Scott Ritter on the US resumption of hostilities with Iran and the push to reopen the Strait of Hormuz
Glenn Diesen interviews Scott Ritter on the day the US announced it would forcibly reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Summary
Glenn Diesen speaks with Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector and former US Marine Corps intelligence officer, on May 4th, 2026, as the United States announces it will reopen the Strait of Hormuz by force. Ritter argues that the US has achieved none of its three stated objectives — regime change, elimination of Iran's ballistic missile capability, and termination of Iran's nuclear program — and that the resumption of hostilities represents an act of desperation rather than strength. He contends that US Iran policy is being written not by the CIA or DIA but by the Foundation for Defense of Democracy, which he describes as an adjunct of the Israeli foreign ministry, and that Scott Bessent has been implementing an economic strategy against Iran derived entirely from FDD analysis that Ritter says is factually wrong. Ritter also argues that President Trump's behavior reflects a clinically diagnosable narcissistic personality disorder that makes standard geopolitical analysis impossible, and that the only path to de-escalation is for Iran to inflict sufficient damage on the United Arab Emirates to force a US withdrawal.
Ritter draws a direct parallel to his own experience after the Gulf War, recounting a meeting with General Amer al-Saadi, who showed him an Iraqi battle damage assessment concluding that the US strategic air campaign in Desert Storm accomplished nothing — with Iraqi industry largely surviving by evacuating equipment. Ritter states he has high confidence the Iranians can produce a similar result from the current US bombing campaign. He also cites specific evidence that US claims of having destroyed the Iranian air force are false, noting that a 50-year-old F-5 Freedom Fighter penetrated US air defenses and bombed Kuwait, and that Iranian SU-30s, MiG-29s, F-4s, and F-14s remain operational and airborne over Iran.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Opening Situation Report: US Forces Move on the Strait of Hormuz
Glenn Diesen: Welcome back. Today is Monday, May 4th, 2026, and we are joined by Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector and former US Marine Corps intelligence officer. Thank you for coming back on. It's been a crazy day. We see that the US announced it would open up the Strait of Hormuz — it would be done today by force — in something of a surprise announcement. We received some reports then of American warships being hit. They appear to have been mistaken, but at least now it seems that the US is attacking Iran in gunboats and Iran is launching a lot of drones and missiles. Beyond this, it's still unclear what's happening. Are we heading towards returning at least to all-out war? How are you reading the situation?
Scott Ritter: Well, clearly the United States is not opening the Strait of Hormuz. I've read the various press releases — two American warships are operating in the Arabian Gulf, and two US-flagged container ships have transited. I don't know if this is true. The United States has a proclivity for lying or shading the truth. What we do know is that ships that have tried to transit have been struck by the Iranians. We know that the Iranians are likewise striking targets in the United Arab Emirates. And the United States has claimed to have sunk at least six small Iranian boats. It's war. I don't know how else to describe this — a skirmish, an opening battle. But clearly the ceasefire is over. Whether it escalates beyond this, we will wait and see.
Bahrain has declared a state of emergency. I think Kuwait is on the cusp of declaring a state of emergency. I think the Gulf Arab states understand that the consequences of America's precipitous action could be fatal to them — not harmful, fatal. Iran has warned the United States using indirect communication methodologies, actually going to Moscow and Vladimir Putin making a one-and-a-half-hour phone call to Donald Trump in which, according to the readout from Ushakov, it was made clear that the consequences of continued American military action against Iran would be devastating for the United States, for the region, for everybody.
Right now I do think this is a containable event, but it's going to require the United States to back down. And if the United States backs down at this juncture, then the United Arab Emirates — which has undertaken extreme strategic repositioning in the past week — well, it's now come out that Israel sent air defense missiles to the United Arab Emirates, including Israeli troops operating on Arab soil. Mindboggling. Which means that the United Arab Emirates has made a strategic decision to step away from the Gulf Arab community and permanently link itself to the Abraham Accords and the Greater Israeli project. This is a heck of a gamble they're making, because it's one they can't recover from. Either they win — the United States defeats Iran — because this Israeli-UAE dream of partnership can only succeed if Iran is strategically defeated. So the United Arab Emirates is now in an existential struggle. They can't accept half measures. A lot of decisions have been made for which there is no going back. And now the question is: will the United States make a similar decision? Hopefully the answer is no. Hopefully we find a way to de-escalate. But I don't think that's in Donald Trump's DNA at this point in time.
