Editor’s Notes: In this episode of Judging Freedom Podcast, military analyst Scott Ritter joins Judge Andrew Napolitano to provide a sobering assessment of the risks and strategic challenges facing U.S. ground troops in a potential conflict with Iran. Ritter breaks down the logistical hurdles of deploying forces to the region, arguing that current military objectives like seizing Kharg Island would be “suicidal” and ultimately ineffective at securing the Strait of Hormuz. The discussion further explores the politicization of military leadership and the urgent need for a diplomatic off-ramp, potentially mediated by Russia, to avoid a disastrous escalation. (Mar 25, 2026)
TRANSCRIPT:
“Undeclared wars are commonplace. Tragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression, with no complaints from the American people. Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government. To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected.”
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: What if sometimes to love your country you had to alter or abolish the government? What if Jefferson was right? What if that government is best which governs least? What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong? What if it is better to perish fighting for freedom than to live as a slave? What if freedom’s greatest hour of danger is now?
Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, March 24, 2026. Scott Ritter will be with us in just a moment on what awaits American boots on the ground in Iran.
US Ground Troops Heading to the Middle East
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Scott Ritter, welcome here, my dear friend. I realize it’s very, very late in the day where you are in Moscow. Thank you very much for joining us. Can you calculate from your own sources and from public sources how many U.S. ground troops Trump is in the process of sending to the Middle East?
SCOTT RITTER: Well, we have two Marine Expeditionary Units comprising the corps is two battalion landing teams, the battalion Marines, and there’s expedition. Bottom line is you’re looking at 4,500 Marines. You have a 5,000 man army airborne brigade, a ready brigade that appears to be mobilized, two Ranger battalions. So you’re talking another thousand or so Rangers, and then they’re talking about starting to mobilize a couple of divisions, and these are 20,000 to 25,000 man strong divisions. So we’re talking about moving around 70,000 troops into the region that are capable of ground combat.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: And what will be their military mission? 75,000 troops?
The Military Mission: Seizing Islands and Securing the Strait of Hormuz
SCOTT RITTER: Well, first of all, don’t get your hopes up because getting them from point A to point B is going to be very problematic, especially for the larger army divisions, the conventional divisions. There’s a lot of equipment and logistics required. There’s a limited amount of pre-positioned gear in Kuwait that we can fall in on. But even then, getting them from Kuwait to Iran or wherever you want them is going to be problematic.
The units that we’re talking about that have the potential for the quickest deployment are the Marines and then the paratroopers and the Rangers. Mission could be to seize Kharg Island. But that literally is one of the dumbest missions ever. There’s no reason to seize Kharg Island. There’s no military mission. It’s sort of a one-way ticket to suicide.
If you look at the map that you’re showing there, Kharg Island is far to the north in the Persian Gulf. The Strait of Hormuz is there on the bottom right of your map. Kharg Island will not secure the Strait of Hormuz. All it’ll do is put however many troops you put on that island in harm’s way, because that island will be immediately saturated with Iranian missiles and drones. It’ll be impossible to resupply those troops and eventually they’ll have to be withdrawn. So you’d be occupying the island for the purpose of taking casualties and withdrawing. It makes no sense.
These troops aren’t enough to secure the strait. Again, the same problem would happen if you want to make a move on Qeshm Island and a smaller island there that the Iranians used to base troops that can block the traffic in the strait. We most likely could seize the islands or parts of the islands, but then staying on there — once you seize it, you’ve got to hold it. And the troops would immediately be put under intense missile and rocket fire and drone fire. You couldn’t resupply them because any ships we brought in or helicopters brought in would be shot down or shot at. You’ll be taking casualties. And for what?
The Iranians will still be able to interdict shipping because unless you go inland, land on the mainland of Iran and push inland 20, 30, 40, 50 kilometers on a wide swath, you’re not going to stop the Iranians from sinking ships.
