Scott Ritter: Trump Calls Putin for Iran War Off-Ramp (Transcript)

But strategically, your job is to remove Ukraine from the side of Europe and the United States, to eliminate the Ukrainian nationalism and to make Ukraine a neutral party. Do you do this by carrying out actions that would inflame Ukrainian nationalism?

Zelensky right now is identified as one of the worst leaders possible for Ukraine. The longer Zelensky rules Ukraine, the better off it is for Russia. They gain everything — the collapse of confidence in the Ukrainian government, et cetera. We now see a political three-way death match between Zelensky, Zaluzhny and Budanov. A Russian targeting of Bankova would literally turn Zelensky into that which Russia doesn’t want him to be — a wartime leader with credibility, give him justification for everything he’s done.

So for the Russians to do nothing is actually the best course of action — to let Ukraine devolve, to let the United Kingdom devolve.

Russia’s Leverage Over the United States

Now, in the context of Iran, for Russia not to take that phone call removes them from the decision making cycle in the United States. But by taking that phone call, Russia is able to make its voice heard. And the President is desperate.

By taking this phone call, Russia has set up the potential for an additional phone call, an additional phone call and a face to face meeting, maybe with Kushner and Witkoff. But that face to face meeting will be done on terms that are far more influenced by Russian goals and objectives because it’s the United States that now desperately needs Russian assistance to achieve an outcome that’s politically useful to the American President.

You know, I think you might see Russia being willing to put pressure on Iran to bring conflict termination, or not to do certain things, in exchange for the United States removing some of their demands.

Ukraine Negotiations: Alaska Plus

When it comes to Ukraine, I think you see the United States literally running away from Ukraine as fast as possible. Russia wants to encourage that, which is why Russia does nothing except leave the door open.

So I think what you saw is a very frank conversation. Not one that put Trump on the defensive, but one that educated Trump about the reality that he’s facing and the role Russia could play. But, you know, letting the President know that there are conditions that have to be met. Russia’s saying we want to negotiate an end to this war, but they’re not going to accept Ukrainian terms and the United States needs to stop backing Ukrainian terms.

And I think you’re going to see Russia and the United States come to an agreement that more closely resembles Alaska, but we’ll call it Alaska modified. Because now, since the United States reneged on Alaska, they can’t just throw it back on the table. When you throw it back on the table, it now has strings attached to it. And the Russians could start calling in those strings.

For instance, the idea of freezing the line of contact in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia might be no longer valuable. The Ukrainians might be called upon to give up those territories as well. You know, we get into buffer zones. Again, I don’t know the details of the Russian position — they haven’t been made public — but I think Russia is in a better position to admit to force, to compel the United States to stick to Alaska plus, meaning Alaska plus the current reality, to bring about an end to this conflict.

And I think the United States isn’t in much of a negotiating position. Time is not on their side because this conflict with Iran is going south quickly. And they need Russia — they need Russia to get involved in the energy market and they need Russia’s help with bringing an end to this conflict.

Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize Moment

And again, Russia can help provide some political cover for the President. Imagine if the President said that he was able to get a Ukrainian peace deal and an Iranian peace deal in the same day. Man, that Nobel Peace Prize looking pretty good around his neck. I mean, he’s the man. I mean, because he is the peace president.

And Russia is more than happy to play that game. I mean, trust me, the Russians know better than anybody that President Trump is the least qualified person in the world for a Nobel Peace Prize. But since the Nobel Peace Prize has already been politically compromised, why not just give it to a politically compromised person?

So I think the Russians know how to play Trump. And I think this phone call was all about playing Trump.

Does Russia’s Restraint Weaken Its Deterrence?

GLENN DIESEN: But at the same time, though, it seems that the cost of doing nothing is that Russia’s deterrence keeps weakening — the fact that the British would dare to do this kind of thing, strike inside Russia. The fact that you have people like Chancellor Merz who can sit in Munich at the security conference and brag about, you know, how he has imposed all these casualties on Russia.

It just — I got the impression from the decapitation strike against Iran that this had brought back, well, made the Russians rethink a bit what was done in December against Russia in Valdai. Do you see this pressure though on Putin to essentially do what Iran has done — that is, tell anyone who attacks Iran, assists in any way, allows the use of bases or airspace, everyone will be struck?

