Scott Ritter: Full-Scale War as Iran Attacks All U.S. Targets (Transcript)

But this time, what degree of escalation, which actors should be involved, when the war should come to an end, what’s acceptable targets — all of this seems to be not under control.

I see reports of Iranian retaliatory strikes on Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Jordan. There’s been some reports of explosions in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Essentially, all regional targets where the US bases are are being hit. And of course, there’s also been strikes in Tel Aviv, Haifa, in Israel. What do you think the thinking is now in Iran? Because they’re certainly not holding back and pursuing some traditional escalation ladder here.

SCOTT RITTER: Well, what is the thinking of Tehran? They just absorbed a decapitation strike that was designed to kill their senior leadership for the purpose of achieving a collapse of the government — a collapse of a system that has been in place for 47 years. So right off the bat, the question is: what do they have to lose? I mean, if they’re coming at you to kill you, do you respond with an escalation ladder, or do you say we are engaged in an existential struggle for survival?

The job of the Iranians is to finish this conflict with the Islamic Republic intact. But much as we’ve seen in the case with Russia and Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has articulated not just the need to bring it into the war, but to bring an end to the war in a way that addresses the root causes of the conflict so that we don’t see a resumption of the conflict break out five, ten years from now.

The United States and Israel have just said we’re in the business of destroying the Iranian regime. The purpose of this campaign is to eliminate Iran. So for the Iranians to emerge from this war alive, but with Israel and the United States still maintaining a regime change posture, doesn’t solve anything.

Iran’s Path to Victory

So what are the Iranians up to? A, they’re in a battle of existential survival. B, they have to win this war. And the victory in this war is regime change.

Now, the United States has always talked about regime change, meaning that it’s not just about removing the regime, but changing the behavior of the regime. One way to change the behavior of the current administration is to guarantee its political demise. Donald Trump, I believe, has committed political suicide here. It’s the end of the Trump presidency — this decision to bomb Iran. If he doesn’t win quickly and decisively, it’s over. He will be routed in the midterm elections and be impeached, probably convicted, and that’s the end of him. So there’s regime change right there.

Benjamin Netanyahu, likewise. If you don’t get regime change and Iran retaliates and does significant damage to Israel, it’s the end of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, his viability as a leader. Then the question is, what replaces them?

And if, by striking regional leaders who have been acquiescent to the Israeli and American vision of the Abraham Accords and the diminishment of Iranian power, what you may see is Gulf Arab nations realizing that the United States isn’t there and Israel is a nation that can be defeated. And you’ll see a change in the attitude of the various Gulf Arab nations.

It’s very important for Iran that when this war ends, this isn’t just what happened at the end of the 12 Day War. You brought an end to the fighting, but the mindset still was in place to achieve regime change. And that’s what we see today. When this war ends, Iran must not only survive, but must have created a geopolitical transformation in the region away from sustaining US and Israeli regime change plans against Iran.

Defeating the United States Without Sinking Ships

And so this is going to require the defeat of the United States military. The US military is defeated not by sinking ships and shooting down airplanes, but by not winning. It’s the same thing about Hezbollah against Israel in 2006 when Israel came out and said, “Our goal in the short August war is to destroy Hezbollah completely.” And at the end of the war, Hezbollah is still there, raining death and destruction down on Israel. Hezbollah wins.

If the United States has said the goal is regime change, when this war ends and Iran is still there, Trump will have lost. And this will be devastating for a man who speaks of “peace through strength.” You’re not very strong when you lose. It’ll be devastating for a man who renamed the Department of Defense to the Department of War, then to go out and lose a war.

But this is what Iran needs to do. Iran needs to win this war. They need to physically destroy Israel and they need to outlast the United States. And again, the conditions of victory are very easy here. You just have to absorb all the ammunition the United States can fire at you, because there is nothing more. That’s what the generals said — when we run out, we run out.

And so I think that’s their goal here. This is not going to be over soon. This is going to be a drawn-out affair. Iran is ready for this. They are prepared for this and they have a plan.

