As the US-Israeli war against Iran enters its second week, the carefully constructed narrative of a swift, surgical, and triumphant campaign has collapsed into a strategic nightmare of unimaginable proportions. What began as a coordinated surprise attack on February 28—designed to decapitate Iran’s leadership and trigger the implosion of the Islamic Republic—has instead ignited a conflagration that is consuming the architects of the war themselves...
In a sweeping, two-hour interview with journalist Danny Haiphong, former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter delivered what may be the most comprehensive and damning assessment of the conflict to date. Ritter, who served as a ballistic missile expert during the Gulf War and later as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq, pulled no punches. His analysis paints a picture of American military incompetence, Israeli desperation, Iranian strategic genius, and a coming economic collapse that will forever alter the global order.
“We lost this war with the first missiles fired into Iran,” Ritter declared. “We defeated ourselves from day one.”
The Strategic Miscalculation That Sealed America’s Fate
The war began on February 28 with a coordinated US-Israeli strike on Tehran that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with his brother, members of his family—including his month-old granddaughter—and several high-ranking commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The attack, carried out with intelligence assistance from the CIA, was the culmination of years of planning by neoconservatives who believed that removing Khamenei would trigger a popular uprising and the swift collapse of the Islamic Republic.
Ritter dismisses this premise as not merely wrong, but catastrophically, almost comically, misguided.
“Anybody who knew anything about Iran would know that regime change by killing the Supreme Leader is impossible,” Ritter said. “If you know about how revered the Supreme Leader is amongst the faithful—and Iran is a nation of faithful—and if you knew about the constitution, you’d understand that Iran is a constitutional republic. In fact, Iran is the most effectively functioning democracy in the Middle East. I’ll say that again, and I’ll be more than happy to take anybody on a debate on this at any time.”
Ritter explained that Iran’s governmental structure, forged in the crucible of the Iran-Iraq War and decades of sanctions, is designed precisely for such contingencies. The Assembly of Experts, the Expediency Council, and the military command structure all have clearly defined roles in the event of the Supreme Leader’s death. Far from creating chaos, the assassination triggered an immediate and orderly succession.
“The murder of Ali Khamenei made sure that the people would rally around the government,” Ritter said. “They have mechanisms in place. They have institutions in place that filled the gap created by his death. They ensured that the regime continued to function.”
Within 72 hours, the Assembly of Experts had unanimously selected Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, the former Supreme Leader’s son, as his successor. Thousands took to the streets of Tehran and Qom in a spontaneous display of national unity, chanting “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.” The IRGC issued a statement vowing “the most severe revenge” and declaring that “the criminals will regret the day they were born.”
Ritter was blunt: “This was a regime change war. The purpose of the surprise attack was to achieve regime change by facilitating the murder of the man that we all believed death would bring the collapse of Iran. And it turned out to be the opposite.”
When Assassination Backfires: Iran’s Pre-Planned Response
The United States, Ritter argued, committed the cardinal sin of military planning: it assumed its enemy would react as it wanted them to, not as they actually would.
“We initiated something that was supposed to achieve a certain result but achieved the exact opposite result,” he said. “We didn’t anticipate the Iranian response. We thought by killing Khamenei, Iran would be like a ship with no captain at the wheel, just spinning around. That wasn’t the case. Iran had a plan, and they immediately implemented the plan. And the plan blew our minds because we didn’t think they were going to do what they did.”
What Iran did, in Ritter’s assessment, was nothing short of brilliant. Instead of launching a single, symbolic retaliatory strike, Iran executed a comprehensive, multi-theater campaign designed to systematically dismantle the US-Israeli military infrastructure in the region.
“They struck everything,” Ritter said. “They did full broad-spectrum strike. And so we initiated something, and the Iranians flipped over and we went, ‘Damn, they’re on our six.’ Now the Iranians are driving this ship. We’re playing reaction. The Iranians are implementing a plan that they have thought out from the start. They’ve prepared for it. They have the resources for it. And they’re implementing this plan without deviation.”
Meanwhile, Ritter noted, the United States has changed its war plan multiple times in just over a week.
“The United States, on the other hand, has changed its plan five times in ten days,” he said. “And we’re going to change it again today because there’s a new economic reality coming into play, which we didn’t anticipate. It’s the most poorly planned military operation in the history of poorly planned military operations. Meanwhile, the Iranians are executing a plan to perfection.”
