Scott Ritter: Iran STRIKES US Base in Kuwait, FIRES on US Tanker – Trump's Attack BLOWS UP

Welcome everyone. Welcome back to the show. It's your host Danny Hiong. As you can see, I am joined by Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector and US Marine Corps intelligence officer, geopolitical analyst, and author. Uh Scott, good to see you again.

>> Oh, thanks. Thanks for having me.

>> Yes. Everyone hit the like button as we come on. And we're just going to get started with the latest developments. Scott, first your comments on what is a war of narratives in many ways, but there have been kinetic uh activity over night and uh both sides, the US and Iran are saying different things about it. Uh first we have the Sensecom narrative of what has happened. another ceasefire violation. But according to Senscom, it is Iran that has committed what they say is an egregious ceasefire violation by retaliating against or this is what Iran says, but they're saying that Iran fired missile a missile against Kuwait, a US air base in Kuwait. But this is only after the United States struck Bonder Abbas because Iran had sent drones at US naval vessels uh near the straight of Hormuz claiming once again selfdefense. Iran has a very different narrative of last night's events. They say that they were actually uh intercepting uh uh tankers including a US tanker that was attempting to cross the straight of Formuz with their transponders off. They stopped two vessels and forced two to turn back. Um, and then Iran says that they fired on Kuwait as a warning uh that the strikes on Bonder Abbas that the US conducted were not going to be allowed without further retaliation. A warning that this could get even worse. So, Scott, what's going on uh in this war right now? there's supposed to be a so-called ceasefire, even maybe a memorandum of understanding on the way, yet the United States uh continues striking Iran uh despite it. What's what's happening here?

>> Well, I mean, I' I've been saying this week and I've been saying for some time, the United States's agreement incapable. don't think there's going to be a um an agreement a ceasefire agreement a formalized agreement uh especially one that can pass muster in the United States Senate or uh you know become a security council resolution um of course that's the goal that's the objective but the United States is agreement incapable um even if we come up with an understanding um you know the United States has deadlines for instance things have to happen at this point at this point and between now and then Donald Trump will change his mind and seek to renegotiate because Donald Trump is not in the, you know, he's not interested in an agreement or a treaty. He is interested in the deal. And a deal is a completely different thing. A deal is, you know, a one-way street. A deal is what's good for Donald Trump. A deal is something that could be broken at any time because it becomes a bad deal and then you have to replace it with a good deal. Um, he can seem to have a deal, but then he finds out after talking to people it's really a bad deal, so he reigns on it. Um, I mean, it has to be very frustrating to be negotiating with the United States at this point in time because we we can't be consistent in anything. Um, the Iranians have been very consistent from the get-go on what their demands are, what the requirements are, and Iran does get to dictate because after all, they didn't lose the war. We did. Um, you know, so that's where we're at. What's going to happen? Hard to say. I don't see a an outbreak of full-scale conflict. the United States can't um and and survive um you know economically already we're in dire straits. Uh you know Iran will collect its tolls. I know uh Scott Bessant the secretary of treasury just sent out a uh a warning to both Oman and Iran that this will not be tolerated. But I don't think Oman and Iran really care what Scott Bessant thinks or the United States Treasury thinks. Um, you know, the bottom line is Iran has a death grip on uh the trans the transit of oil through the straight hormuz and nothing the United States says does, wishes, desires is going to change that. The only thing that will change that is the United States adhering to, you know, an agreement which it's incapable of entering into. So I think there's going to be a an agreement in principle on certain things. um you know whether it's the lifting of the blockade uh whether it's the removal of US forces uh backing off um something will happen but you know at the end of the day Iran's not going to give the United States what's it want what it wants on nuclear that's just the reality of it and Iran's not going to stop charging an environmental tax in the straight war mood that's just the reality of it and Donald Trump at this point in time has said these are you know you know deal breakers um so you know, I think that's where we're at right now with the we're just seeing the living proof of the fact that the Trump administration, the United States as a whole, is literally um agreement incapable and um I don't think there's going to be a formal peace treaty. Now, I'd love to be proven wrong on this. I'd love nothing more than, you know, tomorrow they've signed it and it's great. Goes to the Senate, they approve it, becomes a treaty, goes to the Security Council, and it's wonderful. I just don't see that happening because I don't think Donald Trump's capable of allowing that to happen.

and uh and it appears incapable of uh getting out of this war that you said and I agree with you that the US has lost. But yet Iran seems to be doing everything it can to remain within the bounds of this current ceasefire while also showing the United States in this last missile strike toward a US air base in Kuwait that it has the ability to continue onward and it's only been promising this uh since the ceasefire which was uh uh nearly two months ago now uh was established. So what explains and Scott why the Trump administration why the United States SenCom why they keep on uh with these I don't know what you call them pin prick strikes these kind of like striking Iran and then pulling back and saying no no no this is all within the bounds of the ceasefire actually sometimes they're claiming self-defense which is a very odd uh claim given that uh they are instituting a blockade thousands upon thousands of miles from their shores.

First of all, there's never been a ceasefire. Um, I mean, Iran would like there to be a ceasefire, but there hasn't been a ceasefire. Um, there's been maneuvering. We have an ongoing act of war, which is the blockade. How can you have a ceasefire when the United States is engaged in an act of war? Um, in the United States, a ceasefire doesn't, you know, normally doesn't exist with the continued threatening of force. A ceasefire means a ceasefire, not a temporary halt in hostilities while you maintain that you're going to strike at any time. So there's never been a ceasefire and I don't think there ever will be a ceasefire. I think the United States will continue to maintain, you know, the potential of hostilities at uh at any time. Um I do think that at some point in time we're going to have to basically uh withdraw. We can't afford this uh this military posture much longer. Uh just understand how bad it's gotten. we've run out of operational funds. So, uh, a heavy brigade of a of armor out of Texas that was supposed to rotate into Poland as part of a rotational force uh was stopped. PEG says stop it. We don't have the money to send them. Um, you know, Donald Trump then came out with a statement said, "We're going to send 5,000 troops from Germany." Congress said, "Really? On whose budget?" And who approve approved this? Poland is going, "Really? We didn't sign a uh st status of forces agreement. there is no treaty relationship that allows this. Um I mean so you know Trump lives in his own fantasy world which is half the problem but the the reality is we have an unsustainable force posture. Um we can't afford to do a major escalation because it'll end up very badly for us and our allies. Um and Trump can't accept the terms that are being dictated by Iran. And so we're going to have this never never um you know soft ceasefire um for sometime for the foreseeable future.