And no plan survives initial contact with the enemy. Well, the American plan is already disrupted because they didn’t get regime change. And I think there are a lot of people surprised by the scope and scale of the Iranian retaliation — that they didn’t go through an escalation ladder. And that also has consequences, because now there will be political fallout from that.

These Gulf Arab rulers — they govern on a slim thread of viability. The population needs to believe that these rulers will bring them wealth and high standards of living. If your cities are suddenly blowing up, and you were told all along that this will never happen because the United States will defend you, but now the United States can’t defend you — suddenly these rulers look weak and ineffective, and who knows what will happen.

But this is the Iranian game right now. I think they’re flipping the script. This is a geopolitical equivalent of a wrestling reversal. And the regime change strategy may now be that it’s not the United States and Israel who are going to succeed in removing the Iranian regime, but that Iran will succeed in removing the Israeli regime, the American regime, and maybe many of the Gulf Arab states.

How Long Can the US Sustain This War?

GLENN DIESEN: Yeah, well, that’s kind of the benefit that both Israel and the United States had over the past 30 plus years — that they built up the image of being invincible, all-powerful. And with this, of course, there’s a lot of soft power, because all countries will then fall in line if this is the ultimate security provider, or who can give security or destroy you, then you fall in line.

Of course, this is going to be very different if they don’t hold out. But in terms of Iran holding out — because all they have to do is dish out a lot of pain and wait out the Americans and the Israelis — what is the time constraint here? Because as you said, the United States has limited resources. They have to ship them across the world and at some point you have to replenish. How long do you think the United States can keep such a high-intensity war going?

SCOTT RITTER: I don’t know the ammunition stockpile. I believe that they were looking at a war that was going to last in single digits of weeks. So if this war lasts five weeks, the United States runs out of ammunition. So Iran just has to survive for five weeks, and that’s that.

Trump’s War Speech and America’s Grievances Against Iran

GLENN DIESEN: And I’m not sure if you watched Trump’s — well, let’s call it a war speech, or I read it as a declaration of war. He essentially went back to the Islamic Revolution of ’79, the issue of the American Embassy, the attacks in Lebanon in the ’80s. So he went through essentially the whole history to explain all of America’s grievances towards Iran. And then, of course, the issue of nuclear weapons. What did you make of this speech? Was it justified?

Trump’s Fear and the Political Calculus Behind the War

SCOTT RITTER: Well, Trump didn’t write the speech, okay? He’s reading words written by neoconservative, pro-Israeli warmongers who just trotted out the same old, tired arguments that had been made in the past. There was nothing new here. And the duplicity of the United States was on display as he spoke about a nuclear program that Iran was already putting significant concessions on the table in Oman. So he’s a liar, but let’s throw away the words for a second.

I saw an old, scared fat man. This man’s scared to death. He realizes that he is in a world of hurt. He has crossed the Rubicon, and it’s not going to end well for him. And I think he sees that. I think he sees the Trump legacy collapsing around him. He’s not going to win the midterm elections. He has betrayed his base like it’s never been betrayed before.

Israel was worried before this war started. When Tucker Carlson went and talked to Mike Huckabee, if you looked at the Israeli press, they were saying, “Look, we’re in trouble because there is a split now in the Republican Party about Israel.” That split’s going to grow and grow and grow because this war is just stupid, stupid, stupid. It’s all about Israel. It has nothing to do with the security interests of the United States. And Israel is going to be perhaps fatally hurt by this.

This president has seen his presidency fatally wounded by his own actions. And we’re going to see a desperate man going forward. You already see movement in Congress now to change the law and empower the president to take control of the midterm elections so that he can seal them, because he’s not going to win them. What he has to do is avoid the kind of landslide that results in not just the House going Democratic, but the Senate getting sufficient anti-Trump sentiment to convict if he’s impeached, because he will be impeached.

But what we saw was the end of the Trump presidency. I don’t listen to his words. He didn’t write those words. I looked at his delivery, and this was the delivery of an old, tired, fat man scared. That’s what I saw.

