Scott Ritter answers the question: Can the U.S. Open the Strait of Hormuz?

"Yes, but Iran has ballastic missiles" - Scott Ritter

Yeah, I saw Trump put up a tweet, something along the lines that we hit 5,500 targets, uh, which is much of a strategy just to blow things up. Uh, it's, uh, yeah, it, it, as you said, it begins to look childish.

One would want to see what the objective is and how these targets, uh, you know, achieve that objective. Um, but you mentioned the, the inability to open, uh, Hormuz. Um, the Trump has argued this is a, a, no, an objective: to open the Strait of Hormuz.

I guess it's necessary to get the energy, uh, flowing again. And also he argued if, uh, the Iranians dare to close it, keep it closed at least, uh, he will hit them 20 times as hard.

And Macron has also now suggested that the French will also, you know, uh, he said, have a defensive mission in the Strait of Hormuz to open it up. Uh, to what extent is, is such a military option actually possible, though?

Ooh la la, the French getting involved, isn't that? That's a game changer. I mean, my God, Macron, uh, the military genius that he is. Uh, and I can't imagine, you know, the, I mean, the French, that, that changes everything. I think Iran's going to surrender tomorrow. Um, it's stupidity.

Um, look, there's a way to get the Strait of Hormuz open: brute force. Um, you come in and you seize a Karg Island, you seize, um, all, all, all islands, you, uh, Qashqim Island, uh, and you project power ashore.

You, uh, seize the, uh, the shoreline on, uh, on the Iranian side of the, uh, Strait of Hormuz. You go in with, um, you know, 80,000 Marines and you, um, and you, and you seize them, you hold that territory and you can extend an air, air, air bridge over it and the Iranians couldn't touch it. Um, you can do that.

Uh, it'll cost you, it'll be very heavy, and we don't have the resources availableright now. Um, you know, so that, that's a, that's a time, you know, time-intensive, uh, thing. And still, once you get there, uh, you'll be vulnerable to Iranian ballistic missiles.

You may not get, you know, Iranians able to push you with, uh, troops because with your air supremacy, you'll be able to hold back any concerted ground effort. And you should be able to push back against most, um, you know, local threats. But, uh, we don't have a solution to, to, um, to ballistic missiles and we don't have a solution to, um, drones.

And so we would just now be parking ourselves in on Iranian territory trying to, you know, force ships through. Uh, the Iranians will still on occasion target a ship, um, and they'll just start pounding, um, you know, our forces. Logistics becomes a problem. You put 80,000 guys ashore in Iran, you got to support them, you got to sustain them.

And you port facilities, those port facilities will be under, um, you know, under duress. Um, you know, so and, and, and again, we just don't have the Marines to do that. Um, you know, we would have to redirect a lot of Marine manpower and bring in amphibious shipping that, uh, would be vulnerable.

Um, and it would take months to do this. And meanwhile, the, the international economy is going to collapse well before that. So this is just fanciful thinking on the part of the United States and on the part of, um, of France, that they, they have a vote. Um, the U.S. has always bragged that they could open up the Strait of Hormuz anytime they wanted to.

And the Iranians have always said that that's a pipe dream. And so far it appears that it's a pipe dream that Iran can shut this thing down. There's not a damn thing the United States can do to, uh, open it up.

And the inclusion of France into the war mix, um, I think only weakens the, uh, the case for, for military, because France has zero military capacity that's, that's, uh, that's meaningful. And French involvement with the United States would just complicate planning.

Um, so again, game set match, Iran. They've, um, they've planned this thing out better than, uh, than we have. The fact that we're sitting here talking about this at day 12 means we didn't consider it on day one, which means we're making it up as we go along. We're, we're reactivating. The Iranians are on their war plan.

They are staying to their war plan. Um, they've thought this thing through. John Boyd, a famous colonel, you know, talks about getting inside the enemy's decision-making cycle. He talks about the OODA loop. I'm sure you're familiar with the OODA loop: observe, orient, decide, act. Well, the Iranians are inside the American decision-making cycle.

We've changed our war plan five, six times. Um, they, on the other hand, haven't changed theirs at all. They're sticking to it. Uh, we are reacting to them. Uh, they are driving. They are in the driver's seat. They're the ones, you know, initiating the action. We're reacting. When you're reacting, you're losing. You need to be in charge.

You need to be the one precipitating action, getting the enemy to react. The Iranians are in charge. We are reacting to them. We are going to lose. If we're talking about putting ground troops, uh, into the theater to open up the Strait of Hormuz, it means we, we hadn't considered that as an option early on, which means we've done zero logistical planning, uh, for this.

So no, it's, it's just not going to happen anytime soon. So what are the war plans going from here? What, what, what are the cards that the U.S. can play? Because it looked as if in absence of its own ground troops, it could get Kurds armed them.

There were some reports the CIA had already done this, but now, uh, reports come from the Kurds suggesting that they, they're not going to do this. Uh, Azerbaijan looked like it was going to be pulled in, uh, but instead of retaliating against what was allegedly an Iranian drone, they're now sending humanitarian aid instead.

And, uh, you know, Lindsey Graham, he threatened, uh, uh, Saudi Arabia with consequences unless they would, uh, you know, join in on the fight because they don't want to fight Iran directly either. I guess a lot of their infrastructure is quite vulnerable.