>> and uh we have now two uh and I'm curious on your thoughts of why exactly it seems like they go together. Uh this happened also uh last weekend and there's been two US strikes in the last week and uh prior the last weekend there's there's a similar development occurring where everyone was talking about a memorandum of understanding about to be signed. Trump himself, he got together all the Gulf countries. It was about to be signed. Everything was great. And then suddenly the US was doing exactly what it did last night, which is uh hitting Iran in a very limited manner, pulling back and saying everything is still within the bounds of the ceasefire. And today we have a similar development. Barack Ravi, Axios's and I guess the western mainstream media's favorite former 80 unit 8200 Mossad operative is uh now turned so-called reporter uh says that US Iran have actually reached a deal but now needs Trump's final approval and that Iran has said absolutely not. Uh the Moshaba Hami has not approved of any such thing. What why do this? Is this market manipulation? Is it something else? uh what's what's going on with this pattern? It seems like it almost feels like an information operation that we've talked about on prior shows.

>> Again, I I hate to smile and say this, but it just has to be said. Um normal geopolitical analysis um is derived from rational thought and fact-based truth. Um we know politics can be played. You can slant things some way, you can emphasize things over others, but at the end of the day, the sky is blue, you know, and uh the grass is green. Um and and there it shall be. Uh Donald Trump doesn't live in this world. Donald Trump lives in his own world. First of all, Donald Trump is not your your average American president. An average American president respects the office of the presidency and respects the constitution that you know creates and legitimizes the the work of the US president. Donald Trump is a self-proclaimed dictator. Just go to Davos and you'll hear him say, "I am a dictator." Man who says the rule of law doesn't matter. Only what he personally believes in his sense of personal morality. Um which is laughable. Um and this is a man who operates as a cult of personality. He literally surrounds himself with sycophants. That's it. This is a man who has erected a gold monument to himself in Mara Largo. Had religious figures come in and pray through this monument to a god. We don't know if it is the god because they're sort of replicating what the Hebrews did in the Old Testament where they abandoned God and they worshiped they erected, you know, golden idols to other gods and they got smoked, smitten, whatever term you want to use. Um, you know, Melania, don't look over your shoulders because you'll turn into a pillar of salt. Um, you know, this we are dealing with a man who is not well. In fact I think he can be diagnosed and has been diagnosed by board certified psychiatrists and psychologist is suffering from a malignant form of narcissistic personality disorder. That's a mental illness that manifests itself in antisocial behavior. Um and this explains what Donald Trump's doing here. We're dealing with a mentally ill man. Literally a mentally ill man. so mentally ill, in fact, that if he committed a crime and was brought to trial, um he could be, you know, set free on grounds of insanity because he is literally insane. This man doesn't operate in the normal realm. Uh he's all about himself. It's all about the dawn. It's all about the brand. It's all about the legacy of the family. all the traditional things that a politician in that level should care about like the collective good of the American people, the security of the American people, of our allies, he doesn't consider any of this. None of this. It's only what benefits the Donald. And um that's why it's almost impossible to a explain what he's doing and b predict what he's going to do. How do you predict the actions of an insane man? And the president of the United States is from a legal medical perspective insane. Go to the DSM5. That's the manual that these pe these professionals use. Go to narcissistic personality disorder and you'll see two things. One, I think there's five criteria that have to be met to be diagnosed from a distance. But you're allowed to diagnose it from a distance. It's one of the few mental disorders that can be diagnosed from a distance. Normally you need to command you bring yourself before somebody and be you know examined directly but through observation the diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder can be made and has been made. So the president is a mentally ill man.

>> and uh you know with narcissism of course comes a a bit of a detachment from reality or maybe a lot of detachment from reality but reality still exists and uh one of the realities that that the United States uh at least the uh military the empire so to speak is going to be struggling with this is the center for strategic and international studies they published lished a report recently uh about what exactly is going on inside of the US military that uh the Iran war has essentially done which is completely depleted and here is just a few of those uh numbers. So we have the FAD, the Tomahawk missile, the Patriots, the Jassimms. All of these are estimated to take upwards of three to four years to get back just to pre-war levels. And that's assuming that there are no other wars that are engaged with by the United States under Trump or otherwise. And that's unfortunately a highly unlikely scenario. So maybe you can help us understand these numbers and and why the United States, it seems like uh the Trump administration doesn't seem to care. The Pentagon, even people around the Trump administration, they don't seem to care about this. But uh how does it why does it matter?