Inside the OODA Loop: How Iran Outmaneuvered the US Military
To explain the current dynamic, Ritter invoked the work of Colonel John Boyd, a legendary Air Force fighter pilot and military strategist whose theories have shaped American military doctrine for decades. Boyd’s concept of the OODA loop—Observe, Orient, Decide, Act—describes the decision-making cycle in combat. The side that can cycle through these stages faster, getting “inside” the enemy’s decision-making loop, wins.
“As a fighter pilot, Boyd understood that if two airplanes are coming in, the one who initiates and the other reacts—the one who can cycle information more quickly gets into the kill position,” Ritter explained. “His goal was to have the other side reacting to you.”
By assassinating Khamenei, the US and Israel believed they had seized the initiative, forcing Iran into a reactive posture. Instead, they triggered a pre-planned Iranian response that immediately reversed the roles.
“The Iranians are inside our decision-making cycle,” Ritter said. “They’re winning. Why would Iran pause and allow the United States to recalibrate? They’ve invested a lot. They’ve sacrificed a lot to get to the point right now where their strategic plan is superior to the strategic planning of the United States and Israel. They’re winning this war.”
How Iran Blinded the World’s Most Expensive Defense System
Nowhere is Iran’s dominance more evident than in the skies over the Middle East. Ritter provided a detailed, technical explanation of how Iran has systematically dismantled the US-Israeli missile defense architecture—a system that cost hundreds of billions of dollars to construct and was marketed as an impenetrable shield.
“Every component of the missile defense shield that we’ve put together over Israel and the Middle East wasn’t designed to work with the other,” Ritter said. “They were designed in a vacuum. Some of them, like the Patriot missile, date back to the original missile defense technology of the 1970s. And when Raytheon was asked to build a tactical system for the US Army, rather than doing the right thing—designing it from scratch—they took the shortcut. They took 1970s technology and tried to adapt it. The Patriot system has never worked properly since then.”
Ritter explained that the Patriot, Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Aegis systems are each designed to counter specific threats under specific conditions. The Iron Dome is designed for short-range rockets. The Patriot is designed for traditional ballistic missiles on predictable trajectories. The Aegis system is designed for theater-level defense against intermediate-range threats.
“Iranian missiles don’t play by those rules,” Ritter said. “They have the ability to accelerate mid-course. They have the ability to maneuver. So as these systems seek to acquire a target, you might notice the missiles launch and there’s an S-shaped curve to them. That’s them adjusting. The radars are queuing in, anticipating a point of intercept. But the problem is that point of intercept changes because the Iranian missile accelerates. So now this missile is trying to play catch-up, and you’ll see that big curve as it’s trying to catch up, but it can’t. Then it maneuvers. Let’s say it gets an intercept point. Then it maneuvers again, and it misses every single time. The Iranians have built a system to defeat this.”
But the real genius of the Iranian strategy, Ritter argued, lies in their approach to the entire defense architecture. The US system relies on forward-deployed radars—expensive, sensitive, and vulnerable—to provide early warning and targeting data. These radars are connected to satellite relay stations and communication links that feed data to the interceptors.
“What the Iranians have done is they’ve saturated the skies,” Ritter said. “They’ve collected the data points, and then they’ve taken our eyes out. They blew up all of the radars used to collect data early on. Then they blew up all of the communication links. And so now we have a system that can’t work because it wasn’t designed to work in the first place. The only way we made it work was by putting these eyes out in front of us and communicating back. Full spectrum dominance, we call it. And the Iranians have blinded us. They made us unable to speak. The system has totally broken down.”
Turkey’s Role and the Desperate Reliance on Cold War Relics
With the US radar network in the Middle East destroyed, the Pentagon has been forced to rely on two aging radar facilities in Turkey—one in Pirinçlik near Diyarbakır, and another in Kıranköy, also near Diyarbakır. The Pirinçlik facility, a Cold War-era tracking station, was used during the Gulf War to detect Iraqi Scud launches and provide warning to Israel. The Kıranköy facility houses an X-band radar associated with the THAAD system, originally linked to Aegis Ashore sites in Poland and Romania.