I mean, I would expect in the future that a lot of the Gulf nations will be very cautious allowing their territories to be used again if, again, this is the consequence.

Russia’s Strategic Position and the Iran War Endgame

SCOTT RITTER: Well, again, only Russia can make that call. But I would say that if I were Patrushev advising the President, I would say that Starmer is history. Keir Starmer is toast. And the continued devolution of the British political system is to the benefit of Russia — that when Starmer goes, there will be a political vacuum, infighting, and you’re going to see Britain continue to collapse on its own volition.

The case can be made for patience. What has Britain done besides giving European politicians bragging rights, which is meaningless? Merz bragging about what he did to Russia doesn’t change the strategic equation that the German economy is trash, is going to get trashed even further now because of a looming economic crisis brought on by an energy shortage. So Merz’s domestic political status — let him brag. Who cares? It’s words, it’s nothing.

And Starmer, if he wants to sit there and talk behind the scenes about how England is enabling Ukraine to strike strategic targets — in the short term, yes, it would be pleasing. I think I could say that I speak for a lot of Russians who would love to see British factories go up in smoke and love to see a Resnik rain down on German factories. And it would feel good for a moment. But is the goal to end this war or is the goal to expand this war?

Because right now the European Union is in trouble. They don’t know how they’re going to fund the continuation of this conflict. Germany again is a collapsing economy and Merz’s political fortunes are collapsing. Starmer’s on the way out. Macron’s in crisis. Sometimes, when the enemy is doing what you want them to do, just let them keep doing it and take the peripheral hits.

There will have to be a balancing act because this is not sustainable. But I think there are ways that the Russians would be able to strike targets inside Ukraine without empowering Zelensky. I think you might be seeing a Resnik used more liberally to take out air bases where the aircraft that fired the Storm Shadows are located, to strike targets — we know that the British have built certain refurbishment facilities. I believe there are some Flamingo assembly facilities in Western Ukraine, maybe precipitously close to the Polish border. These are targets that need to be taken out and taken out decisively. And there’s been some political risk associated with taking out these targets. I think it’s time to eliminate that political risk.

So that’s where I would think the Russians could go to flex their muscle, but let Europe continue to commit suicide. They’re weaving the rope, they’ve put it around their neck. My God, don’t stop them getting on the stool and kicking it out from underneath themselves. That would be my advice to the Russian president — we’re winning, so let’s keep on track. Don’t allow ourselves to be deflected off course because the British landed a punch.

You’re in a 15-round boxing match, round nine, the British hit you, got a nice kidney shot. Okay, don’t change your plan. Get back to the game. You’re wearing them down and you’re going to knock them out around round 14 or 15. But if you change now because you got mad and start aggressively punching, you might be playing into their game plan.

So I think Russia stays to the script. This oil — the lifting of oil sanctions — I think is just a gift from God. I’m not an economist, but I can’t imagine that this doesn’t solve a lot of pressing economic problems for Vladimir Putin. No budget issues. You keep making a $57 profit margin over what you were making, and who knows how high this goes. Russia right now has the ability to influence how long the Strait of Hormuz stays shut.

Russia is in the driver’s seat. The United States went to Russia for a solution. Russia didn’t go to the United States for a solution — the United States went to Russia for a solution. And so the United States is looking for Russia to do something. Russia is in the driver’s seat here. I think this isn’t a sign of weakness on the part of Russia. It’s actually a sign of their diplomatic strength.

Is There an Off-Ramp for Iran?

GLENN DIESEN: Well, I assume that in these talks Trump was looking to what extent Putin could help to put an end to this war — in other words, offer some kind of an off-ramp, even if it could be concessions from the Iranians, which probably isn’t forthcoming. But we’ve also seen reports coming out — at least in the Washington Post — suggesting that Trump’s advisor argues we have to put an end to this because we’re not winning. And also in the Israeli media there are suggestions now that many Israeli leaders are also worried that Iran is not collapsing and it’s not going to capitulate.

So where is this all going now? I guess my question is twofold. Is there an off-ramp to this war in Iran? And if not, what will Trump do — just inflict destruction? What is the war plan now that regime change isn’t happening?