The “President of Peace” Narrative Collapses

GLENN DIESEN: I guess all this being the president of peace, ending all these wars, having his peace board, none of this really makes any sense. I mean, it could have been called good branding. But now I guess all of this is lost as he now becomes the ultimate warmongering president. I think it’s very much opposite of what Venezuela was — just in and out in one day, very limited goal to kidnap a president and declare victory and celebrate oneself.

But why was this so imminent? Because the need to attack now — we’ve seen over the past few days some American generals, or leading military staff, arguing that we’re not really that well prepared, we don’t have enough defensive interceptor missiles, we can’t really absorb necessarily all of Iran’s retaliatory strikes. So maybe we should either not do this or wait. Why was there such a hurry to try to engage in this war when one isn’t prepared properly, and also if the strategies and planned war plans aren’t really that much in place?

The Point of No Return: Logistics and the Window of War

SCOTT RITTER: Well, just a quick history lesson. I may have gone over this before, but I’ll just reiterate it. During Desert Shield and Desert Storm, the flow of logistics into the region was called the TPFDL — the Troop Phased Deployment List, or something of that nature.

When the war ended — I mean, we knew this going in. I knew in October because I was on a planning cell with the command Marine Corps — that we had crossed a line from which there was no coming back. The decision to go to war against Iraq wasn’t made in the lead-up to January 16-17. It was made in the middle of October when we began moving forces. Because once you begin moving forces, things take on a life of their own. And you can’t withdraw them without creating significant problems. Because once you disrupt the TPFDL and try to reverse it, you can’t reconstitute it until months down the road, so you lose an entire window of opportunity.

The same thing happened in 2003. They renamed the TPFDL — I forget what they called it, the flow forces or something of that nature. But the same thing happened. They acknowledged afterwards, “We were prisoners to the system, that we had to go to war in March because the flow of troops, the flow of logistics dictated that.”

And I said, watching this, “We have reached a point of no return.” We have deployed forces — for instance, air defense forces. We robbed Peter to pay Paul. We stripped down air defense in Asia and Europe to bring them in and reinforce resources that were meant to reinforce Asia and Europe in case of a conflict, instead diverted to the Middle East. We can’t keep them there forever, so there’s a limited window where they can remain there.

Then we began deploying all this strike capability — aircraft carriers, tactical fighters, refuelers, munitions, munitions, munitions. And once we began flowing that in, it has to be used, or else you have to reverse-flow it out. You begin to reverse-flow it out, and what happens then is that your window of strike opportunity expands.

This is a politically driven war. This war has nothing to do with the threat posed by Iran. I’ll say that again: this war has nothing to do with the threat posed by Iran. This war is about the timing of outcomes. The president has a midterm election coming up in November. The president needs to be defining the debate amongst the American people about the future of his presidency by early summer, mid-summer of this year.

And so the belief was that if he could achieve that which no other president has achieved in 47 years — removing the Iranian regime from power in a quick, relatively bloodless conflict — that he would be a hero. He would be a man of peace, because through war he brought peace, and he would carry this through.

They couldn’t not strike now, because to not strike now means that your window would have you bombing in the middle of the summer during the height of the campaign. He needed a result by the middle of summer. So this war is driven by American domestic political prerogatives. If he didn’t strike now, we would have to begin moving assets out of the region, and we wouldn’t be able to reverse that and achieve the same level of force until the middle of summer.

Iran’s Missiles Break Through: How Was This Possible?

GLENN DIESEN: It’s strange if he thought Iran would be the same easy target, because Venezuela was a day operation. It seems that they’re able to choke Cuba and take this annoyance off the table after 65 years, without much media complaining. But Iran — I think they might have misjudged it.

Were you surprised, though, to see all of these Iranian missiles getting through to all these different regions? I thought first all these countries across the region — all the Gulf states — shouldn’t air defenses first have been exhausted before all these missiles began to come through? It just seems like this war began this morning and we already see missiles going through to Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, Jordan, and possibly Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Israel, of course. How is this possible?