I think previous assessments — I know the war plan that I worked on, which was this very war plan — involved seizing the port of Chabahar. We were talking about putting in a Marine Expeditionary Force, a division-size force. So you’re talking about 25,000 to 30,000 Marines followed on by about 150,000 to 200,000 army soldiers. So you’re talking almost 250,000 troops just to go in and secure a route inland. We’re not mobilizing anywhere near that number, and the numbers we have are totally insufficient to the task.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: What do you think the military objective will be of the troops that Trump is sending to somehow open up the toll gate at the Strait of Hormuz?
Insufficient Forces and the Lessons of Koh Tang
SCOTT RITTER: There are insufficient forces to do that. We just don’t have the forces that can do that. First of all, the Marines are on board four amphibious warfare ships of the legacy type.
In 2019, General Berger, the Commandant of the Marine Corps at the time, issued his commandant’s guidance. And he said, after reviewing the directions from the White House and the Pentagon on what they want the Marine Corps to do,
“I have to report that we can’t do it.” That our legacy attachment to amphibious ready groups — which is what we’re sending — are no longer viable in a day and age where the enemy has missiles that can reach out and touch you before you even get close enough to launch your ships.
We put all our Marines into one basket. We have an entire battalion landing team on the ship coming in from Okinawa and we have another one spread over three ships coming in from San Diego. You sink one of these, you’re losing all your Marines. We’ll never get the Marines close enough to shore while they’re on these ships. So we’d have to disembark the Marines from their ships. But you can’t do that close to Iran because again, they’ll get hammered.
So you’ve got to go in through the Red Sea and come across either through Jordan or through Saudi Arabia. Now you’ve increased your logistical burden on the Marines. Then you have to use a heliborne assault because the ships are no longer available.
And I keep telling people, go ahead and Google Koh Tang — the Battle of Koh Tang Island, May 1975, when a Marine battalion landing team was tasked with seizing an island a little bit smaller than Kharg Island. And what happened to them? The Marines don’t lose battles very often. We lost this battle. We got beat. Most of our helicopters were shot down or destroyed, and we had to leave our dead behind. We don’t do that. Worse, we abandoned three Marines that we failed to evacuate because we evacuated under fire, and they were captured by the Khmer Rouge and executed. This is the fate of anybody who tries to take Kharg Island.
Hegseth’s Incompetence and the Lack of a Plan
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Does Hegseth know what he’s doing?
SCOTT RITTER: No, absolutely not. The most incompetent man that ever served in the position of Secretary of Defense — and it is Secretary of Defense. The “Secretary of War” nonsense is his own manufactured thing. Congress is the only institution authorized to change the title, and it has not done so.
Hegseth is just, again, a man who at best could have been a battalion operations officer, and probably would have been fired for sheer incompetence. He became a Fox News talking head, and Trump fell in love with the man’s aggressive speaking. It’s one thing to be on Fox News and talking tough. It’s another thing to be the Secretary of Defense and talking so tough that you disregard the law of war, that you say that we will not comply with rules of engagement, that those are for the weak, that our job is to kill things and break things — and then that ends up attacking a school and killing 175 children.
Meanwhile, we don’t have the force capable of doing the mission that has now become manifest. And the other thing is, why didn’t Pete plan it this way? This is the most incompetent man on the face of the earth. Donald Trump says that Pete said, “Let’s do it, let’s do it.” That shouldn’t be an implementation order. There should actually be people who are smart who have reviewed this and said, “Let’s not do it. We’re going to open up a whole can of worms here. You’re going to kick a hornet’s nest and then sit around and scream while you’re getting stung, not understanding why you’re getting stung.”
We knew in advance the Strait of Hormuz would be closed. The Fifth Fleet, based in Manama, Bahrain, has been monitoring this forever. And they know what the Iranians were going to do. This doesn’t take anybody by surprise. We knew that they were going to launch ballistic missiles. We knew that they had built underground missile cities in almost all of their 31 autonomous military districts. We knew that. We didn’t know where they were located, but we knew all this.