“Because they have no more target acquisition—the Iranians have taken out all the radars in the Middle East—the Turkish radars are now collecting the data and feeding them into the system,” Ritter said. “You may ask yourself, why would Iran attack Turkey? Because Turkey is providing targeting data to the ballistic missile defense shield. Iran wants to make a point: Turkey is not an innocent party in this conflict. Turkey is an active participant.”
Ritter noted that Turkey cannot claim NATO immunity, as NATO is not officially participating in the war.
“Any nations that participate do so on an individual basis,” he said. “Turkey can’t say this is a NATO function. Turkey has become an active participant in this conflict.”
Running on Empty: America’s Ammunition Crisis
Even if the radar problem could be solved, Ritter warned, the United States is rapidly running out of interceptors. The most advanced Patriot missiles—the PAC-3s—are gone. What remains are PAC-2s, a decades-old design that Ritter says “don’t work, never did, never will.”
“We’re burning through the PAC-2s because we’re trying to intercept things they can’t,” he said. “The Iranian missiles are too fast, too maneuverable, and they’ll never be intercepted by a PAC-2. And when we run out of PAC-2s, we ain’t got nothing left. There is literally nothing left. The Aegis missiles that we have are very expensive. We’ve probably blown through about 80-90% of our inventory, and what we have left won’t work because all the radars are destroyed.”
Israel’s situation is even more dire.
“The Israelis are out of ammunition,” Ritter said. “They don’t have anything. What we gave, they fired. Israel doesn’t produce its own missiles. We do. When Iron Dome ran out of interceptor missiles during their fight with Hezbollah, it was American military aircraft flying in from Europe, bringing stockpiles of interceptor missiles that we had stockpiled here because we make them. Israel doesn’t make anything. We make them, and we don’t make enough. And there’s none left. Game, set, match.”
Iran, by contrast, has planned for this war for two decades.
“Guess who’s not running out of missiles?” Ritter asked rhetorically. “Iran has sufficient missiles to last about six months of sustained activity, maybe even longer. They have enough drones to last for about a year and a half of sustained launch capability.”
The Minab Massacre: A War Crime Enabled by Policy
Perhaps the most horrifying revelation in Ritter’s interview concerned a US strike on the Iranian port city of Minab. On the first day of the war, American cruise missiles targeted what the Pentagon described as “IRGC command facilities” at the Minab Naval Base. But the reality, Ritter claims, was something far darker.
Ritter explained that under the Geneva Conventions and the US military’s own Law of War Manual, targeting requires a rigorous process of “distinction”—ensuring that a target is genuinely military in nature—and “proportionality”—ensuring that the military value of striking a target outweighs the potential harm to civilians. This process is overseen by the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response office, a Pentagon unit created in 2023 to prevent the kind of civilian casualties that plagued the Global War on Terror.
“Pete Hegseth did away with that directive,” Ritter said. “He canceled it in his effort for ‘lethality.’ So there is no civilian harm mitigation and response capability in America anymore. Instead, what there is is a literal free-for-all. We can do anything we want.”
Without this oversight, targeting was allegedly handed over to an AI-assisted program called CLAD, developed by the defense contractor Palantir. CLAD scans databases and generates targets based on parameters like building dimensions, proximity to known military facilities, and other algorithmic criteria. No human being, Ritter claims, vetted the targets before the missiles were launched.
The Minab facility was assigned four impact points: two warehouses, a medical facility, and a large building in the upper right corner of the base. But the Tomahawk Block IV cruise missiles used in the strike have a unique capability: they can loiter over a target, collect real-time imagery, transmit that imagery back for assessment, and then execute an immediate reattack based on what they see.
“The fifth cruise missile’s job is to loiter over,” Ritter said. “The first four come in and hit the two warehouse facilities. There’s nothing in there. No secondary explosion, nothing. They’re empty. They hit the medical facility—we got smoke coming out. It hits another building, collapses it. There’s smoke coming out, but more importantly, there’s people moving around. Lots of people moving around. And that imagery is being sent back to the ship, and the operators are looking at it going, ‘We got a lot of people moving around that target. We hit something of importance. Reattack.'”
What the operators didn’t know—because no human had vetted the target—was that the building was a school. The first missile had struck a classroom wing, killing some students and injuring many others. Survivors were ushered into the school’s prayer hall, a large building that happened to match the dimensions CLAD had been programmed to identify. Meanwhile, teachers called parents, urging them to come and collect their children.