>> Well, first of all, if you put that that that form up, we should look at it more carefully. Um because you you see estimated use in air and war probably higher numbers than that but that that's the estimated use. Um and you take a look at deliveries in 2026. That's reality. So every one of those they used a thousand Tomahawks only 207 are going to be replaced in in this in this year. Uh THAAD 190 to 290 probably the higher number only 92 are going to be replaced. You see what happened? We have a deficit we cannot dig ourselves out of. Do not look at the fiscal year 2027 request because that is not real. No money has been allocated. Therefore, no production capacity has been expanded. That's all fake numbers. It hasn't been approved by Congress. And we don't know if the industries this is based upon, you know, the the framework agreement goal. This is a bunch of guys getting together and just basically spewing out what what what we want to do. That's not real. And we live in the real world today. Today is about reality. We have run out of ammunition. We don't have any. We cannot fight a war. This is the reality. And this is the reality that's going to exist for several years because look at Tomahawk 2030 2031. I mean, I'm not good at math, but it's 2026. That tells me four or five years from now, 2029. I mean, again, three years, 2029, 3 years, 2029, 3 years, 2028, 2029, 2 to three years, mid 2027. Good luck. No, that money hasn't been approved. Late 2026, doubtful. The point is, this is all fiction. This is fantasy. It doesn't exist. We are in a hole that we cannot dig ourselves out of. Um even if you allocate the money, how do you Let's again go through each one of these. It's probably classified the amount of uh you know permanent magnets and other uh you know rare earth you know materials that go into the the making of these weapons. These weapons can't be made without specific components. specific components which are tied to um the ability to access uh the rare earth minerals out of China. China's denying us access to that. So we can't even make them even if the money was there. We can't make these. We don't have the ability to make these. This is the fatal flaw of the approach the United States has taken to war fighting since the end of the Cold War where we basically um don't waste them for bombs. Magnets are cool. Don't waste them. I don't know. I'm not gonna get into it. But, you know, guidance and control. What do you think makes the bomb hit its target? You know, it's not just a bomb. They put guidance on it. What's in the guidance? What's makes the little chips do the little chip things? So, sorry, I shouldn't read comments, but sometimes ignorance is bliss. The the point is the we are are we we programmed ourselves to fight wars where we would intimidate people with technology. That the idea was to make anybody understand that if you fought us, we would overwhelm you with technology. We would come in with generation 5 fighters that you couldn't touch. We have interceptors that shoot anything down you shoot at. We have longrange standoff weapons that make us immune to your air defense, but we can kill everything. and we'll come in and we'll hit you hard for a week and you'll be destroyed and surrendered because you can't stand up to it. And the Iranians have been preparing for over two decades to stand up to it. And the Iranians prepared for a long fight uh to write out all of these weapon systems. None of this took Iran by surprise. By the way, you know, there are right in between Iraq and Afghanistan. Where are the two places where we fought major conflicts throughout the two decades of of this century? Iraq, Afghanistan. You think we blew flew B2 bombers over each one? Yeah. You think they dropped munitions? Yeah. You think all those munitions went off or were there some duds? Duds. And you think the duds could have been picked up and then turned over and reverse engineered and all the components to Yes. You think that was shared with the Chinese and the Russians? Yeah. You think they added some analysis that fed back to the Iranians? Yes. My point is the Iranians have watched us fight forever. To show you how good they are, we had something called the uh the the beast of Kandahar. I think RQ76 or something of that nature. giant delta-wing B2 bomb looking bomber looking uh drone and this thing would fly it, you know, it got famous during the uh the raid on a badabad, you know, the assassination of a 57 year old diabetic uh you with kidney failure, Osama bin Laden. Um so it it's the the the system that flew over Pakistan filming the raid that the president of United States and those were watching and the beast of Kandahar flies over Iran as well. Sort of immune. It's so high, stealth features, fly over, take pictures and all this stuff. And the Iranians sat there and watched it. A technical team off the off the runway in Kandahar every day watching it take off, collecting the signals, you see, because there's a controller taking it off. Off it goes, flying. Yay. Gets to altitude and then the controller turns it over to another controller operating out of, you know, Nevada. And uh there's a handshake that goes on. You you click it, there's a handshake. The the the the drone talks to the controller and they go beep. And then they shake hands and they sync up their secure comms link and he has control and now he's flying it. And the Iranians are going, "Thank you. Play that handshake again. Play it again." Then they send it back to their smart boys who break it apart. They go, "We got this handshake." And so the condart takes off. They delink it. It goes to a handshake. And the Iranians come and go, "We're shaking hands." took it over and flew back to Iran and took it. Do you guys understand how hard that is? How hard that was to accomplish? But the Iranians did it because they understand everything about what we're doing. There's nothing we do that takes them by surprise. Not a damn thing we did take them by surprise except the timing of a surprise attack that was, you know, shielded by an act of perity that, you know, hey, we're going to negotiate with you. We got a deal on a way to Washington DC for finalization. Everybody sleep tight. Boom. You're dead. bomb. That's how we operate. We lie, we cheat, we steal, we don't operate honestly at all. And we still got our asses handed to us because they're better than we are. They understood us better than we understood them. We went in there thinking we could kill Ayat and collapse the regime and intimidate the crap out of everybody because we got F-35s, we got B2s, we got everything. We're America. We're the best. And then we ran out of ammunition. We ran out of ammun. And you know what? That ammunition didn't work. All those GBU57s, you know, the big bomb that we drop in and makes it go boom. At least four of them didn't go off. Guess who has them today? Not just the Iranians, the Russians and the Chinese who are reverse engineering them as we speak. Every single weapon we fired, most of them don't work. The Tomahawks, 2017, we fired a bunch of Tomahawk block fours at Syria. You remember that? striking the so-called Syrian chemical weapons facilities that weren't chemical weapons facilities and get another failure in intelligence. We fired I forget what it was 61 of them. 23 didn't work. 23 ended up in the fields of Syria there intact. Intact. And guess who captured them? The Syrians. And guess who they're friendly with? The Russians. And guess who the Russians are friendly with? Iranians. Guess who has total understanding of the Tomahawk Block 4? Every aspect of it. So it could be jammed, spoofed, whatever the Iranians do. All the things we fired, most of them didn't work, ladies and gentlemen. Most of them were jammed. Most of them were spoofed. And the ones that didn't, they hit buildings that were empty. We had zero impact on Iran in terms of bombing things. We had zero impact. Well, we might have had like a little bit of impact, but the overall effect is nothing. No impact on their ballistic missile production capability because it all been removed from the above ground facilities to underground facilities that we couldn't reach. The same thing with everything they do. We lost this war because they're better than we are. Those weapons that you saw up there, most of them don't work. They're too expensive. They can't be replaced. And we built our whole war fighting me way of, you know, waging war around these weapons. We don't have them anymore. There's a reason why people got mad when uh I forget was it u was the name of the the senator who basically said, "So what you're telling me is we're out of ammunition." And they're all, "You can't say that. You're a traitor." But he was telling the truth. We're out of am. We don't have the ability to make the ammunition we need. We're defenseless in the Pacific. We're defenseless in Europe. And we're defenseless in the Middle East.

