 Steve Bannon

We were talking about that last week, Steve, where it's going to get really volatile or every news story, every comment either out of Trump or the foreign ministers, whoever is running Iran. They make a comment. Markets react. I'll tell you exactly what happened last night at 6 o'clock. We get a preview of what's happening. The night trading starts. All the equities are down.

958.198 - 983.067 Steve Bannon

Dow, S&P, NASDAQ were down 300, 400, 500 points. Woke up this morning, they were down 700. Trump made the statement on Truth that he was going to delay this, whatever action he was going to take, the bombing of Iranians. oil and electricity plants for five days. Markets went from down 700 to down 1,200. And then the foreign minister said, oh, no, we're not negotiating with Trump.

983.087 - 994.68 Steve Bannon

And the question is now, who's telling the truth? All right, so there's this thing called the taco trade. There's no disrespect meant whatsoever. Wall Street, they're jerks, but they call it taco. Trump always chickens out.

Chapter 6: What role do Turkey and other nations play in the Iran negotiations?

1067.493 - 1104.26 Steve Bannon

Where Brent got to over 110, 112, did that drop below 100? I saw 101 low of the day for Brent, then it bounced back up, and it's trading right around 100, $101 a barrel. But it had gotten as high as legitimately sitting at 115 for a while late last week. Remember, our great allies in the Gulf, particularly Qatar, UAE, and the Saudis, They want oil and gas prices as high as possible.

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1104.461 - 1127.503 Steve Bannon

Qatar, obviously very concerned about their field. They said 17% of production taken out of their LNG capacity. But they would love to be able to cause force majeure on those contracts, and particularly as far out as you can get, and renegotiate those with the Europeans. Same with the Saudis. The Saudis love oil above $100 a barrel, right?

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1127.523 - 1149.671 Steve Bannon

So our allies are only our allies in certain aspects of this, Eric. Yeah, so they're allies to Trump saying, yeah, Trump, go ahead, keep going. We got your back. We support your action against Iran because every one of those actions creates a higher oil price. And then also when the Iranians retaliate against Middle Eastern oil infrastructure, which is very strange to me, Steve.

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1149.691 - 1157.001 Steve Bannon

When you think about it, why would they go after oil infrastructure in the Middle East other than maybe trying to send a message to Trump, we're going to get oil prices as high as possible?

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1156.981 - 1174.534 Steve Bannon

There's a danger – so my point is I think we've been talking about this for the better part of three weeks now that the Middle Eastern allies, so to speak, may be in somewhat cahoots with the Iranians, even if it's not an actual email or text saying we got you. But maybe there's some communication from the Iranians to –

1174.514 - 1192.445 Steve Bannon

Let's see, Bahrain or Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, not Israel, but the others, where they say, we're going to hit this oil infrastructure, whether it's a refinery or an oil producing platform. We want to let you know, get your people off there, but it's going to get hit. That means they get their people off and the loss of life and all of a sudden oil prices remain high.

1192.605 - 1214.736 Steve Bannon

And then these countries get to slowly bring that back online. They could say, it's going to take us 60 days, 90 days. The longer it takes to bring all that energy production back online, the longer these prices are going to stay elevated. And filling the coffers of the Middle Eastern countries is a problem. I will tell you, Lindsey Graham out there saying, go hit them, take Karg Island.

1214.756 - 1230.297 Steve Bannon

That's one of the most foolish things I've ever heard in my life. Stay away from the oil infrastructure right now. Karg Island's all about oil and energy. You want to stay away from those at all costs. Hit other things, not Their oil infrastructure, because that was going to come back and haunt you. Lindsay just never, never met a war.

1230.337 - 1245.61 Steve Bannon

He didn't fall in love with, or wasn't already in love with or supporting or agitating. So I hope Lindsay's not the one. Yeah, I do. Yeah, I do. Yeah. I do think he's not talking about destroying. The oil infrastructure, at least his concept.

Chapter 7: How is the U.S. military strategy evolving in response to Iranian threats?

2122.042 - 2134.722 Steve Bannon

Very confusing because with President Trump, hey, it's all part of the same thing. There's 20 million here. We got to get them out. And just saying they can't vote is not that step one. And of course, he jumped Thune.

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2134.702 - 2154.938 Steve Bannon

And cause we covered this all weekend and you've got Mike Lee and you've got Eric Schmidt and you've got a couple of three there that are actually fighting to get a legislative process. The rest you could tell are like 11 year old kids when they don't want to do something like stick around for the weekend or kind of, you know, mopey about doing it. I think Trump put them on, on notice. Also,

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2154.918 - 2176.572 Steve Bannon

The Supreme Court. Tell me what's going to happen at the Supreme Court. Another huge element of this of trying to get to the bottom of 2020 election theft and make sure it doesn't. We don't have the Chinese Communist Party and the Democrats working in conjunction can't steal future elections. Mike, what's the Supreme Court's going to weigh into this starting today? Correct.