But we fell in love with an Israeli-fed fantasy of regime change — that if we kill Ali Khamenei, the government will collapse, and then we don’t have to worry about all the little dirty details of war. So we went to war on the basis of a fantasy of regime change and collapse. And then when they didn’t collapse and when their missiles started impacting, we didn’t have a plan. Then when they shut down the Strait of Hormuz, we really didn’t have a plan.
So what we’ve seen over the course of the last four weeks is the United States making it up as it goes along. And it gets worse because you get Donald Trump thrown into the mix. This is a man whose social media account should be shut down for national security purposes. He is jerking everybody around. He is toing and froing, saying things that should never be said if that is indeed your policy objective. But he’s just making us look foolish. And as a result, the military is expending a lot of energy and a lot of resources trying to react to stupidity that he says one day, only to change his mind the next day.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Doesn’t the Marine Corps have generals who can say to Hegseth, “We can’t do it, and here’s why?”
The Politicization of Military Leadership
SCOTT RITTER: Well, yes, they do. The question is, are these generals overly politicized, like the Navy, like the Army? We’ve seen since the end of the Cold War when Bill Clinton came in. What we saw when Bill Clinton became president was how he began to politicize senior military promotions. Basically, anybody that was due to be promoted, who was deemed to be loyal to Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush were passed over in favor of people who were more politically inclined. This began the politicization not only of the higher ranks, but of the processes of promotion.
So today, when people go up to a battalion commander selection board, which is the 05 level, lieutenant colonel level, they’re not being evaluated on their combat capabilities, their tactical expertise. They’re being evaluated on their political correctness. They’re being evaluated in a whole range of things that have nothing to do with war fighting, about political correctness and political alignment. And if we change presidents every four years, that means that we’re seesawing back and forth.
And then the other thing is that many of these people get involved in defense procurement, and their loyalties then lie in their potential for being hired by these companies once they leave. And so the officers that serve today, you don’t make colonel, you don’t make brigadier general without selling your soul to politics. There’s no more pure combat leaders. There’s always a political aspect to these people, and they become yes men.
And as a result, at the time when we need a Smedley Butler or we need an Al Gray, my commandant, we don’t get that. We get generals who are silent in the face of absurdity, or they just nod their heads and say, “We will find a way to execute the orders,” because they think they’re being good soldiers, not realizing they’re being bad Americans.
Your duty, especially as a Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, is to advise the President on military matters. And the biggest piece of advice you should give this president is, first of all, don’t go to war against Iran. And second of all, don’t go to war thinking that they’re not going to close the Strait of Hormuz, because there’s not a damn thing we could do to keep it open. And don’t go to war thinking that you’re going to shut down their ballistic missile launch capabilities, because history shows we don’t do that very well. And don’t go to war thinking that your ballistic missile defense shield is going to protect it, because it never has and it never will.
This is what the generals should be telling President Trump, but instead, they fall in line with Hegseth, and when he says, “Let’s do it,” they go, “Okay, let’s do it.”
Intelligence Capabilities Before a Ground Assault
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: What kind of intel would be available to the military before these guys put their feet on the ground?
SCOTT RITTER: Well, I’m sure we’ll have extensive intelligence. We’ll have imagery intelligence, some of the most high quality. And then you can throw in other sensors to complement that — radar sensors, et cetera — to get a feel for what’s happening underground. Infrared sensors to find out where heat signatures are, to determine where weapons might be stored. We will be doing a lot of electronic intelligence, trying to capture communications, and that helps us track individuals and track units.
Less human intelligence at this point in time, because the vectors for human intelligence collection are closed. There’s no fishermen showing up in Dubai right now for a human team to go down and debrief on what’s going on at Kharg Island. Everything’s locked down, but we’ll have good tactical intelligence for the most part.
But again, the Iranians have been preparing for this for years, so we don’t know if what we’re collecting is disinformation. It’s just a partial picture. We don’t know. And the other thing we don’t know is the quality of the truth. One of the things that took us by surprise at Koh Tang Island is we only expected 30 to 50 Khmer Rouge — poorly armed Khmer Rouge. We ended up fighting 300 to 500 of their elite troops, people who were disciplined enough to stay down and maneuver under fire and basically defeat the Marines.