>> Yeah. And then now it seems that the uh US the Trump administration or at least the US uh uh wararm mongers uh they are once again trying to and and we know that in war a lot of it for especially uh the US is to uh you you use the word intimidation intimidate especially the people uh to agree to future terms that the US is going to want. That of course has not worked and we know that sanctions serves a similar purpose maybe through a different weapon. And this time around though the sanctions are feeling quite desperate Scott. Now the Treasury Department is sanctioning the Persian Gulf Strait authority accusing Iran of using the antony to shocker generate revenue from vessels transiting the straight of Hormuz. How can SC how can one sanction an entity that Iran created and has absolutely no connection to uh the US side of the global market? It's a it's a very interesting uh thing and feat to try to impose on Iran. But nonetheless, this

>> though isn't the sanction of Iran, it's the secondary sanctions that follow. for instance, any country or ship or whatever that goes through and pays the uh toll will be subject to secondary sanctions. So that's the goal is to get the people to say no. Except gosh, Scott, you haven't really thought this one out, have you? Because they say no, then the oil doesn't flow and then they die.

>> Then they stay

>> or be sanctioned by America. I think they're going to choose sanctions, Mr. Bessant, because your sanctions suck. First of all, my understanding is that um they're they're no longer paying in dollars and the dollars are no longer going to the uh the banks in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. That's the way Iran used to work until the United States went in, seized those assets, $12 billion worth. Congratulations, America. You got 12 billion dollars of stolen money that you're going to have to return eventually. It always works out that way. But so now you're paying in yuan, Chinese currency going into banks. the United States doesn't control or I think one of the things I hear is cryptocurrency uh that they're they're they're collecting tolls in cryptocurrency. Uh again, the US has zero control over that. And so we can't stop Oman and um in Iran from doing this and we can't stop the countries from paying it because they have to pay it to survive. You know, we could threaten secondary sanctions, but all that does is make people pull further away from the American orbit. I mean, there you know Marco Rubio who I despise openly um once said the one few honest things he said when he was talking about Brazil and Brazil was talking about ddollarization and you know working with bricks to come up with alternative means um and he said we can't allow this to happen if Brail no Brazil no longer pays in the dollar we can no longer sanction them and if we can't sanction them we can't control them and that changes not what most honest thing anybody's ever said because the whole concept of the dollar and everything isn't about you the smooth economic flow. It's about American control, American ability to squeeze, you know, your throat through sanctions. The world is waking up to the fact that uh there is a limit to American economic power. Russia proved it. China's proved it. Look, the Chinese were threatened. They you can't buy Scott Besson again, he should learn to shut up. You know, China, you're private oil refineries. No Russian oil is allowed to go in there. If they go in there, we're going to sanction you. The Chinese government went, "Yeah, disregard." uh do the Russian oil. If you sanction us, we'll we'll crush you. And Trump's already knows. Last time he tried to oversanction China, China crushed him, squeezed him to death, made him surrender. This is the reality of it. This is a humiliating moment for the United States because one of the greatest economic weapons that we've had, which we've abused over the course of several decades, is now being exposed as literally an empty threat. Scott Bessant is going to say sanction anybody. You think Iran is afraid of sanctions? Not at all. They've survived under stringent sanctions and Iran owns us right now because I can guarantee you if given the choice of being hit with secondary American sanctions or paying the tariff, people are paying the tariff because they need that oil more than they need the blessing of Scott Bessant.