US Objectives and the Role of the Foundation for Defense of Democracy
Glenn Diesen: Well, it begs the question of what the objectives are, because again, I agree it can still be contained if they walk this one back, and the US can even use it for PR, trying to present it as Iran being the aggressive party. But what do you think are the objectives here for the United States? I can see that they might want to try to push through and probe — see if Iran would allow ships to go through if they're being threatened. But it should be obvious — and you would know as well as an intelligence officer — that the people who are there in the US, these are smart people, they would know that the Iranians would not permit this. Indeed, if they let some ships go through, it might even embolden the Europeans to join in with the Americans. Why do you think the US went forward with this? What are the objectives?
Scott Ritter: Well, you say that Trump has surrounded himself with smart people. I say the opposite. Trump has surrounded himself with some of the stupidest people on the planet. There might be smart people on the periphery, but their voices are being drowned out by the stupidity being whispered in his ears.
Just take a look at the intellectual foundation of American policy on Iran and the Persian Gulf region today. It is being run by the Foundation for Defense of Democracy, which is literally an adjunct of the Israeli foreign ministry. In fact, when it was originally founded, it used a Hebrew name because it was an Israeli organization. But these are the people who are writing the policy that advises Scott Bessent. The CIA is not writing policy. The DIA is not writing policy. This Israeli think tank is writing policy, which means this is an operation being run by Israel. And we get back to what we talked about originally — the United Arab Emirates, the Abraham Accords, and the Greater Israeli project. That's what this is all about.
Scott Bessent has been implementing economic strategies against Iran which are 100% derived from FDD papers and prognosis. He's 100% wrong, by the way. Everything he says about Iran is factually incorrect. There is no pressure on the Iranians. Their oil wells aren't in danger of collapsing because of bad maintenance. They haven't run out of storage. The idea that they're not making money — go to the Pakistani border, Mr. Bessant, and take a look at what's going on right now. The flood of vehicles going back and forth in expanded black market and gray market operations, where Iran is exporting a tremendous amount of oil to Pakistan and earning hard currency in the process.
So the stupidity of Scott Bessent is only matched by the stupidity of Pete Hegseth — this testosterone-fueled individual who is running around pretending that the United States military has somehow won this war against Iran. And I want to remind people there were three objectives stated by the United States going into this. Regime change was one of them. Termination of Iran's ballistic missile capabilities was a second one. And the elimination of Iran's nuclear program was the third. None of these objectives have been met. What we see is that the regime is stronger today than ever before. The missiles are there, firing right now, sinking ships, damaging ships, destroying infrastructure. And the nuclear program isn't on the table — Iran won't put it on the table. So the United States has achieved nothing but embarrassment and humiliation.
Even American reporters who've been cheerleaders for this war have to acknowledge that Iran has destroyed almost the totality of American military infrastructure in the region. So for Hegseth now to tell the president, "We've got this, boss" — he doesn't have anything. This is a humiliation. Where is the admiral who commands CENTCOM? On an Apache helicopter apparently, doing some sort of photo op, flying through the Strait of Hormuz. I dare you to fly through the Strait of Hormuz, Admiral. You'll be shot down. This is stupidity taking place right now. We have people who have literally invented their own fantasy world and filled it with their rhetoric, and now they're running into the harsh truth that nothing they say is true and nothing they do gets accomplished.
Iran has said that if the United States resumes military operations against Iran, they will destroy the totality of the oil production infrastructure of Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. That means the physical elimination of these modern nation states as viable entities. That's what's at risk here. The Russians tried to warn Trump — actually went to Moscow, spoke to Putin, Putin made the phone call. But smart people aren't anywhere near this president. There are no smart people around this president. If there were, this wouldn't be happening.
Iran's Strategy and the Path to De-escalation
Glenn Diesen: Yeah, that's fair. But let's say if they're not working to contain this conflict — that is, to walk back all the things that have happened today — what do you expect the return to war to look like? Will they essentially pick up where they left off, or do you think this will be a gradual climb up the escalation ladder, or do you think it will go much further up and intensify the attacks much more than last time?