“Parents in the neighborhoods nearby come rushing to the facility,” Ritter said. “Operators look at teachers ushering children into the prayer hall, parents rushing in, and at the moment where everybody’s come together, we double-tapped it.”
The fifth cruise missile, armed with a thermobaric warhead that turns unexpended fuel into a fuel-air explosive, penetrated the prayer hall and detonated.
“Read the stories of the parents about how they found their children,” Ritter said, his voice breaking with emotion. “‘There was nothing left of my child. She had been burned to death. I only could identify her because of the remnants of her backpack.’ That’s what we did. We double-tapped them. Pure 100% murder, because Pete Hegseth decided that we needed to be more lethal.”
Initial reports indicate that 175 people, mostly children, were killed in the strike.
The War Criminal in the Pentagon
Ritter’s fury at Hegseth was palpable throughout the interview. He described the Secretary of Defense as “a war criminal” who has “disgraced his uniform, disgraced his country, and disgraced humanity.”
“He got rid of the regulations that required the United States military to comply with the law of war, our own law of war manual,” Ritter said. “And any American who sits there and says, ‘This is okay. I voted for this,’ die. Go away. Disappear. You’re the reason why this country no longer stands for anything. You’re the reason why this country is hated and reviled. Because you have no soul.”
Ritter called on Hegseth to be prosecuted for war crimes.
“The decisions that he has made are unconstitutional, and they’ve resulted in the mass death of innocents,” he said. “And if we don’t hold him accountable for this, then it’s an indictment of us all.”
The Economic Front: Short-Term Pain for Permanent Collapse
As devastating as the military dimension has been, Ritter argues that the economic front may prove even more decisive. The United States and Israel, in their initial strikes, targeted Iranian oil depots in southern Tehran, hoping to cripple the Iranian economy. Instead, they triggered a response that has shut down the global energy market.
“The Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed,” Ritter said. “Not a damn thing we can do about it. Qatar is no longer producing gas. Kuwait’s no longer producing oil. Saudi Arabia stopped producing, not because they wanted to stop, but because Iran made them stop. The United Arab Emirates is about to be shut down. Saudi Arabia is on the verge of being shut down. Baku is going to stop its ability to produce oil if they play stupid games.”
The impact on global oil prices has been immediate and catastrophic. Brent crude has surged past $100 a barrel, with some analysts predicting $200 if the situation persists. The Wall Street Journal reported that even after European countries eased their reserves, prices continued to climb.
Iran’s message has been clear: this is only the beginning. A spokesperson for the IRGC was quoted asking, “Are you ready for that?”
The American Consumer Wakes Up to Empty Pockets and Empty Shelves
Ritter noted with grim satisfaction that the American public is beginning to feel the pain.
“On Friday, gas was $3.11 a gallon when I filled up my tank,” he said. “Today it’s $3.41 a gallon. It’s gone up 30 cents, and by the end of the day it’s going to go up another nickel. By the end of the week, who knows where it’s going to be.”
He mocked the administration’s talking points about “short-term pain for long-term gain,” a phrase repeated by multiple officials and parroted by mainstream media.
“It’s a little too cute, a little too slick,” Ritter said. “They repeat it and they repeat it and they repeat it, and you suddenly realize that we are literally—we don’t have a free press. Wake up, America. We don’t have a free press.”
A montage of clips shows US officials and media figures repeating variations of the same phrase. “Short-term pain for long-term gain,” they intone, like a mantra.
“That’s why you need to hit the like button for Danny Haiphong,” Ritter said. “Because you know Danny Haiphong and Garland Nixon and Judge Napolitano and others—they provide alternatives to what you just saw.”
The Myth of American Energy Independence Exploded
Ritter eviscerated the notion that the United States could insulate itself from the energy shock.
“We’re energy sufficient,” he said, mimicking the official line. “We’re America. We got Texas. They frack things. They break this oil open and they get gas out of there. And we’re energy sufficient. We’re not affected. And then we invaded Venezuela. We got all their oil. We’re good to go.”