The Iranians that are on Kharg Island have been preparing for this war for some time now. And the intelligence should be such that we can tell our bosses, “Don’t do this. We don’t know enough about where the underground disposition of the forces are. And if you send in paratroopers or Marines, they could be walking into an ambush and be slaughtered.”
Senator Graham’s Call to Take Kharg Island
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Wow. I don’t want to ruin your dinner, but here’s the senior senator from South Carolina on taking Kharg Island. Number 13, Chris. Here’s what I tell President Trump.
SCOTT RITTER: Keep it up for a few more weeks.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Take Kharg Island, where all of the resources they have to produce oil — control that island. Let this regime die on the vine.
SCOTT RITTER: Well, first of all, Senator Graham has to understand that Kharg Island — the notion that all of their resources to ship oil are on there — is false. It is a convenient point to ship oil. And the Iranians have the facilities there, but those facilities can be replaced. They can transfer those capabilities elsewhere. This is not a one-of-a-kind unique facility. So the Iranians have the ability to ship oil elsewhere, reconstitute elsewhere. So it’s a fiction to say that if we take this island, we destroy the Iranian oil economy. We will temporarily displace oil shipping, but the oil production will still take place and they’ll just find another place to do the transshipment.
But again, Senator Graham just makes it sound like this is so easy, that it’s an easy thing to do — an amphibious assault under fire. I think in the same presentation, he said, “We took Iwo Jima.” Well, Senator, you didn’t take Iwo Jima. You couldn’t. You couldn’t qualify to be a Marine that would take Iwo Jima or take Kharg Island. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You are ignorant about not just ground combat operations, but amphibious assaults — something I did for a number of years.
This isn’t easy. It’s very hard work. There’s a reason why we have a monument built — the Iwo Jima monument — because we lost thousands of Marines to take that tiny little patch of coral sand. Tarawa again — we had to wade through chest-deep water for a mile, get machine-gunned by the Japanese who were dug in, before the survivors were able to accumulate on the beach and continue the assault. This is hard stuff. This is the hardest stuff in the world. And Graham just makes it sound like it’s easy. It’s not.
Senator Graham forgets that at some point in time, we have a duty and responsibility to the Americans who provide us with their sons and daughters to make sure that before we send them to war, it’s a war worthy of the cost we’re asking people to pay. And taking Kharg Island is not worth a single drop of American blood. And Senator Graham is sitting there speaking as if we should be ready to lose another 5,000 Marines.
Are There Real Negotiations With Iran?
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Is there any evidence to support President Trump’s claim that his two real estate agent negotiators have been negotiating with a high-ranking Iranian official for the past two days?
SCOTT RITTER: There’s indirect evidence that the American position has been put before the speaker of the House of Parliament, but that’s a far cry from saying that there are active negotiations. Witkoff and Kushner have transmitted, or sought to transmit, an American position — uninvited by the Iranians, by the way — through Egypt and other intermediaries, to the speaker of the House, specifically asking the speaker of the House to be the person to do this.
The Iranians are wise on this. Why would they seek to go after the speaker of the House or make it appear that that’s the channel? Because look what happened today in Iran — in all of the major cities, hundreds of thousands of Iranians in the street. And what they’re saying is, “Do not negotiate, do not make peace. Keep the war up. We’re winning. We, the people of Iran, are ready to pay whatever price is necessary to win this war. And now we’re winning. Do not negotiate.”
This is what’s happening here. This isn’t about a negotiation. This is about a continuation of the mental warfare that the United States is playing against Iran. Why didn’t they go to the Foreign Minister? He’s not dead. Trump said they’re dead. He’s not dead. The Foreign Minister is very much alive. Why aren’t they going to him? Because he is the official voice of foreign policy. Why didn’t they go to the President? He’s not dead. Trump said everybody’s dead. The President’s alive. Why didn’t they go to the Supreme Leader? The Supreme Leader has been elected. He’s there. Go to him.