Iran Cracked the Code: Lessons from the 12-Day War

SCOTT RITTER: Well, the 12-Day War gave Iran tremendous insight into how the coordinated missile defense shield over Israel — but also over the U.S. shield in the region — operates. They fired a lot of missiles that were designed to absorb Israeli and American defense capacity, not just to exhaust it, but to learn. This is a system, and so you need to see how it functions — how radars communicate with one another, how you transition from an F-35 over Jordan and how that radar feeds into a THAAD radar that is being reinforced by Aegis radars, getting a unified picture.

The Iranians were collecting intelligence. These are some of the smartest people in the world at doing these sorts of things. I remind people they hijacked the Beast of Kandahar, and they may have hijacked another American drone that went off the radar just a couple of days ago. These people are very, very good at what they do.

And so they were able to dissect the Golden Dome. Because remember, at the end of the 12-Day War, we didn’t see waves of missiles coming in — we saw one, two, three. But the difference was every single one of them hit, and they hit something of value. And that’s when Netanyahu got on TV with his shaking hands, and then he called Trump. And Trump was able to do the midnight ceasefire exchange to bring the conflict to an end.

But the Iranians broke the code. They now knew how to defeat the system, and they could defeat it with individual missiles whose performance parameters were such that they could not be intercepted. Instead of leading with mass attacks — which would be very difficult to do right now, because I believe that over Iran right now we have a lot of aircraft flying around hunting missiles — what you need is what I’ll call leakers. One fire here, one fire here, one fire here. But all three hit their target, because the Iranians have built missiles that cannot be shot down by American-Israeli air defense. And that’s what we’re seeing right now — the superiority of Iranian missile technology over the defense missile.

A Silver Lining? The Failure of Missile Defense as a Wake-Up Call

And a little off topic, but I just want to tell people: this is exactly what would happen to Golden Dome if we ever built it and went to war against Russia. Except that the consequences of that failure would be existential, because it would be nuclear. Missile defenses don’t work.

This might be one of those rare silver linings in a cloud. Nobody wanted this war, but if we can get out of this war with nothing greater than the humiliation of the United States, it could be a wake-up call to future administrations that arms control actually works. We should give it a shot, and not pursue Golden Dome and all the things the Trump administration is doing.

Again, I do believe this is the end of the Trump administration. I don’t believe they survive this. And one of the reasons is that the Iranians have exposed a $1.5 trillion annual defense budget to be an empty fraud. I mean, how do you explain this to the American people? You spend this much money and you’re getting swamped right now by Iranian missiles.

Apparently there are casualties in Bahrain — I don’t know how many, but apparently there are American military casualties in Bahrain, and we can expect more. The military has failed the American people. It’s supposed to defend, it’s supposed to be able to do things, and it hasn’t been able to do it. And our political leadership has failed the American people because they allowed a war to take place — a war of choice, not a war of necessity.

Iran poses no threat whatsoever to the United States. So this is a war of choice. It’s an illegal war of aggression. It’s the highest war crime imaginable. It destroys the credibility of the United States — who will ever negotiate with us again? Because once again, we were in the midst of negotiations with the Iranians, who were putting real solutions on the table, and we chose regime change.

If I were the Russians, I would never sit down with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner ever again. They can’t be trusted because they’ve been corrupted by this process.

So this is just a bad day — a bad day for Iran first of all, because they were hit and there are dead Iranians, and we shouldn’t overlook that. We have a dual responsibility to acknowledge this. But as an American, this is a horrible day for my country, because we have just self-identified as a nation incompatible with the rule of law, a nation incompatible with the norms and values of global, civilized society. And we’re not even going to win. So it’s just bad news all around. The only good news is that this regime will be over.

The Role of Russia and China — Stability Over Chaos

GLENN DIESEN: Just like in the 12 Day War in June. This attack, this surprise attack happened during negotiations when there were allegedly progress being made, which suggests that either the negotiations were just a fraud. If progress was being made, it is. You know, one often assumes that dominance is the ideal format for security though, that this one can negotiate from position of strength.

But it is problematic, I think, not just for the United States, but the political West. The dominance over the past 30 plus years. When you’re in such position, you don’t make priorities anymore. You can absorb a lot of cost so you end up doing reckless things and of course hubris.