He then asked the question that should be on every American’s mind: “Ask yourselves why you’re paying through the nose at the gas pump if we’re so damn energy sufficient. Ask yourself where the strategic petroleum reserves are. Donald Trump didn’t load them up, guys. They’re empty. They don’t exist. We’re screwed.”
No Tears for Tel Aviv: Israel Reaps the Whirlwind
Ritter made no effort to hide his contempt for Israel and its supporters. When Haiphong showed images of darkened cities in Israel and reports of civilians huddling in bomb shelters, Ritter’s response was withering.
“Excuse me, Danny,” he said, wiping his eyes in mock sorrow. “I was crying for Israel.”
The sarcasm quickly gave way to cold fury.
“No one cares. Literally no one cares,” he said. “The Israelis mocked the Palestinians. They mocked the suffering. They denied the genocide. They denied the suffering. And frankly speaking, what Iran is doing to Israel right now doesn’t even come close to what Israel did to the people of Gaza. The worst is yet to come.”
Ritter noted that Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence had been hit, his brother reportedly killed. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir was severely injured and may not survive.
“Let me just pause because I’m overcome by emotion when genocidal maniacs have the tables turned against them,” Ritter said. “I will never shed a tear for anybody in Israel today. If you’re in Israel today, you’ve made a conscious decision to remain in Israel as it’s basically violated the law, committed genocide. It means that you are an active participant in an overall policy of greater Israel.”
Israel as the Modern Manifestation of Nazi Germany
Ritter then made a comparison that will undoubtedly generate controversy but one he insisted is historically accurate.
“To steal the land, you must depopulate the land,” he said. “That means that you are going to carry out an Israeli version of Plan Ost—the Nazi plan to depopulate Belarus and western Russia, to eliminate millions of Slavs to make lebensraum for the greater German people. Israel is the modern manifestation of Nazi Germany. They are Nazis. This is not an exaggeration, ladies and gentlemen. We’re talking about literally the worst people on the planet. Literally the worst people on the planet reside in this artificial entity called Israel that no longer has a right to exist.”
He argued that whatever legitimacy Israel might have had in 1948 has been forfeited by decades of occupation, apartheid, and now genocide.
“That Israel has become an illegal parasitic attachment to humanity,” he said. “And the fact that Iran is in the process of erasing Israel from the map of the earth—I’m not going to shed any tears.”
His advice to Israelis was simple: “Leave. Leave Israel. And when you leave, don’t bring your sick ideology with you. Go and join other nations and hopefully integrate into them and live peacefully and harmoniously.”
India’s Betrayal of BRICS and the Coming Reckoning
Ritter also addressed the role of India in the conflict, revealing a betrayal that has profound implications for the Global South.
“India has admitted they’re in a strategic relationship with Israel,” Ritter said. “India has admitted that they gave the coordinates of an unarmed Iranian ship that had gone to India for a peaceful rally—they gave it to the United States, to Israel, who gave it to the United States, so that the ship could be sunk.”
This act, Ritter argued, constitutes a betrayal not only of Iran but of the entire BRICS framework. India, a founding member of BRICS, has chosen to side with Israel against a fellow BRICS member.
“India is a member of BRICS who has decided that they will not support a fellow member of BRICS, Iran,” he said. “India is going to pay a heavy price for its decision to support Israel and support this war. India could have been one of those nations that got an exception to the transit out of the Strait of Hormuz. But India is now a declared enemy of Iran, and India is going to suffer a huge economic hit.”
He noted that India has a Muslim population larger than Pakistan’s and suggested that the country’s Muslims might have something to say about Modi’s alignment with Israel.
“Maybe it’s time for the Indian people to rise up and eliminate Modi as their prime minister,” Ritter said. “This man has been sitting on the fence. This man has been playing both sides for far too long. He’s allowed the United States to dictate solutions to him, and now at the behest of the United States, in order to curry political favor with Donald Trump, he has allowed India’s strategic national security interest to be subordinated to that of the state of Israel. Unacceptable.”
What China Has Learned From America’s Humiliation
Ritter also drew a lesson for China from the conflict’s trajectory.
“What do you think the Chinese have learned from this?” he asked. “You think the Chinese have learned that if we cave into Donnie, everything will be okay? Or have they learned that if we tell Donnie to pound sand, stand up and say bring it on, Donnie walks away because he doesn’t have anything?”
The implication was clear: American power is a bluff, and the bluff has been called.