SCOTT RITTER: The only off-ramp is one that Iran agrees to. The United States and Israel have no vote on this. They started something. They’re no longer in control. This is going to go as long as Iran wants it to go. That’s just the reality.

What can Trump do? We had General Keane come out and outline his plan. Basically he said we’re having great success against the Iranian missiles — last night proved that to be a straight-up lie. “We’ve sunk the Iranian navy.” Who cares? The Strait of Hormuz continues to be closed and you’re not going to open it up because it was never about the Iranian navy.

And now you’re going to expand your target set to strike strategic industrial targets inside Iran? They’re all empty. If you think that at day 12, Iran continues to have high-value industrial equipment stored in known strategic industrial facilities — please pass that marijuana cigarette because it’s pretty damn good and I want some of it. Even though I don’t smoke marijuana, I might if it’s that good, if it allows you to hallucinate that. Because those sites are empty. There’s no strategically important equipment in any known facility anymore. It’s all been moved, it’s all been evacuated. So we’ll just be bombing empty buildings.

So all Trump has is an expansion of the empty building bombing campaign, which makes us feel good because we get a lot of war porn. We get to watch things blow up and go “ooh, ah.” And the mouth breathers get to breathe heavily and post stupid stuff on X and other social media outlets. But Iran just continues winning.

At some point in time, it’s going to become clear to the United States that it doesn’t dictate the end of this war — Iran does. And they need therefore to talk to people who have connectivity to Iran, while the United States has no connectivity. Iraq will not pick up the phone and talk to Witkoff. It means that Russia now becomes the interlocutor, and now Russia gets to talk to the Iranians and gets to play a role as mediator. And that’s where the value of Russia comes into play.

Can the Strait of Hormuz Be Forced Open?

GLENN DIESEN: So Trump put up a tweet, something along the lines that we hit 5,500 targets — which is much of a strategy just to blow things up. As you said, it begins to look childish. One would want to see what the objective is and how these targets achieve that objective.

But you mentioned the inability to open Hormuz, and Trump has argued this is an objective — to open the Strait of Hormuz. I guess it’s necessary to get the energy flowing again. And also he argued if the Iranians dare to keep it closed, he will hit them 20 times as hard. And Macron has also now suggested that the French will also have a defensive mission in the Strait of Hormuz to open it up. To what extent is such a military option actually possible, though?

SCOTT RITTER: Ooh la la. The French getting involved — that’s a game changer. I mean, my God, Macron, the military genius that he is. I can’t imagine — the French — that changes everything. I think Iran’s going to surrender tomorrow. This stupidity.

Look, there’s a way to get the Strait of Hormuz open — brute force. You come in and you seize Kharg Island, you seize all islands, Qeshm Island, and you project power ashore. You seize the shoreline on the Iranian side of the Strait of Hormuz. You go in with 80,000 Marines and you seize and you hold that territory and you could extend an air bridge over it and the Iranians couldn’t touch it. You can do that. It’ll cost you. It’ll be very heavy and we don’t have the resources available right now. So that’s a time-intensive thing.

And still, once you get there, you’ll be vulnerable to Iranian ballistic missiles. You may not get — Iranians able to push you with troops because with your air supremacy, you’ll be able to hold back any concerted ground effort and you should be able to push back against most local threats. But we don’t have a solution to ballistic missiles and we don’t have a solution to drones. And so we would just now be parking ourselves in Iranian territory trying to force ships through. The Iranians will still on occasion target a ship and they’ll just start pounding our forces. Logistics becomes a problem. You put 80,000 guys ashore in Iran, you’ve got to support them, you’ve got to sustain them. You need port facilities. Those port facilities will be under duress. And again, we just don’t have the Marines to do that. We would have to redirect a lot of Marine manpower and bring in amphibious shipping that would be vulnerable. And it would take months to do this. Meanwhile, the international economy is going to collapse well before that.

So this is just fanciful thinking on the part of the United States and on the part of France — that they have a vote. The US has always bragged that they could open up the Strait of Hormuz anytime they wanted to. And the Iranians have always said that’s a pipe dream. And so far it appears that it is a pipe dream — that Iran can shut this thing down and there’s not a damn thing the United States can do to open it up.