No, because what they’re trying to say is that those people aren’t legitimate. Those people have no authority. Those people are weak. We want to go to the speaker of the Parliament. And what they’re trying to do is drive a wedge between the people who constitute the government of Iran, get them to fight amongst each other, get the Iranian people to be outraged, and basically start to create fractures inside this extremely resilient body called the Iranian nation state.
There are no substantive negotiations taking place between the United States and Iran. Iran refuses to negotiate with the United States. And using Witkoff and Kushner — these are the two guys that negotiated with Iran the last two times, in June and in February, ostensibly to get a nuclear deal — they found out that they were just setting the Iranians up for decapitation strikes. So why would the Iranians do this?
Trump Claims Talks Are Going Well
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Again, here’s the President of the United States yesterday saying, “We’re talking and it’s going well.” Number six.
VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Mr. President, Iran’s foreign ministry says you’re not telling the truth when it comes to productive conversations.
DONALD TRUMP: They’re going to have to get themselves better public relations people. We have had very, very strong talks. We’ll see where they lead. We have major points of agreement — I would say almost all points of agreement. Perhaps that hasn’t been conveyed. The communication, as you know, has been blown to pieces. They’re unable to talk to each other. But we’ve had very strong talks. Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner had them. They went, I would say, perfectly. I would say that if they carry through with that, it’ll end that problem, that conflict, and I think it’ll end it very, very substantially. We have very much in mind our partners in the Middle East. We’ve had great relationships with a lot of them. As you know, a lot of them were surprisingly hit, and I was surprised to see it, and so was everyone else. But they are very much in mind in the discussions.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: So the discussions took place yesterday?
DONALD TRUMP: They went into yesterday evening. They want very much to make a deal. We’d like to make a deal, too.
VIDEO CLIP ENDS:
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: What could he possibly be talking about? The discussions went perfectly. Has the United States agreed to the Iranian demands?
SCOTT RITTER: What we do know is that the Trump White House has articulated their demands and spelled them out, and the Iranian Foreign Ministry has articulated Iran’s demands. So what Trump is probably talking about is that Kushner and Witkoff are talking to somebody. They want to convey a message to the Iranians. And the conversation is how Witkoff and Kushner are talking to this intermediary and how the intermediary on his own volition is pushing back with the Iranian position, saying, “Do you really want me to try and go in there with you saying this? This is what the Iranians’ response has been.”
And so it becomes an internal conversation between the Trump team and a designated mediator who hasn’t been officially designated, because the Iranians don’t want a mediator. The Iranians are talking to nobody right now. Absolutely nobody.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Rejects Further Talks
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Here’s the Iranian foreign minister yesterday. Chris, number 10.
VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:
IRANIAN FOREIGN MINISTER: I don’t think the question of talking with Americans or negotiation with Americans once again would be on the table, because we have a very bitter experience of talking with Americans. We negotiated with them last year in June, and they attacked us in the middle of negotiations. And again this year they tried to convince us that this time is different. They promised us that they don’t have any intention to attack us, and they wanted to resolve Iran’s nuclear question peacefully and to find a negotiated solution. And we finally accepted. But again, after three rounds of negotiation — and after the American team in the negotiation said itself that we made big progress — still, they decided to attack us. So I don’t think talking with Americans anymore would be on our agenda anymore. Perfectly rational.
VIDEO CLIP ENDS:
SCOTT RITTER: And that’s the one thing we can say about the Iranians — unlike the United States, which has changed its war plan just about every day and contradicted itself on a regular basis, the Iranians haven’t changed their message at all. From day one, they said, “This is what’s going to happen if you do this.” And when we did that, what they said was going to happen did happen. Iran has not altered its plan whatsoever. And so there’s a consistency in anything the Iranians say about this operation that’s lacking on the part of the United States.
How Precarious Is the American Position?
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: How precarious is the American position in this war now as we speak?