So perhaps you’re right. This is, if a little wake up call it could be healthy before we engage in something much grander and stupider such as taking on Russia in a war.

Let me just ask a last question here though. What do you make, what do you expect to see of external support? So far I’ve only seen Yemen make the claim that they’re going to start targeting ships in the Red Sea again. And I saw some reports which I haven’t been able to confirm that they also launched some ballistic missiles. Do you expect to see anything coming out of many militias in Iraq or Lebanon, Palestine or have you heard anything about the engagement or Russia or China giving any indirect contributions or is it too early still?

SCOTT RITTER: Well, according to what I read before the attack on Iran was made, Israel launched a massive multi hour suppression of Hezbollah — they bombed southern Lebanon extensively and I believe that was to suppress Hezbollah which had positioned itself to participate. Hezbollah had said that they will not join a conflict of limited proportions. But if it is a full scale conflict, they would join, I expect.

Look, this is an existential conflict for Hezbollah. If the Iranian regime is collapsed, if they fall, it’s the end of Hezbollah. Hezbollah cannot survive without the support of Iran. So there’s no reason for Hezbollah to sit on the sidelines and watch Iran be destroyed. So I believe you’re going to see Hezbollah decisively engaged on this because it is now a war of existential consequence. Ansrallah is doing it. Hamas. I think we might see Hamas actually involved especially if they perceive Israeli weakness to, you know, make a move so that you get a full press. And the militias as well.

Intelligence Failures and Political Manipulation

You know, it’s just a massive miscalculation on the part of Israel and the United States. I’ve always said that the United States military is professional and they are, and we have the capacity to inflict a lot of damage and we do. But intelligence is a very important part of this too. And the United States has, over the course of several decades now, allowed the intelligence process to be politicized so that instead of providing fact-based information to the leadership for them to make the best informed decisions possible, they become an echo chamber of decisions that are inevitable.

Meaning the leadership says, “We’ve already made the decision, make the intelligence fit this so we can justify this.” And when you do that, all you do is you delude yourself.

And I believe that it is going to turn out that — and you saw this when President Trump dismissed Tulsi Gabbard’s assessment regarding Iran’s nuclear weapons program, where she said, “There is no nuclear weapons program, no evidence of this happening,” etc. — he said no, she’s wrong. Well, who is he relying upon? Either a cell outside of the control of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which would be fundamentally illegal, or the Israelis. Meaning that the President is now taking guidance from Israel over his own intelligence officials.

But I think that decisions were made to initiate a conflict against Iran that weren’t based upon the kind of informed advice you would normally get from an intelligence community, but rather on advice that had been politically tainted, designed to tell the President what he wanted to hear, not what he needed to hear.

And that also guides how military plans are developed. You have a mission, but that mission has to be based upon reality. How you accomplish this mission has to be based upon a realistic appreciation of the problem. You can’t solve a problem unless you’ve accurately defined it first. And the job of the intelligence community is to accurately define the problem so a solution can be had.

But if the intelligence community is now lying to the President about what’s going on in Iran — for instance, “the people will rise up, all you have to do is bomb these targets and the people will rise up” — well, the military bombs those targets, but now the people don’t rise up.

Targeting Khamenei — An Act of Insanity

Or you’re told, “We will kill Khamenei,” but we don’t. And again, the American people need to understand who this man is and what he represents, what an Islamic republic is, what the Shia faith is. He’s the second most influential and powerful Shia theological figure in the world after, I think, Sistani in Najaf. We tried to kill him this morning. We tried to kill a major religious figure.

This would be the equivalent of somebody trying to kill the Pope. You’re trying to kill the head of the Russian Orthodox faith, tried to kill the Archbishop of Canterbury. This is that scope and scale. And then you also conflate that with the fact that nationally, they tried to assassinate the President of Iran. This is insanity of the highest order. Insanity of the highest order.

And so don’t be surprised when the Iranians respond in a way that is reflective of the insult that they have received.

Russia and China — Seeking Stability, Not Chaos

You said Russia and China. Some people say, “Oh, well, Russia and China will encourage this conflict because it leads to the weakening of the United States.” But I respect you as an expert and all that, maybe you’ll disagree with me, but I think you might agree with me when I say that the goal of Russian foreign policy is not to destabilize the United States, but just the opposite — to create a stable world where everything is predictable.