So what, what, what does this, I guess, what, what, yeah, what cards are there to play? As you know, how short is the U.S. on ammunition here? Well, I mean, we have plenty of, um, of, um, you know, dumb bombs.

Uh, we have some, uh, kits that can be, you know, attached to them. So, you know, we could drive, you know, drop, uh, laser guide, laser-guided munitions. But, you know, we've been supplying Israel. What, how do you think Israel leveled Gaza? Um, so there's a finite level of these, you know, number of these, of these sets.

Uh, we're running out of standoff precision missiles, which means future strikes would require aircraft to actually penetrate the Iranian airspace. Iran has, uh, held back on its air defense.

Um, they've, they've retained a significant portion of it. And if we start penetrating the air defense, I think you're going to start seeing air, um, air defense ambushes. And, uh, we'll start losing aircraft, which is going to be problematic because then we have to rescue pilots, which they put in combat search and rescue team. They could go down. We get a Blackhawk down, Persian style.

Um, it's just a bad, it's a bad, it's a bad look all around. Um, we, we, we are running out of precision standoff weapons. They're very expensive. And, um, again, anybody knowing anything would have said, we just, it's, it's, we don't have enough. Um, we're going to run out of cruise missiles.

We, you know, we fired enough to kill a bunch of children, but we haven't retained enough to sustain this, uh, this conflict. So, you know, the next steps are just to blow up more things. I mean, that's what General Cain said. That's the only option we have is to blow up more things. That's all President Trump can threaten to do, to blow up more things. Um, we don't even know what they're blowing up, though.

Again, if we've shown so much confusion in our initial, uh, wave of our attack where we should have had the best intelligence possible, and yet we put out of four places targeted in the Manab, uh, naval facility, two that were empty warehouses, one was a hospital, one was a school, uh, 50% of our targets were illegal under a law of war.

Makes you wonder what the percentage is that we're striking today that are illegal. We will never know because, uh, Pete Hegseth closed down the, um, the units responsible for screening targets to make sure that they were not civilian in nature. Um, and but now as we become more and more desperate, we're just going to start expanding the target deck.

And, uh, you know, if, if we've bombed 5,000 targets and now Trump says we're going to bomb more, uh, where are they going to come from? What targets are they? Who's making these targets? Who's making the decision? Is this AI-driven? Uh, how many homes are we going to strike? How many schools are we going to strike? How many hospitals are we going to strike? How many mosques are we going to strike?

And the answer is a lot, because this now has become literally a, a war of, um, you know, cultural genocide. Um, you know, and that's, that's what the United States will be. And we're not going to win. The Iranians are not going to blink.

I mean, I'm, I'm sure, I'm sure you have, um, studied, uh, at least peripherally the, uh, strategic air campaign during the Second World War against Germany. And you're cognizant of the reality that, um, it didn't achieve the strategic results they wanted to achieve. The German production actually went up, um, became more efficient.

Um, and the, the, the will of the German people to resist was not broken by the strategic air campaign. So what we're proposing is basically to, you know, increase the scope and scale of a strategic air campaign that history shows doesn't work, doesn't, doesn't achieve the outcomes you want.

Um, you know, there's a reason why Azerbaijan backed off. Uh, this, this war was sold as a regime change war, even though now Trump says it's not. Well, it's not because we can't, but we tried.

And, um, you know, the idea was, you know, if you kill Ali Khamenei and you have people in the streets shouting death to the, uh, to the Ayatollahs, uh, the Kurds might be more inclined to say, "Okay, we're in." The Azeris might say, "Yeah, Zengus in our corridor is looking pretty goodright now.

Let's, uh, let's jump in on this one." But when you kill the Supreme Leader and the end result is a unified Iran screaming for revenge, the last thing you want to do is get your list on that, uh, revenge list. Um, and the Kurds are suddenly, they woke up and they went, "Whoop, we're not doing that." And the Azeris went, "Yeah, we're not doing it either.

The Saudis, they're not doing it." Lindsey Graham can take, talk to at least Pink in the face. Um, but, you know, he may look cute to his, uh, never mind, I'm not going there. Um, you know, I don't like Lindsey Graham, but no reason to get ad hominem on him.

Um, you know, but he, he, this is a man who talks tough, but he, there's nothing tough about him. He's a pancake. He's a perfume princess. He's nothing. Um, he's a senator who, you know, for whatever reason, people listen to, but hopefully he's being disgracedright now. And I think he's embarrassed.

I think he's embarrassed by the fact that he's sold a war to Trump and that war's going bad and his political capital is going out the window and he's coming up on a contentious, uh, election that he may very well lose, which would be the greatest thing South Carolina has ever done. Um, so he, he's becoming more in desperate, threatening Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia doesn't care about his threats. The biggest consequences to Saudi Arabia would be the destruction of their, uh, energy production capability, which is a guarantee if they, uh, jump in two feet into this war against Iran. The United States has proven that it can't defeat Iran.

Iran has proven that it can continue to inflict destruction beyond its borders, even after absorbing 5,000, you know, the bombs dropped on its territory. So, um, it doesn't matter what Lindsey Graham says. He's irrelevant.

He's simply fodder for the, um, mainstream media to, uh, to sell a war that is increasingly becoming impossible to sell.