The inclusion of France into the war mix I think only weakens the case for military action, because France has zero meaningful military capacity. And French involvement complicates US planning. So again — game, set, match, Iran.

They’ve planned this thing out better than we have. The fact that we’re sitting here talking about this at day 12 means we didn’t consider it on day one, which means we’re making it up as we go along. The Iranians are on their war plan. They are staying to their war plan. They thought this thing through.

John Boyd, a famous colonel, talks about getting inside the enemy’s decision-making cycle. He talks about the OODA loop — I’m sure you’re familiar with the OODA loop: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. Well, the Iranians are inside the American decision-making cycle. We’ve changed our war plan five, six times. They, on the other hand, haven’t changed theirs at all. They’re sticking to it.

We are reacting to them. They are driving — they are in the driver’s seat. They’re the ones initiating the action. We’re reacting. When you’re reacting, you’re losing. You need to be in charge. You need to be the one precipitating action, getting the enemy to react. The Iranians are in charge. We are reacting to them. We are going to lose.

If we’re talking about putting ground troops into the theater to open up the Strait of Hormuz, it means we hadn’t considered that as an option early on, which means we’ve done zero logistical planning for this. So no, it’s just not going to happen anytime soon.

The US Running Out of Cards to Play

GLENN DIESEN: So what are the war plans going from here? What cards can the US play? Because it looked as if, in the absence of its own ground troops, it could get Kurds, arm them — there were some reports the CIA had already done this — but now reports come from the Kurds suggesting that they’re not going to do this. Azerbaijan looked like it was going to be pulled in, but instead of retaliating against what was allegedly an Iranian drone, they’re now sending humanitarian aid instead. And Lindsey Graham threatened Saudi Arabia with consequences unless they would join in on the fight, because they don’t want to fight Iran directly either. I guess a lot of the infrastructure is quite vulnerable. So what cards are there to play? How short is the US on ammunition here?

The Strategic Failures of the Air Campaign

SCOTT RITTER: Well, I mean we have plenty of dumb bombs, we have some kits that can be attached to them. So we could drop laser guided munitions, but we’ve been supplying Israel. How do you think Israel leveled Gaza? So there’s a finite number of these sets. We’re running out of standoff precision missiles, which means future strikes would require aircraft to actually penetrate the Iranian airspace. Iran has held back on its air defense. They’ve retained a significant portion of it. And if we start penetrating the air defense, I think you’re going to start seeing air defense ambushes and we’ll start losing aircraft, which is going to be problematic because then we have to rescue pilots, which puts combat search and rescue teams in danger. They could go down. We get a Blackhawk Down Persian style. It’s just a bad look all around.

We are running out of precision standoff weapons. They’re very expensive. And again, anybody knowing anything would have said we just don’t have enough, we’re going to run out of cruise missiles. We fired enough to kill a bunch of children, but we haven’t retained enough to sustain this conflict. So the next steps are just to blow up more things. I mean, that’s what General Kaine said. That’s the only option we have, is to blow up more things. That’s all President Trump could threaten to do, to blow up more things.

We don’t even know what they’re blowing up, though. Again, if we’ve shown so much confusion in our initial wave of attack, where we should have had the best intelligence possible, and yet we put out — of four places targeted in the Manob naval facility, two were empty warehouses, one was a hospital, one was a school. 50% of our targets were illegal under the law of war. Makes you wonder what the percentages are that we’re striking today that are illegal. We will never know because Pete Hegseth closed down the units responsible for screening targets to make sure that they were not civilian in nature.

But now, as we become more and more desperate, we’re just going to start expanding the target deck. And if we bomb 5,000 targets, and now Trump says we’re going to bomb more, where are they going to come from? What targets are they? Who’s making these targets, making this decision? This is AI driven. How many homes are we going to strike? How many schools are we going to strike? How many hospitals are we going to strike? How many mosques are we going to strike? And the answer is a lot, because this has now become literally a war of cultural genocide, and that’s what the United States will be doing. We’re not going to win. The Iranians are not going to blink.