Scott Ritter: It depends again on how much of a wake-up call, how much awareness the president has. Some people might accuse this of being trivial. I know there are MAGA supporters out there who'll say this is Trump Derangement Syndrome. But we have to stop viewing this problem from the standpoint of traditional geopolitics, because you'll never get it right. This is about a mentally ill president. When I say mentally ill, it is a mental illness. Narcissistic personality disorder is literally a mental illness. And this man has an extreme, malignant version of it. He is literally psychotic.
You saw the posts — eleven posts in a period of a handful of hours. Stuff that, if any military person did this, they would be relieved of command and their clearances would be revoked. If you were a flight attendant with a major airline and you went on a social media spree of this nature, you would be yanked. A pilot would be yanked. You're not allowed to do this because it's a sickness. It's a sickness that's humiliating for whom you represent, and it represents a total lack of mental stability.
Now you understand why it's almost impossible to answer your question, because we're dealing with a literal insane person who has surrounded himself with people whose job is to sustain the insanity. They're not there to correct the president or do anything constructive. They're there to stroke the president's ego, which is the worst thing you can do for a narcissist — but that's what's happening. We have a cult of personality in Washington DC.
So how do you end this? I think the Iranians, hopefully, are on the right track. You end this by punching him straight in the face. Straight up — punch, break his nose, make it hurt, make the blood flow. And what I mean by that is: hit the United Arab Emirates hard. I don't know how hard they're going to hit them, but if you saw, they skipped an echelon. The Iranians didn't go tit-for-tat on escalation. The United States hit some ships, and boom — the UAE. If they keep hitting the United Arab Emirates with near-fatal intensity, it sends a signal to the rest of the Gulf Arab states that Iran will follow through on its promises.
At that juncture, somebody has to tell the president — certainly somebody can tell the president — that if oil gets to $200 a barrel, the American economy is going to just shred itself. The global economy is finished. And he is finished as a president. Somebody needs to go back and tell him Bill Clinton's warning to himself during his first run for president: it's the economy, stupid. That is as relevant today as it was back then.
If you want to lose an election, keep doing what you're doing, Mr. President, because not a single American understands the Middle East well enough to contradict you on your lies. What they do know is that whatever you're doing in the Middle East has resulted in higher gas prices at the pump. Diesel is going to become unavailable. Airlines are going to shut down. We are getting into the summer season when Americans think they're getting on airplanes. They're not going to be getting on airplanes because no airplanes are going to be taking off because there will be no aviation fuel. Europe is already through this crisis — Luton has had 20,000 canceled flights. Other airlines in Europe have stopped training staff. You don't stop training staff. You never stop training staff unless it's over. And that's where we're at right now.
So I pray that the Iranians terminate the existence of the United Arab Emirates right now, or at least move in that direction, to send the signal to Trump that it's over. You lost. You can't win. Withdraw. We're past the point of trying to create a face-saving mechanism for the United States. Now we're in a life-saving mechanism, and somebody has to tell Trump: don't kill the nation as you kill your political future. Because his political future is shot. It's finished. He has committed political suicide. He can't recover from this. There is no recovery from this.
And if he keeps doing this, understand there are ramifications. How do you think the Chinese summit is going to go? It may get cancelled because of the stupidity of this president — this narcissistic individual who's calling the shots. I wish I could be more optimistic, but I can't. If you have an international relations degree, it will do you no good, because we're dealing with trying to predict the actions of an insane individual, and you can't do that.
Desperation, the Failed Blockade, and the Collapse of the Iran Narrative
Glenn Diesen: Yeah, I was a bit surprised that the US decided to go back into this war, because it looked as if there was some desperation, which is why they exited this war to begin with — or at least pushed for this ceasefire. Do you see time as now being decisively on Iran's side? And if so, is this possibly the reason why the US went back in — that the blockade is too costly in terms of resources and can't be sustained? I'm wondering whether this is desperation, or should we expect to see something else from the US.
Scott Ritter: Well, I think it's pure desperation. First of all, I should mention — I've been running around busy. My daughter had a baby, and so the last ten days have been this insanity of watching this wonderful little girl survive some very serious heart surgery. So I forget what the calendar is. Today is Monday, right?