The Nuclear Dimension: The Death of the One Man Who Said No
Perhaps the most terrifying section of Ritter’s interview concerned the nuclear dimension. He explained that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was the one man in the Iranian power structure who consistently opposed the development of nuclear weapons, based on a fatwa he issued decades ago prohibiting their use as un-Islamic.
“Ali Khamenei was it,” Ritter said. “He was the guy that said no. The conservatives, his own son—they were like, ‘We need nuclear weapons.’ And he said no. And we killed him.”
With Khamenei gone, replaced by a son who has long advocated for a more aggressive nuclear posture, the calculus has changed. The conservatives who surround the new Supreme Leader have been arguing for years that the fatwa is reversible—and Khamenei himself acknowledged that fatwas can be reversed, even if he personally refused to do so.
“Now they have agreement that they are reversible, and Ali Khamenei is dead,” Ritter said. “We may very well see the Iranians decide that nuclear weapons are exactly what they need.”
The 450 Kilograms: Iran’s Pathway to the Bomb
Ritter revealed that Iran has been stockpiling 60% enriched uranium—450 kilograms of it, enough for multiple weapons. And they have solved the engineering challenges of weaponization.
“They said in the fall of 2024 and in the spring of 2025 that they had solved all of the issues pertaining to the delivery of a nuclear weapon,” Ritter said. “They had a warhead design. They had it built. It was ready. All they needed was fissile material.”
The 450 kilograms of uranium hexafluoride can be converted into uranium metal and formed into shapes conducive to a gun-type design—the same design used in the Hiroshima bomb, which was never tested because it was guaranteed to work.
“They have the ability to produce 10, 15, maybe 20 kiloton warheads,” Ritter said. “Very crude weapon, but very effective. Doesn’t need to be tested.”
He noted that Iran has missiles capable of carrying these warheads and that the warhead designs are already integrated with the missile systems.
The Reverse Samson Option: What Happens If Israel or the US Uses Nukes
Ritter warned that if the United States or Israel uses nuclear weapons against Iran, the response will be swift and devastating.
“You drop one nuclear weapon on us, and everybody dies,” he said. “It’s a reverse Samson option. Iran will nuke Israel. The difference is Iran is huge. You’re small. Three nuclear weapons ends all life in Israel.”
And it wouldn’t stop there. Ritter predicted that Iran would also target Gulf states that facilitated the attack.
“After they take out Israel, they’ll take out the states that facilitated this,” he said. “Saudi Arabia will be destroyed. Dubai will cease to exist. Abu Dhabi can go down. Kuwait City can go down. The point is, once we cross that road, you’ve made a decision that you are going to physically eradicate the Islamic Republic of Iran, and therefore the fatwa automatically gets reversed.”
A Plea From a Man Who Dedicated His Life to Arms Control
Despite his anger, Ritter made clear that he does not want to see a nuclear-armed Iran. He has spent his entire career in arms control and non-proliferation.
“I still believe, I don’t know why—because it’s been my life and I’m still naive—but I still believe in nuclear non-proliferation,” he said. “I believe in the legitimacy of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. I believe in arms control. All these things that have proven just to be a joke in the eyes of the United States. They disgraced my entire life. My entire life has been spent pursuing arms control, and this government has just made it a joke. A literal joke. A tragic joke.”
But he acknowledged the Iranian perspective.
“So who am I to tell the Iranians you can’t have nuclear weapons?” he asked. “Who am I to say you can’t do this? It’s hard to sit there and make that argument in a vacuum. But when your nation is being subjected to the death and destruction that’s being laid down, wanton murder by the United States and Israel—why not get a nuclear weapon if you’re Iran? Why not?”
The Weak Man and the Coward: Ritter’s Verdict on Donald Trump
Ritter reserved some of his harshest language for President Donald Trump, whom he described as “a coward” and “the weakest man possible morally, physically, intellectually.”
“Donald Trump is a coward,” Ritter said. “Straight up coward. He only strikes when he thinks there’s going to be a quick, easy victory. Notice what happens when he’s faced with a morally complicated issue. He caves.”
Ritter pointed to Trump’s handling of Syria as evidence.