>> Well, uh I think it's a good time now to talk about some other fronts. Scott, I wanted to ask your uh comment on uh the Ukraine front uh because uh there have been of course in the last week or so uh strikes that Russia conducted in response to the horrific war crime uh that Ukraine engaged in uh in Lugansk, the killing of uh just dozens of of students and faculty staff. Now there's this kind of very strange Oh, sorry about that. Very strange development where after Lavrov warned that uh you know foreigners, embassy staff, anyone you know in Kiev uh from abroad should leave. uh now union actually saying that Europe stayed in Kiev to stand with uh Ukraine while the US left and now the US is saying no they didn't evacuate their diplomats but we are expecting things to heat up now with regard to Ukraine because it seems like Ukraine and their backers uh continue to get more and more uh aggressive toward especially harming civilians. uh what is your uh assessment of what's going on and uh uh how it might relate to uh the United States's particular maybe precarious position as it relates to Iran and the uh broader force projection it is trying to impose on on the world war in Iran and when you lose a war that sort of exposes certain realities the reality is United States cannot we can't fight a sustained fight against Iran, which means we can't fight a sustained fight against China, and we can't fight a sustained fight against Russia. Uh, and we're not in a position to support others because we're out of ammunition. We're literally out of ammunition. We got nothing left. So, we've taken America off the board in terms of relevance. We can't even threaten anything. We can't even get our act together on uh on troops in Poland. Um, you know, 4,200 aren't rotating in, but 5,000 are going in, but Congress didn't approve, so 5,000 aren't. You know, we don't have anything. We're literally a bunch of hot air coming out of the mouths of the most irrelevant people in the planet. Um, unfortunately, there are some relevant people that are doing relevant things. The British are very relevant. The British have been running a very successful campaign um which sought to divert the focus of effort away from the re battlefield reality where contrary to popular belief in the west Russia is dominating across the battlefield. Things are not going well for the Ukrainians and haven't been for some time now. But the British have been playing a different game, a mental warfare game designed to collapse Russia from within. Anybody who thinks that that's not possible, take a look at the collapse of the Soviet Union. you'll understand how mental warfare played a role in getting Russians to stop believing in themselves. Russians to start looking to the West as a dominant society. Um to lose faith in your leadership, to lose faith in everything. Uh to abandon, you know, what you what you're supposed to be, who you are. That's what happened the decade of 1990s. Vladimir Putin did a reversal and built Russia up to where it is today where they're proud of themselves with just reason um and all this stuff. We're trying to break that down again. That's what mental war is. And one of the things we're doing is exploiting the fact that Vladimir Putin doesn't want to escalate. That Vladimir Putin wants to keep this war confined to Ukraine and deal with the limited objectives of making sure Ukraine doesn't join NATO and doesn't retain banderist Nazi ideologies, things of that nature. Doesn't pose a threat to Russia. Um, so the West has been testing him all along. Every time a red line is drawn, you know, F-16s, red line, third world war, F-16s coming, Russia just responds by killing the F-16s. Hi, Mars. Attack them, shooting them down, nullify them. How many time when's the last time you heard about attackums doing anything worthwhile in Ukraine? You don't. Um, it's the same thing. Every escalation is managed by Russia. Operation Spiderweb, drones coming in, hitting bombers, that should have triggered a massive result response. Russia just blew it off because they said it doesn't change the fundamental direction we're heading. We're doing okay. But the British have been focusing on asymmetric warfare, hybrid warfare, using drones. Everybody talked about Ukrainian drone operations. At the tactical level, the Ukrainians, I think a lot of the innovation is theirs. But when you get up to the strategic level, this is 100% a British-driven operation assisted by the CIA uh and the in Germany. Um, Firepoint, a a Ukrainian drone production uh company is Look at the CEO. She's some girl with no education who was just a bimbo who was given the job to serve as a a way to steal money to enrich Zalinski. But the British took it over and made it something real. The FP5 Flamingo is a British weapon. A Britishmade weapon um that's fired against the Russian uh strategic depth uh claiming to be Ukrainian. You know, before this war started, the Russians made a point to Joe Biden. We will not tolerate NATO missiles based in Ukraine that can hit Russia's strategic depth. Now you have NATO missiles based in Ukraine that hit Russia's strategic depth. A red line that was crossed, but the Russians went, we can ride this thing out. We can do this. The same thing with FP1s, u this this wooden, you know, drone that flies in and hits oil rigs and all that. The Russians are blowing it off, saying it's not a big deal. But there's a continuing echo chamber going out there shouting out about how weak Putin is, how you know impotent Russia is, how this that and the other thing and it's starting to be resonate within certain segments of Russian society and you start to get defeatism. You got people start doubting Vladimir Putin. Now it hasn't reached critical mass. It's a long way from doing that but it's there. this latest attack against Starbell Teachers College uh is the straw that broke the camel's back. I don't know if Ukraine and Great Britain intended it to be this way. Um I don't even know if they hit us if they knew up front they were hitting a uh a a a teachers college. I actually think that AI assisted in the uh designation of this target just like we did with Minab, clearly a school for children. Um but we bombed it thinking it was a headquarters of a missile brigade. you know, here they thought because they saw photographs of um students from another college, not this one, wearing military uniform, that this was a military facility. It's not. Um those students were students who were participating in a game. They they're non-combatants, not affiliated with the military, everything. That's the reality of it. But the AI doesn't see that because AI is not intelligent. AI just tells does what the people programmed to do. They saw a photograph and said, "This school is a military target." And then the attack was sent in. FP1 drones, four of them, each one outfitted with airto ground rockets. That's the new variation, which means that somebody has to see it because you don't fire air to ground rockets in the blind. This isn't a situation where you program in a GPS coordinate and the FP1 flies out there and flies in and dives in where you know it tells the dove. There's another drone above this. There's Starlink connectivity. We know because they got the antennas and it's being broadcast back to a command center and that command center is seeing the target. So these drones come in and they cycle off their airto ground rockets. The eyewitnesses on the ground say we heard rocket fire. We can see the rockets come in. We can hear the rockets come in. FP1 is a propeller driven thing. It's not a rocket. So rockets being fired. Cycle back. Fire again. Cycle back. Fire again four times. Then they dive in at the end because they they carry maybe 200 kilogram bombs. Dive in, boom, boom, boom, collapsed the building, killed 21 uh students. This resonated in Russia unlike anything. I mean, even in Kursk when uh in August of 2024 when the British uh you American le Nazis, literal Nazis, I mean when I say Nazi, I mean swastika wearing Nazis went into Kursk and the Russians couldn't evacuate the elderly from the from the border villages quick enough. And so hundreds of them, 600 or so uh were captured. They were all murdered, butchered, raped. These