I’m sure you have studied, at least peripherally, the strategic air campaign during the Second World War against Germany, and you’re cognizant of the reality that it didn’t achieve the strategic results they wanted to achieve. German production actually went up, became more efficient, and the will of the German people to resist was not broken by the strategic air campaign. So what we’re proposing is basically to increase the scope and scale of a strategic air campaign that history shows doesn’t work, doesn’t achieve the outcomes you want.

Regime Change Ambitions and Regional Fallout

There’s a reason why Azerbaijan backed off this. This war was sold as a regime change war, even though now Trump says it’s not. Well, it’s not because we can’t, but we tried. The idea was, if you kill Ali Khamenei and you have people in the street shouting death to the ayatollahs, the Kurds might be more inclined to say, okay, we’re in. The Azeris might say, yeah, the Zangezur corridor is looking pretty good right now. Let’s jump in on this one. But when you kill the Supreme Leader and the end result is a unified Iran screaming for revenge, the last thing you want to do is get your name on that revenge list. And suddenly they woke up and they went, well, we’re not doing that. And the Azeris went, yeah, we’re not doing it either. The Saudis, they’re not doing it.

Lindsey Graham can talk till he’s pink in the face, but this is a man who talks tough, but there’s nothing tough about him. He’s a pancake. He’s a perfume princess. He’s nothing. He’s a senator who, for whatever reason, people listen to, but hopefully he’s being disgraced right now. And I think he’s embarrassed by the fact that he sold a war to Trump and that war is going bad and his political capital is going out the window, and he’s coming up on a contentious election that he may very well lose, which would be the greatest thing South Carolina has ever done.

So he’s becoming more desperate, threatening Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia doesn’t care about his threats. The biggest consequences to Saudi Arabia would be the destruction of their energy production capability, which is a guarantee if they jump in two feet into this war against Iran. The United States has proven that it can’t defeat Iran. Iran has proven that it can continue to inflict destruction beyond its borders even after absorbing 5,000 bombs dropped on its territory. So it doesn’t matter what Lindsey Graham says. He’s irrelevant. He’s simply fodder for the mainstream media to sell a war that is increasingly becoming impossible to sell.

Strategic Defeat and Global Consequences

GLENN DIESEN: It does look like, strategically, they got a bit lost after the original regime change operation failed. And, of course, the whole premise that Trump would be allowed to choose the next leader, it does show a certain amount of detachment from what they think Iran is and the Iranian people. Just as a last question, though, what do you think are the wider implications of this? Because this is, of course, not just a war between Israel and the US on one side and Iran on the other. This will have wider global ramifications. What does this mean for the future of Israel? Nuclear proliferation, the Abraham Accords, the partnership between Russia and Iran? Sorry, a lot of questions packed in there. But more generic — what do you think are the wider consequences of this war? Not just the war happening, but it’s going to the south as well.

SCOTT RITTER: I think this will be a huge strategic defeat for the United States. Trump will try to mitigate that by creating political cover at home. But globally, look what’s already happened. We’ve stripped air defense out of South Korea, and we’ve proven that our ballistic missile defense shield over Asia doesn’t work. If we were trying to intimidate the Chinese — and remember, the national security strategy document of the Trump administration speaks of conventional military overmatch against China in the Pacific — we’ve just proven that we are woefully inadequate.

If you want to see a nation that has more missiles than Iran, look at China. Taiwan has to be looking at this saying, we’re screwed. It’s over. If China ever decided to unleash their ballistic missile fury on us, we know that the ballistic missile defense won’t work. We know that they’ll destroy everything. We know the United States can’t come to our assistance. So it’s over. South Korea and Japan have to be reconsidering their tripartite nuclear deal with the United States because the United States has been exposed as a toothless tiger. Not only that, we’re stripping away their defenses.

So this is bad for the United States all around. Strategically, we’re not going to recover militarily from this, even though we’re not suffering significant material loss in terms of aircraft and munitions. What this is going to do to American defense priorities in terms of rebuilding ammunition — because once you have no ammunition, your military is useless. And so who’s going to step in and take advantage of this?