The Russians want predictability, they want stability. They’re not looking to defeat America, bring down America. They’re not looking to generate chaos, and China is the same way. They want to live in a world where rules are adhered to, because rules that are adhered to create a system of sustainable, predictable outcomes.

And so the role of China and Russia — I don’t believe — isn’t going to be “how can we get Iran to defeat America?” I think their role is “how can we bring an end to this conflict without destabilizing the world?”

And so I think you’re going to see a lot of pressure put on Iran by Russia and China not to allow this conflict to expand to economic targets. We see political targets being hit, military targets and political targets being hit, but we haven’t seen economic targets being hit. And I think that’s the final red line.

So I think Russia and China will be trying to keep Iran from crossing that red line. They’ve done their best to ensure that Iran can ride out this storm. Iran wins by not dying. Because if the United States and Israel fail in regime change, I believe that’s the end of the Trump administration, and I believe that’s the end of Benjamin Netanyahu as a politically viable Israeli politician. So you’ve just reversed the script and you’ve done regime change in the points of origin of this conflict.

But again, Russia and China aren’t looking for regime change. They’re looking for stability. They want this war to end, and they’re working to bring that about. So I think that’s what the role of Russia and China are going to be.

The Strait of Hormuz and the Economic Red Line

GLENN DIESEN: No, I think you’re probably right. That is this whole view we often have in the West — that is, look at the international conflicts as a struggle between the good guys and bad guys in which peace will arrive once the bad guys are defeated. I don’t see the Chinese or the Russians thinking in this manner. I think they’re more concerned about managing competing interests because, you know, if one rival is defeated, it doesn’t mean that’s the end of the international system and the security competition.

Indeed, I think the war produces unpredictability, often radicalism. I don’t think anyone wants to see America defeated. That would be a shock to the system. But yeah, to bring them down a peg or two, probably. And the war with Iran — this is something that could trigger World War III, which you could be looking at. So I don’t think they want to see this at all.

Sorry, just the last final question. You mentioned the economic targets — the Strait of Hormuz, though, if this is shut down, this is the ultimate economic target, isn’t it? I’m not sure if it’s a good night for the global economy, but surely it will be a pretty big hit.

SCOTT RITTER: Well, the Strait of Hormuz can be shut down without permanently damaging the energy security of the world. It’s an on and off switch. The bigger problem is what happens if Iran starts targeting Saudi oil production infrastructure, Azeri oil production infrastructure, Kuwaiti, United Arab Emirates. This is irreversible damage. This is permanent damage. This is the kind of stuff that will collapse the economy for a long time.

If you shut down the Strait of Hormuz, you stress the system, but you de-stress the system by opening it back up. And so I think again, what Russia and China will encourage is to keep the strait open. But if Iran is going to play the economic card, then to limit it to the temporary closure of the Strait of Hormuz, but not to expand it into striking energy targets.

My concern is that the United States and Israel, as they see their strategic air campaign falter, may choose to engage energy targets, in which case all bets are off and Iran would respond quite harshly. So I think this is one of the biggest challenges facing Russia and China — how to keep this war from expanding into an economic war.

Closing Remarks

GLENN DIESEN: Well, as I said, we’re still in the early — well, the first day of this war, which could well fizzle out or it could plunge us into World War Three. What’s it called? Operation Epic Fury. So ridiculous. It’s like children are —

SCOTT RITTER: I think the lion’s roar is the Israeli version or something like that. Judean roar or something. Who knows? Yeah.

GLENN DIESEN: Well, thank you for taking the time. I know you’re very busy, and it’s very late or early there in the US. So thank you very much.

SCOTT RITTER: Well, thank you. Thanks for your work. I mean, shows like this are very important right now for people because we are in a time of chaos, intellectual chaos. And so I think you provide a very balanced approach to assessing problems. So thank you for the work you do.

GLENN DIESEN: Well, thanks again. I very much appreciate it.

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