Nazis were raping 80-year-old women, filming it, and then they go off and they they get killed, and the Russians get the bodies, they get the cameras, and they have it. This is not speculation. This is statements of fact, you know, and that didn't trigger this Russian reaction. The Russians still went, we'll just kill them, kill 60 to 80,000 of them, recapture the territory, and keep moving. We're not going to escalate. This attack is different. It hit Russia at the wrong time and it basically has created an outrage that cannot be ignored by the Russian government. So what the Russian government did first of all is respond um with a massive strike designed to take out the units responsible. Remember when I said that Starlink was involved. The problem with Starlink involved is that that signal that's going back to have some guy watch this gets intercepted and the Russians knew where it was. It was probably being run out of there's a a a facility south of Kiev where the erection hit a white church it was called Ba um hit hit these above ground garages but we know that those disguise or those were aircraft maintenance disguis compartment built during Soviet times expanded by the Ukrainians where the FP1 drone unit was that was directing this fight. Uh the arrester took it off took it off the map. It's gone. Finished. They struck other facilities in and around K. It's funny how people are like, "They struck a museum. THEY STRUCK A MUSEUM. THEY STRUCK A SHOPPING CENTER. They struck civilian targets." Except gosh, it's the Ukrainians that sit there and make the videos that say the FP1 drone, a great weapon. We're hitting the Russian oil thing, but you know, but we don't produce it in a factory because we produce in the factory. The Russians would hit the factory and destroy it. So we're we're today we're in a school gymnasium. Today we're in a you know the the basement of a museum. Today we're in they sort of openly admit it. Every place the Russian hit were FP1 drone production facilities related to the attack on this school uh command and control facilities etc. That's what that attack was. Um that's all it was. Everybody thought that that was going to be the big attack that does it. No. Then the Russians came out and said because you know again Putin doesn't do anything in you know knee-jerk standard response and then he sits there and he waits he deliberates and they come out and they say that's it we're done no more negotiations negotiations are finished. So anybody call us and everybody else in Europe going well we're going to try and figure out who's going to represent us in the negotiations with the Russians. There is no more negotiations. This will be unconditional surrender. That's it. Ukraine will accept Russia's terms as dictated by Russia without modifications or Ukraine will die. That's where we're at now. They sent out in accordance with international law, they have to give adequate warning of any attack that may, you know, cause casualties among a civilian population. And so that's what Russia did. Um they did it in writing. They've done it with phone calls. And everybody sitting there go, "Well, why didn't they have attacked yet?" Well, because the Russians are smarter than you and me. I myself said I thought that Kiev would be erased. They're not going to erase Kiev. Why? Because the Russians are smarter than you and me. Um a member of the state Duma part of the defense committee gave an interesting interview yesterday where he said because I'm like take out the Rada, take out the parliament, make it a visually pleasing thing. I said yeah the parliament's empty and you want me to put an archnik on the parliament? The archic costs $50 million. You want to put a $50 million weapon on an empty building that doesn't accomplish anything. No. When you use the arnik, people have to die. Important people have to die. You have to collapse structures that are underground. That's what the arric does. So when they fire the archnic, it's at a target that is designed to be collapsed and kill the people inside. That means you have to collect the intelligence where that target is. So they're not going to strike until they get the intelligence. The other thing they said is that this is going to take place over time. So it doesn't have to happen all at once. Fact is, if you go back in the intelligence business, um sort of what I used to do in the uh when I was a weapons inspector, you call it shake the tree. But basically, you go in, you do something to provoke. And then the in this case, I move in on a special Republican guard facility adjacent to a presidential palace because I believe the special Republican guard is hiding weapons of mass destruction documents. I can't prove it though. So, I go in there and I jolt them. Then I see what happens. Do cars go out the back? Where do the cars go? We This worked like a champ. One place we hit and sure enough, the cars went out. We tracked it to a place downtown Baghdad. Had the YouTube image take a picture of it. I went there and it was an evacuation point for documents related to the work that the Iraqis didn't want us to know about. Shake the tree, make them act, go, and you pounce on them. But this case, it's not going to be inspections that pounce. It's going to be archnik. It's going to be, you know, Iscander. It's going to be precision munitions. They're going to hit the important things, decision-m centers, um, and, you know, command and control and defense industry production because the the the Ukrainians are not going to put it all in the factory. The factories are going to disappear. They're going to break it up and hide it around the country as they are want to do, and Russians will detect it and kill it. This is a long-term strategy of absolutely degrading Ukraine's ability to stay in this fight. And that's what we're going to see going forward. I don't think we're going to see the massive strike that everybody's expecting. I was expecting it, but I don't think we're going to see that because I've been listening. You know, that's the sign of a good analyst, by the way. You you shut up sometimes. We're on a talk show, so I'm talking, but when we're done, I shut up and I listen. I listen to what the Russians say. I read what the Russians write, and I absorb it. And uh in absorbing what the Russians have been saying, I don't think there's going to be a massive decapitation strike. I think there's going to be a program of precision strikes over time that destroy uh Ukraine's ability to continue this fight and that there's nothing there's nothing the West can do about it. The other thing is the Russians are prepared to strike Europe and the decision has already been made. Latafia is on notice if they allow next week there's the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum and that's where I'm headed uh to speak. But the day after I speak, Vladimir Putin speaks. The Ukrainians want to put drones into the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. Um they're not going to. Um if they fly through the Baltic corridor, then the Baltic nations will be destroyed, eliminated. Um that's just a statement of fact. And if Europe wants to do anything about it, then Russia will hit them as well. This is where Russia's at right now. They're just tired of playing games. They're tired of, you know, dealing with stupid people. And they're just at the point right now where if you continue to attack Russia um in a way that threatens it existentially, Russia will respond accordingly. Ukraine, unfortunately, is going to find out this lesson. It's the end of Ukraine. Ukraine will cease to exist in the in the state that it is. There will be unconditional surrender. Russia will control the government. The United States no longer has a vote. You remember how Donald Trump was talking about how we're going to have, you know, security guarantees? We're gonna have, you know, we're going to control this and that and the other thing. US doesn't have a vote. We're done. We actually backed out. We're finished. And they will never be invited back in. That's the reality. Europe's never been invited in, although they think they want to be invited in. Nobody will be invited in. This is between Russia and Ukraine.