Geopolitical Realignment and Russia’s Role

I think we’re going to have to leverage Ukraine away, meaning that Russia is going to get what it wants in Ukraine. I think China is going to get what it wants in Taiwan. I think China is going to get what it wants in the South China Sea. I think India is going to realize the United States is not the partner it should be, and India will jump in even further with BRICS. And I think that Iran will emerge as a regional power. The United States will be evicted from the Middle East.

Israel — this is the one place where I think Putin’s intervention could come into play, because Putin has said straight up that Israel, because of its heavy Russian and Ukrainian population, is an extension of Russia. So Putin’s not going to let Iran sit there and continue this war to the point where they depopulate Israel. I’m not talking about killing Israelis. I’m talking about making Israel unlivable and people start to flee. So I think that Israel will be retained.

But now pressure can be brought to bear on Israel regarding their nuclear program. I don’t think Israel gets to stand around as a unilateral defiler of nuclear non-proliferation. Either the entire world goes nuclear, or Israel is going to have to be compelled to talk about this. And maybe that’s the leverage Russia could use too, for the Iranian program — meaning to finally dispose of this 450kg of 60% enriched uranium. Iran’s not going to give up that for free. Now the United States has lost all negotiating posture and can’t be trusted. But Russia might be able to get Iran to put that on the table and get the deal that closes the door to any breakout potential, in exchange for Israel putting its nuclear program on the table as well.

So there are a lot of possibilities here, but in order to do that, this war is going to have to continue for a little bit more time. You’re going to need the United States to feel real economic pain. That’s the only way you’re going to get the United States to make some of the decisions that need to be made. And then the president — being the con artist he is — can sell that. “I’m the man who brought peace to the Middle East and peace to Ukraine and Russia. I’m the guy who did it. Me, Donald Trump. I’m the best thing in the world. This never would have happened if I hadn’t gone to war with Iran. This war with Iran — we achieved the lasting peace. Look, we brought stability to the Middle East. There’s no need for American troops in the Middle East anymore. We brought peace. We can bring them home. I told you I’d bring my troops home. This is a great victory.”

And I think he’ll try to sell it that way. And he may succeed because the American public has shown itself to be very ignorant and vulnerable to this kind of nonsense coming from Washington D.C.

Lavrov’s Stance and Russia’s Diplomatic Foundation

GLENN DIESEN: Yeah, last question. Did this surprise you that Lavrov was essentially scolding the Gulf nations? Because many had assumed after Syria that the Russians would try to do a more balanced approach to the Middle East — that is, their engagement in Syria alienated many of the Gulf states. But here we see Lavrov making it very clear it’s not a neutral actor in this conflict, and essentially scolding the Gulf states for participating in the attack on Iran and then coming to Russia trying to make them put pressure on Iran. Did this come as a surprise?

SCOTT RITTER: No, because as a longtime student of Russia, Russia acts upon the diplomatic foundation that exists. Parse away Russia’s involvement in Syria and see what Russia’s obligations were. It wasn’t black and white. Russia was not obligated to get involved. Russia was there to achieve stability. Russia made recommendations to the Assad regime that were ignored. A situation occurred and Russia did not have the authority to expand that conflict, especially once Assad started to weaken.

So I think people throw a lot of weight on that. But Russia is a global actor that requires the diplomatic foundation to be in place. They, believe it or not, actually adhere to the rule of law far better than anybody in the West does. They have domestic issues. Things have to be done legally, and they also have relationships with nations that are defined by agreements.

This is why the 12-day conflict was so frustrating, because everybody’s saying, where’s Russia? Where’s Russia? But it was Iran that didn’t ratify the strategic framework agreement, so there could be no Russia because there was no agreement. Now they have an agreement. Now they have a strategic framework agreement. This gives Russia a tremendous amount of political legitimacy and viability. There’s a foundation now of diplomacy upon which they can act. They can act aggressively against a Gulf region that has behaved egregiously, because they are empowered to do so because of their agreement with Iran. And so that’s why I think you see Lavrov doing what he’s doing, because Russia is firmly in a legally sound and legally secure position for them to be lecturing people about their behavior.

GLENN DIESEN: Well, thank you for sharing your insights and taking the time.

SCOTT RITTER: Okay, thanks. Sorry about the Internet, but hey, it is what it is.

GLENN DIESEN: It happens.

SCOTT RITTER: Okay, bye bye.

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