“Do I support al-Jolani, the beheading ISIS leader of Syria?” he asked, mimicking Trump’s thought process. “‘Well, he’s a strong guy. Tough guy. He’s made some hard decisions.’ So he caves instead of saying, ‘No, we’re going to kill you because you’re al-Qaeda and we don’t forgive, and you’re going to die.’ Nope. He did the opposite.”
With Iran, Ritter argued, Trump has been similarly outmaneuvered.
“He’s confronted by the fact that they’re tough,” Ritter said. “Even—you know, they’re tough. They’re tougher than you are, Donnie. Ten times tougher than you are. And they’re smarter than Pete Hegseth, your testosterone-driven, 315-pound-pressing imbecile who’s governing what used to be called the Department of Defense but is now more euphemistically accurately described as the Department of War.”
The Dictator and the Cult of Personality
Ritter warned that the United States has ceased to function as a constitutional republic and has become, in effect, a dictatorship.
“James Madison warned us about the dangers of factions,” he said. “Factions are controlled by a functioning republic, a constitutional republic that has checks and balances in place. But these checks and balances have to work, or else the executive—which has been imbued with a great deal of authority—becomes a tyrant.”
He noted that Congress has abdicated its role, the Supreme Court has been marginalized, and the president now governs as “a dictator.”
“We have transferred power to a functional dictator, a cult of personality,” he said. “And we have one chance to fix it. That’s this November.”
Netanyahu’s End: A Dead Man Walking
As for Benjamin Netanyahu, Ritter was equally dismissive.
“He’s a smart man, politically astute, but he’s boxed himself into a corner,” Ritter said. “He basically took all his remaining savings while he’s in Vegas. He’s already gambled away everything. He takes everything left and puts it on one number and rolls the dice. It ain’t going to come up what you want, Benny. It’s over.”
Ritter noted that Netanyahu’s brother is dead, his family under attack, and his political base crumbling.
“He needs to hope that he passes through natural causes,” Ritter said, “because he’s been marked for death. You don’t get to assassinate the Supreme Leader and walk away.”
The Hunted People: America’s Reckoning
Ritter issued a similar warning for Trump.
“He needs to be careful,” Ritter said. “The American people have to understand that we don’t have a right—just because we have the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans—we don’t have the right to go around and murder people, murder leaders, murder religious leaders, and then pretend that there are no consequences. We are a hunted people. We are a hated people. And our actions will haunt us and hunt us for a long time going forward.”
A Call to the American People: Wake Up
Ritter’s message to the American people was stark and uncompromising.
“Maybe the disastrous war will wake the American people up,” he said. “The only way it can, because we’re all trapped in that cocoon of comfort. But when suddenly we have to go out there and pay eight bucks a gallon for gas, when we go to Walmart and we see the shelves are empty because truckers can’t afford the diesel to ship things around, when we see the price of food go through the roof, when we realize our paycheck doesn’t cut it anymore—maybe we’ll wake up. Maybe we’ll do the right thing.”
The “right thing,” in Ritter’s view, is to vote out the current administration and restore constitutional governance.
“There’s nothing worse than a dictator,” he said. “There’s nothing worse than a cult of personality. There’s nothing worse than a person that openly says, ‘I will not comply with the Constitution of the United States.’ You can take a Democrat who, as long as they say, ‘I will comply with the Constitution, I will obey that oath,’ and they respect the checks and balances—that’s imperfect. I agree that the Democrats govern horribly. I agree that they make bad policy. But we can fix that constitutionally if we the people wake up.”
A Challenge to America’s Service Members
To the 40,000-plus American service members currently deployed in the region, Ritter offered a stark challenge.
“You raised your hand, you took the oath, you put on the uniform, you serve,” he said. “I’m one of these people that believes that your duty and responsibility is to your oath, to the Constitution. Your job is to obey the lawful orders given to you to the best of your ability.”
But he also urged them to think critically about those orders.
“Maybe before you die, disobey an unlawful order,” he said. “Maybe you’re on an Aegis cruiser at the Tomahawk control station, and they come in and say, ‘We’re going to be firing off another strike.’ Say, ‘Time out. I need to see the decision-making matrix on this one. This target we’re hitting—have we actually looked at it to make sure it’s not a civilian target? Where’s the packet? Where’s the targeting packet? I am not firing a missile against a grid coordinate. I need the targeting packet. I need to ensure that we have done civilian mitigation. Have we done civilian mitigation? Yes or no, sir?'”