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2176.957 - 2198.509 Steve Bannon

Yeah, I mean, let's go back to the Senate just really quick. Our most crucial sovereign power as we the people is controlling our border and controlling our populace, right? And these Democrats are trying to sabotage the will of American voters. When the American voters overwhelmingly elect it,

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2198.489 - 2227.915 Steve Bannon

President Trump, a Republican House, and a Republican Senate to secure our border and to expel illegal aliens, starting with the worst of the worst, like Trende Aragua and MS-13. We had another incident where a young woman was allegedly murdered in cold blood by another illegal alien in America. This is unacceptable. And the American people overwhelmingly support securing our border.

2227.995 - 2250.684 Steve Bannon

They overwhelmingly support expelling dangerous illegal aliens. They overwhelmingly support proof of citizenship and voter ID in our elections. The problem is that Senate Republicans are completely out of touch with with their constituents. They need to get outside of the beltway. They need to touch grass.

2250.784 - 2271.64 Steve Bannon

They need to go home and have town hall meetings like my former boss Chuck Grassley does every year, the full Grassley, 99 counties every year. That's what these Senate Republicans need to start doing because they are out of touch with their constituents. Because I can tell you this, hearing from the inside, Senate Republicans are overwhelmingly against the Save America Act.

2271.66 - 2289.011 Steve Bannon

They don't want to pass it. And so that's why we need to turn up the heat with the war room posse and hold them accountable. Turn up the heat as high as it will go and get this thing passed. Hang on. Hang on. Hang on. This is why Trump put Dune on blast. Just repeat that last.

2289.051 - 2303.674 Steve Bannon

I just want to make sure people understand this, that the people you see come to the microphone, except for a handful of them, the Mike Lees, the Eric Schmitz, a couple other of these warriors, the rest of them have literally no interest in this. Correct, Mike?

Chapter 8: What future challenges could arise from the current energy crisis?

2767.587 - 2800.744 Steve Bannon

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2802.125 - 2823.191 Steve Bannon

Okay, for Morning Joe, specifically for Mika and for the crowd over at MSNBC, the ICE agents at the airports to help out. And remember, they said they're not going to work the x-rays. It's too complicated. They're not trained for it. But they're trained to wait for it. Check IDs. That's why it's perfect training for the fall of 2026.

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2823.231 - 2842.335 Steve Bannon

This is why it's such a brilliant, this is another 5D chess move for President Trump. Let's get ICE into the airports to help out to the lines. They can't work the machines. You know what to do? Just walk them down. Hey, we're going to speed things through. Can we check your IDs? That's what's going to happen in the fall of 26 because, folks, we're tired of having elections stolen.

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2843.117 - 2852.922 Steve Bannon

So ICE is going to be there in the fall of 26, just like they're in the airports today. So from the war room, suck on that. Let's go to Memphis.

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2852.902 - 2881.086 Steve Bannon

uh brian glenn brian and by the way brian glenn has has has uh has a shanghaied one of our great producers who will go unnamed as all the producers for the worm is is out there as your cameraman uh low value added making you look great when he should be in the worm doing the production but brian i digress glenn brian you're there in memphis why is the president united states going to memphis today the crime rates already dropped is this because he's going to use this as an example of what he's going to do in the future sir

2883.53 - 2901.42 Steve Bannon

uh good morning uh i by the way the wait at atlanta tsa late was about four to five hours after blowing about two hours in line going nowhere steve i rented a car and i drove from atlanta to memphis late last night got in here and of course my

2901.586 - 2921.046 Steve Bannon

great cameraman jarvis hold it hang on hang on hang on hang on hang on hang on hang on hang on stop you went to atlanta to try to fly out waited a couple hours said heck with this give me a car i'm gonna drive to the mississippi i'm gonna drive from atlanta georgia to the mississippi river because it'll be quicker

2923.422 - 2946.867 Steve Bannon

Well, I got to the airport five hours in advance, and once I realized I was not moving anywhere, I just chose to bail the airport, get a rental car, and drive. And I will say this, the international terminal, get this, had three TSA agents working the entire international terminal. at ATL yesterday. It's a complete disaster. I would avoid that airport at all costs.

2946.887 - 2968.363 Steve Bannon

Now, here in Memphis, a totally different story. If you're flying out here in Memphis, you'll go maybe 8 to 10 minutes from the door to on the other side of the TSA security line. Different story here. But in Atlanta, avoid it at all costs. The reason why I'm here is back in September of last year, is when he launched this Memphis Task Force. Let me step aside.

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