>> Well, if you could react to this, Scott, this I'm seeing a parallel here. Uh we had the Trump administration since uh really since February 28th since the beginning of the strikes on Iran claim that everything was destroyed. And he said this for weeks and weeks and weeks. Iran's military capabilities everything missiles, drones, air force, navy, all of it gone. And uh when you were talking about the way that Russia is being uh portrayed now across a wide uh range of the political spectrum in in the west and in the United States, it's uh Russia is on the back foot. Russia, they even

tried to claim that the retaliation is a way to try to convince uh uh people everywhere that Russia is not weak. But last time I checked, these wars, the United States, uh, NATO, they instigated these wars and yet they're the ones who have not won them at all. Like they haven't won these wars. So, it's an interesting thing when the United States, NATO, Europe, uh I guess the collective West as it is, uh claim that others are weak that they're targeting and yet they are the ones that are stuck and unable to dictate any outcomes in it. I find that very curious. What's your reaction to it?

>> Well, let's just again let's look at the statement of fact. remember that? You don't have to put that chart up, but the chart that you had there before and they talked about a framework agreement. That's a framework agreement between the Trump administration and American uh defense contractors, Locky Martin, Rathon, and others that they're going to ramp up production. Um there's no money been attached to that. So therefore, it's purely theoretical. Nothing's happening. Um that's where that's the state of US defense industry. Totally incapable of meeting the demands of modern war. As we saw, a 37day campaign against Iran has literally drained the arsenal of the West. Uh, an ongoing conflict with Ukraine has done the same with Europe and what's ever left of the United States uh arsenal. U zero Russia, on the other hand, has been building up its defense industry. It's just chugging along like you wouldn't believe. Um, and Russia is not just building things and using things. That's how we operate in the West, by the way. That's one of the reasons why we don't have massive stockpiles because you can't convince Congress of the need to overproduce and have 5,000 weapons sitting in a warehouse that may never get used. And if they never get used and they get outdated and and and that means we just spend a lot of money on weapons because our weapons are very expensive. So, we can't overproduce them. We have to produce just the number we need to meet certain benchmarks of training and operational uh storage. But our operations are always based on short wars because we're going to intimidate the enemy into surrendering. uh we don't have any plan for long wars because we can't produce enough weapons to support a long war. Look at this 37-day war. We couldn't do it. Russia on the other hand operates only on the concept of long wars. Um so their defense industry is not just producing weapons for this war. But remember their military went from 900,000 then was expanded to 1.2 million and now is currently expanded I think to over two million. Uh that's a lot of people. Um where are they getting their weapons from? Russian defense industry. And it's not just guns and uniforms and ammunition. It's the weapons of war, tanks. I love when I hear stupid people like Jeff Fischer, some retired colonel idiot, uh, who who's like, "The Russians don't have anything. The Russians have everything, Jeff. Everything you don't have, everything the West doesn't have." Uh, they've been producing tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery pieces on a regular basis. And they don't go to the front lines exclusively. They go out to equip the new units that have been created like the 70,000 strong new army corps in the St. Petersburg military district that has armor, artillery, everything. And you don't just build armor, artillery, you have the ammunition that they need to fight a sustained war. So they build up the ammunition stocks as well. This is what Russia is doing. Russia will never run out of ammunition. Look at Archnik. Um, you know, Russia's fired three of them. Uh, the first two were experimental models. I don't know what this one was. Probably a a serial production one. Um, they went into serial production in August. Let's just call August a wash, meaning we plan on going to serial production, but we haven't quite produced it yet. Uh, so September, September, October, November, December, January, February, March, April, May. Nine months. Minimum production five five irrationalics. 9* 5 45 45 minus one 44 they have 44 archnik that's minimum production maximum production based upon what I experienced when I worked at Vodkinsk um they could probably produce you know I mean they were running out the uh you know annual prod for the SS20s 80 80 a year or so um but let's just call it you know let's let's break it down, let's call it half that. The bottom line is there or 60 or so. The the Russians probably have somewhere, you know, around, you know, 50, 60, 70 arr. That's a lot. Um, they're not all going to be used against Ukraine. There's arnics that are set aside for first of all, Barus, which has its own regiment, nine launchers. um each launcher probably a complement of two. That's 18 missiles um that can be armed and fired against Europe. There's other regiments out there. Uh Germany's got its own arnik attached to it. You know, England does, France. You know, the arric covers a whole bunch of stuff. They have long range, you know, Iscanders thanks to the fact that we got out of the INF treaty. The Iscander K now probably operates in a range of over 2,000 kilometers. Um that can hit Europe as well, also hit Ukraine. But they've been producing these. producing some pretentious number. When the war first started, the Russians, the escander was a army level battlefield support weapon. So in order to fire an escander, it had to go up the chain and an army level commander had to say, "We're going to hit that target." You understand that? That is not a responsive targeting. That is a strategic targeting, command and command post, airfields in in support of a larger operation. Today, Esconders on a daily basis are literally on launch ready mode with a forward observer with a drone and he can sit out there boom and he gets a target that is deemed worth hitting troops training something. He can direct the esconder to be fired instantly and it will hit the target. Why can they do that? Because they've produced so many escanders they can now bring it down to be literally a battlefield support weapon. The Russians have nothing but ammunition. Um, and they're, you know, the British just 500,000 Russian dead. No, no, probably 300,000. That's probably an accurate number. But the R, but the British can't tell the truth because they're involved in this psychological operation. Now, 300,000 is a lot. You know, that's sort of matches the numbers that we lost the United States in both theaters in World War II. So, anybody pretending this isn't a bloody war is wrong. But the Ukrainian numbers are about 2.2 million right now dead. When you add wounded, over five million. And the and and the data seems to support this. Uh even you know Scott Blabber um not Scott Blabber P. Blabber former Delta Force guy in the no has come out and talked about millions of Ukrainian dead um because that's the truth. We can try to disguise any way we want to. The Russians aren't losing 30,000 men a month. It's not even close to that. The Ukrainians are losing one, two, three, 4,000 guys a day. Uh and they can't recruit enough. There's a deficit there. You know, this is the reality. You know, the Russians are doing everything right. They're not doing it the way some in the West would like it to do. There's a lot of people say want it to end, want it to do this, want it to do that. Russians are doing it their way. I mean, Frank Sinatra literally sang a song about them. They've done it their way. Um, and this is this is the reality. The Russians are winning this war. And now the Russians are going to win the mental war aspect, too, because they're going to flip the script on the British and it's going to be the collapse. when when the Russians begin this campaign of taking down Ukrainian um you know decision-making centers, they're going to make it lethal to be somebody working with the Ukrainians. Right now underground there's a whole bunch of NATO guys, a whole bunch of American guys in there working with the Ukrainians. Uh it's going to become lethal to do this. They're not going to hit the embassy and kill American diplomats. But if Americans have any of their technicians underground in a center, they're going to die. Um, and when that happens, the rats will leave the sinking ship and the Ukrainians will be on their own and it eventually lead to the total collapse of Ukraine, which could happen as soon as this summer. June is going to be a critical month. I mean, that's why I'm sort of I'm excited. I didn't know about this when I decided I'm going to Russia in June, but I'm going to be in Russia in a one of the most important months of this entire This is the month of decision. I think the outcome is obvious, but still it's going to be contested. Uh Zalinsky has announced that June's the month where he's going to launch the long awaited drone offensive that was supposed to break the will of the Russian people. Uh 16 to 20,000 drones are being provided by the British. Zullinski is talking about launching up to 6,000 drones a day against Russian targets. Uh the Russians will counter. It's going to get ugly fast. Um it's all going to happen in June. Um I don't know if you know they say St. Petersburg at night um during you know you're supposed to go out at night. They raise the bridges. as you look at the ships go through the stars. It's beautiful. I think we might get a different light show alto together. Um because this is the reality of war. But u it's going to be a major month and I think it's going to be the month that um Ukraine stops functioning as a modern nation state and starts to function as a nation in absolute collapse, absolute decline.