Russia as the Key to a Diplomatic Off Ramp
SCOTT RITTER: Let’s put it this way, Judge. We’ve lost this war and we’re not going to win this war. And if we allow things to continue militarily without a diplomatic off ramp, we’re going to suffer egregious economic harm. We already see tightening of the belt here and there. Globally, the damage is real. Now Australia is in an emergency situation. South Korea is in an emergency situation due to energy shortages. And it’s going to be energy that drives this.
I mean, Donald Trump can’t survive politically. And if you don’t think that this war was about the midterm elections and tried to position himself to be some sort of conquering hero for those, then you don’t understand what this war is about. Donald Trump, right now he’s looking at numbers, economic numbers that will be disastrous. And there’s no ability to reverse this. He can’t force open the Strait of Hormuz, simply can’t do it. We don’t have the capacity to do that.
And if he carries through his threat to destroy the totality of Iran’s energy infrastructure, then Iran will destroy Gulf Arab states energy infrastructure, and then they’ll start hitting fresh water. You remove fresh water from the occasion and these lands become uninhabitable to flee. It’ll be disastrous for Gulf Arab states. It’ll be disastrous. This is the reality. And so Trump needs a ramp, and it’s going to be one that’s going to require the United States to make significant concessions to the Iranians.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Scott Ritter, thank you very much, my dear friend. I know you’re on the other side of the world and it’s very late at night. I appreciate all this. Your audience is enormous and I know I speak for them, that they appreciate it as well. All the best to you, my friend. We’ll see you again soon.
Scott Ritter’s Mission in Russia
SCOTT RITTER: If I could just add something. I’m in Russia for a purpose. And the thing that I’ve been pushing for the past several days is the role that Russia can play in providing the very off ramp that we’ve been speaking of. And while it’s up to Russia to determine, A, if they want to do this, B, what a grand bargain with the United States would look like, what I can say is that this message has been very warmly received by the Russians. I’ve been asked to speak before an audience at the president level. I’ve been requested to be interviewed on their national press about this issue, and I’ve interviewed some of the great thinkers in Russia about this.
Russia holds the key. Russia is one of the major energy producers. Right now the United States needs Russia and Russian oil on the market to stabilize the economy. Russia has connectivity with both the United States, with Israel and the Gulf Arab States and Iran, with whom they’re a strategic partner. The United States has no ability whatsoever to negotiate directly with Iran. Russia has the ability to mediate amongst all the parties.
And this has to happen sooner rather than later, before the economic consequences of what Trump has done spins out of control. And there seems to be a recognition in Russia that this indeed is a mission they need to, at a minimum, consider and most likely start to act on.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Are the Americans worth negotiating with? Do they have credibility, particularly the two that Trump sends out?
America Has No Negotiating Leverage
SCOTT RITTER: No, they don’t. I mean, are they worth negotiating with? You have to have a door open. And these two are the door that has been opened. So you deal with what you have. But what we need to realize, and I think the Russians understand this, is that America has no negotiating leverage. There’s nothing America brings to the table. This is all about Russia literally doing America and the world a favor by providing political cover for an American surrender. They won’t call it a surrender, but it’ll be a surrender in everything but name only.
We’re in a very desperate situation, Judge. We don’t have a solution to this problem that we created. And right now, every day that goes by, this problem gets more and more unsolvable by the Americans. We’re going to need outside help, and Russia is the most likely source of that outside help.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Well, you’re doing the work of the angels. You may be suggesting a solution which will resonate with all the right people. Godspeed, safe travels. We’ll look forward to seeing you again soon. Scotty, thank you very much.
SCOTT RITTER: Okay, just. Thank you.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Sure. All the best. A great man and a great ability to crystallize a problem in front of people that can actually help solve it. Well, before I get to tomorrow, here we are, Judge Napolitano Weekly, our new short audio podcast. It’s me talking to you about personal liberty in a free society. Wherever you get your audio only — Spotify, Apple, iHeart, or Amazon — log on to it and tell us what you think. Tomorrow, Wednesday at eight in the morning, Gilbert Dr. Row, at two in the afternoon Max Blumenthal, at three in the afternoon the great Phil Giraldi. Thank you for watching Judge Napolitano, Judging Freedom.
Related Posts