He concluded: “If the answer is you don’t know, then I’m not launching the missile. Arrest me. Move me. Put somebody else in. The only thing that matters is the Constitution. You didn’t take an oath to Pete Hegseth. You didn’t take an oath to Donald Trump. You took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution.”
A Warning to the Nations of the World
Ritter’s final message was to the nations of the world, particularly those in the Global South.
“Nations that stand up to Trump win,” he said. “Nations that bend the knee to Trump die. Venezuela could have stood up to Trump, but they took the easy way out. They took the CIA money. They caved. Cuba—this is a warning to you. The United States doesn’t care about you. Donald Trump seeks to dominate you, seeks to destroy you. Stand up. Fight back. Don’t give in.”
He reiterated that Trump, when confronted with real resistance, always backs down.
“He was misled into believing that Iran would fold like a house of cards,” Ritter said. “And now look at him. Panicked. Five war plans in ten days. There’s going to probably be another war plan today or tomorrow because they don’t know what they’re doing. Iran is in their decision-making cycle now.”
The Final Assessment: The War Is Lost
As the interview drew to a close, Haiphong asked Ritter for his final assessment. The answer was characteristically blunt.
“We have lost this war,” Ritter said. “The Iranians were smarter than us about ballistic missile defense. They were smarter than us about strategy. They were smarter than us about politics. They were smarter than us about everything. This war is lost. The only question now is how much more damage will be done before we admit it.”
He paused, then added: “And I think the American people are going to pay a very heavy price for the arrogance and ignorance of their leaders.”
Ritter’s analysis, drawn from decades of experience in military intelligence and weapons inspection, presents a terrifying picture of American decline and Iranian ascendancy. The United States, he argues, has been out-thought, out-fought, and out-maneuvered at every turn. Its missile defenses are blind. Its military is running out of ammunition. Its economy is facing an energy shock from which it may never recover. And its leadership—both civilian and military—has proven itself criminally incompetent.
The only hope, Ritter suggests, lies in the American people themselves. If they can wake from their “cocoon of comfort,” if they can see through the propaganda of “short-term pain for long-term gain,” if they can hold their leaders accountable at the ballot box and their service members accountable to their oaths, there may yet be a way out.
But time, he warns, is running out.
“The Iranians are inside our decision-making cycle,” he said. “They’re winning. Why would they pause and allow the United States to recalibrate? They’re not going to allow that. Donald Trump is in a lot of trouble. And I think you’re going to see this war go on for a lot longer. And I think the consequences of the American defeat are going to be far greater than anyone imagines.”
A Final Word on Independent Media
Before signing off, Ritter took a moment to address the viewers directly, urging them to support independent media.
“If you like the fact that I’m on this show talking, then donate to Danny Haiphong,” he said. “Danny’s the man. Danny made this happen. Danny’s the guy that puts the hours in. He prepares. He gets this out there. Support Danny Haiphong. Support all of the independent media out there that you can. Because otherwise, you’re just going to get a bunch of clones saying ‘short-term pain for long-term gain.’ And that will be the message you’ll get over and over again.”
He also addressed a question from the chat about appearing on Tucker Carlson’s show.
“Tucker Carlson doesn’t talk to me anymore,” Ritter said. “If you want me to do a show with Tucker Carlson, contact Tucker Carlson. Send him an email. Send him something and say, ‘Do a show with Scott Ritter.’ Because Tucker has decided that—I know there was a while where he loved me. He was calling me twice a week. We were talking. And then he decided he was going to strike off on his own. Which is his right. Would I love to have a conversation with Tucker Carlson? Sure. Why not talk to a guy that has the ability to reach a billion people? But I’m not going to bend the knee. I’m not going to crawl. I’m not going to beg. I’m here. If Tucker wants a show, he knows how to reach me.”
Finally, he apologized for his language.
“I was very worked up this morning,” he said. “I spent the morning researching this Minab strike. And the more I found out about it, the more I was enraged beyond belief. This is my country. These are my fellow service members. They’re using my taxpayer dollars to buy weapons that are being used in the name of all of us. And we can’t allow this to happen. If we sit back and do nothing, then we are complicit in the crimes that are taking place.”