>> Yeah, Scott, I know you have an appointment soon. I was going to ask your final thoughts on Cuba, but maybe if you because the US is preparing for war supposedly there, but uh maybe a quick comment on that and also if if you have any last words before uh we end here.

>> Sure. Well, on Cuba, it's just simple. It looks like we're trying to apply the Venezuela game book on this. The same thing, indict Maduro, justify moving removing them. We indict Ral Castro, justify removing them. The thing about Venezuela though is that Venezuela once was totally owned by the United States. Uh Chevron was in there. We owned all the families, the big families. You had the Hugo Chavez come in, have his uh revolution, and Maduro took over. Uh but at the end of the day, unfortunately for the Venezuelan people, the CIA was able to come in, reestablish contact with people, and buy them out. And that's what happened. We bought out Venezuela. Okay. Now, we want to put that same model in play at Cuba? Well, Cuba, you know, the la the revolution was in the 1950s. Um, the the mafia that was there is no longer there. Those families have long left, like, oh gosh, Marco Rubio's family. Um, you know, so the people that are in Cuba today are revolutionaries, people of the revolution. All they've known is revolution, and they will defend the revolution. Uh, you can't buy them out. You're not going to buy them out. Uh, are they strong? Well, no. They don't have a lot of weapons. They've been under sanctions and all that. But the notion that Cuba is going to collapse is a fundamentally flawed notion. And I certainly hope we don't test that thesis because it'll go very bad for us. We don't have the troops to take on Cuba. We can't occupy Cuba. And if we try to occupy Cuba, we'll get involved in a very, very bad fight with the Cuban people. It be tragic for the Cuban people, but it also be tragic for the United States. So that's my feeling on Cuba that we think we can accomplish something that we're not going to be able to accomplish. If we try to accomplish, it'll be yet another failure for the United States. Now, moving on, just to conclude, as I said, I'm uh I'm heading to Russia next week. Uh I call it the revenge tour because, you know, the last time I tried to go to the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, the United States government stopped me at the airplane, took my passport, and said, "You can travel." What we now know, uh because of certain criminal cases ongoing in Russia, is that the Ukrainians asked the US government to pull my passport because Ukrainians didn't want me to speak at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum because Ukrainians were afraid of what I was saying that I was deemed to be and we know this is the case. The Center for Countering Disinformation called me the number one enemy of Ukraine at the time. I'm still up there. Um the Mir torrent list had me marked for death and they still have me marked for death. They send a letter bomb to my house. Yay postal service for doing jack Um but you know so it's real. This is this is this is real and all that. They tried to stop me. Um, they're the ones who send submitted a false affidavit through the FBI office in Kiev uh that triggered an FBI raid on my house claiming that I was a Russian agent. Um, it's a classified affidavit. I'm still not allowed to have access to it, but again, through other sources from Russia. We know that it was the Ukrainians that did this. Um, and the Ukrainians probably don't want me to travel this year, but I don't think the Trump administration is receptive to Ukrainian input as the Biden administration was. But the bottom line is I'm going and uh it's going to be a big deal. I'm um I'm really looking forward to it. Then after that, I'm spending the better part of a month um doing things. I can't say what I'm doing. Um but I can say it's going to be perhaps the biggest thing I've ever done in Russia. Um and I go to Russia as an independent journalist. I pay for everything myself. I don't I'm not subsidized by anybody but you. U and what I'm saying this is I've got a big program in place. It's about 85% funded, meaning I'm going and I'm going to get a lot done. But, you know, there you can go and get a little bit done, a certain level of funding. You can go and get most of it done. Then you can go and get everything done. Right now, I'm at the most of it done. I would just make an appeal if people go to skyroder.com to the donation page there. Um, if you can do some donations and help me get over there so I can get everything done that just today an opportunity came up. Again, I can't talk about, but it's a unique opportunity. It's never been done before by anybody. And um I just need help to be able to do it because I have to pay for everything. I have to pay for driver security. I have to pay for interpreters. I have to pay for uh all the video production. All that kind of stuff. So to do things as this new opportunity comes up, it has to be funded. And so that I'm just making an appeal right now because this is going to be a cool trip. It's going to be a dangerous trip, but it's going to be a cool trip. And um the information that I gather is sent back to you, the public. I do it. I publish articles. I do videos. It gets back to you. It's designed to empower you with knowledge and information. So, view me as your tool and um and help me get the job done and I'd appreciate it.

>> skyroder.com is in the video description where you can do that. Well, without further ado, everyone, uh we're going to end the program here. Hit the like button so more people hear this. Uh go to scottr.com. You can support uh his upcoming project. And uh be sure to support this channel as well in the video description below. I'll be back. Uh, actually I'm going away for the weekend as well, but original clips are coming to you during that period. So, I will uh definitely be posting those. Without further ado, I'll see you all again soon. Uh, thanks so much, Scott. Take care, everyone. Bye-bye.