So what was it last week — everything on social media, everybody was talking about the genius of the American blockade. It was genius, of course, because only Donald Trump can produce absolute genius. A blockade of 16 ships which can never work — everybody knows that. But no, it's Donald Trump, it's a brilliant blockade, it's causing the collapse of Iran because Kharg Island was full, 98% full, and they keep putting oil in and they have nowhere to put it, and when they run out of places to put the oil their wells are going to have to shut down, and they can't shut them down properly, the water will seep in, that'll be the end of the Iranian economy. So the Iranians have to quit. Donald Trump is a genius. You heard that. You saw it. You read it. None of it was true. Not a single word of it was true. It was FDD-Israeli-produced propaganda sold to Scott Bessent, who sold it to the president.
I think the intelligence reports came in and said, "Mr. President, the Iranians are thriving. They're actually selling a lot of oil. They're making a lot of money. They're not running out of storage at all. And meanwhile, the global economy is about ready to go into a tailspin. You can't outlast the Iranians because we will collapse before they collapse." That was one thing.
And then the other thing is the president's looking at his polls here at home. He's just dying politically. The worst-performing president in history. When you combine that, it was an act of desperation. Rather than doing what was right for the world, what was right for the nation, and saying, "Yeah, we're going to pull back and we'll get a deal" — the Russians were offering a way out, he could have done a grand bargain, gotten peace in Ukraine and all this stuff — but no, he needed to have a win because he's a narcissist. And so this was the gamble.
And again, he was told by people that the Iranians have nothing. When this president keeps talking about 159 ships at the bottom of the sea, it means he's focused on the wrong thing. And when he lies about the state of the Iranian air force — because we know that a 50-year-old fighter penetrated the vaunted American air defense and bombed Kuwait, an F-5 Freedom Fighter — how did that happen if you destroyed the Iranian air force? We know that SU-30s and MiG-29s and F-4s and F-14s are in the air over Iran today. They weren't destroyed. And we know Iran has all of their missile capability intact. It wasn't destroyed. We didn't accomplish anything.
I remember at the end of the Gulf War, way back in the day, I met with General Amer al-Saadi. He used to be the head of the military-industrial commission and then he became the oil minister. He had commissioned a battle damage assessment from the Iraqi perspective, and he showed me the book, showed me the work. And what it proved is that the United States accomplished nothing in the strategic air campaign in Desert Storm. Nothing. We blew up empty buildings. The Iraqi industry largely survived intact by evacuating equipment. I'm here to tell you right now that I have a high degree of confidence that the Iranians can produce a similar result. We accomplished nothing — literally nothing in 40 days of bombing. Nothing. That's the reality.
And Donald Trump can't admit it. He has people who won't tell him the truth. He has people who are lying to him and lying to themselves. And that's the problem. The United States has become agreement-incapable because we have no integrity, we have no honor, we have nothing. There's no ability to tell the truth. We lie to ourselves as much as we lie to others, and this is throughout the system. So how do you even begin to deal with the United States? Because we don't know what reality is. We don't live in a world where facts are a thing. We live in a world where it's all about perception management, about lies. It's insane. Literally, this country has gone insane. Our media has lost the ability to tell the truth about anything. And even when they try to tell the truth, it's always done in a minor manner. Nobody wants to call it out as it is.
This president is mentally ill. I don't have the ability to medically make this diagnosis, and legally you're not allowed to make a diagnosis unless the person sits down in front of you. But 2 plus 2 equals 4. This president is insane. And it makes it impossible for standard political, military, geopolitical analysts like yourself and myself to do standard connect-the-dots analysis, because there are no dots. Whatever dots we think we see, he doesn't see. He has populated his world with different dots — lies, fabrications. He's operating in a completely different dimension. So how do we predict what he's going to do, and how, and why? We don't know. We don't see his map. We don't see the dots he's trying to connect.
Glenn Diesen: Yeah. The lying is extraordinary. I mean, the whole point that Iran was defeated and they asked for the ceasefire — then it would make sense if it was the US that accepted the ten-point plan from Iran. Same as if the blockade was working as brilliantly as the media repeats that Washington says — then why would the US return to a high-risk war? Nothing really makes sense. But yes, here we are. Anyway, I know you're short for time today, so thank you very much for coming on, and I hope to speak to you soon.
Scott Ritter: Okay, Glenn, thanks a lot. Have a good day.