Speaking With Missiles: Iran's attack on Israel

Connecting the Dots with Dr Wilmer Leon (audio)

Follow this week's guest Scott Ritter on X/Twitter @RealScottRitter and his substack http://scottritterextra.com/ and read his latest article here: https://consortiumnews.com/2024/04/15/scott-ritter-the-missiles-of-april/

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FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Announcer (00:06):
Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.

Wilmer Leon (00:14):
Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon, and I'm Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they happen in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which they occur. During each episode, my guests and I have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between current events in the broader historic context in which they happen, enabling you to better understand and analyze the events that impact the global village in which we live on today's episode. The issue before it says, what can we expect next? Now that Iran has responded militarily to Israel's attack on the Iranian consulate in Syria for insight into this, let's turn to my guest. He's a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. His most recent book is entitled Disarmament in the Time of Parika, and he is of course, Scott Ritter. As always, Scott, welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Wilmer Leon.

Scott Ritter (01:37):
Well, thanks for having me.

Wilmer Leon (01:39):
So Pepe Escobar wrote the following. He called it the Shadow Play, and he writes, so this is how it happened. Burns met an Iranian delegation in Oman. He was told the Israeli punishment was inevitable, and if the US got involved, then all US bases will be attacked and the Rai of Horus would be blocked. Burns said, we do nothing if no civilians are harmed. The Iranians said it will be a military base or an embassy. The CIA said, go ahead and do it. Scott Ritter, you've been writing about these issues in Iran for over 20 years. First, your assessment of Pepe Escobar's assessment.

Scott Ritter (02:29):
Well, I mean, clearly Pepe, he is a journalist. He is a journalist of some renno, and he has a source and he's reporting it. It's plausible. I can't confirm it. I can't sit here and say, I know that this happened. I have no idea if this happened. I do know that the CIA has over the course of time, taken on a shadow diplomacy role because the State Department in implementing America's hegemonic policies has alienated America with so many nations and that normal diplomatic relations are impossible. And so the CIAs assume this responsibility. Indeed, this is why William Burns was selected by Joe Biden to be the director of the CIA. He's not a CIA hand, he's not a man who has involved. He's a diplomat, former ambassador to Russia, and he's a man who has written a book called The Back Channel, which describes his approach, the back channel approach to resolving things. Burns has carried out similar meetings with Russia when trying to reopen arms control venues or talk about possible prisoner exchanges.

(03:55)
It's burns that takes the lead on these things. The CIA has played an important role in the past in facilitating dialogue between the Palestinians and the Israelis. The CIA had a very big role to play in making that happen. The CIA was behind the secret negotiations with the Taliban that led to the American withdrawal. So would it surprise me that the CIA has connectivity with Iran? Absolutely not. Especially given Burns' role and the importance of the back channel to the Biden administration. I think the Israelis might find it somewhat of a shock that the United States green lit the Iranian response. But then again, we're living in very strange times where the lack of, let's just call it the deterioration of relations between the United States and Israel is real. I've said for some time now that no American president or presidential candidate has won the White House by turning his back on Israel.

(05:09)
And I've also noted that no Israeli Prime Minister stays in power by turning his back on the United States. And yet we have a situation today where Joe Biden, a sitting president, is starting to turn his back on Israel because of the policies of Benjamin Netanyahu's government policies that are being carried out in direct defiance of American instructions to the contrary. So we live in unprecedented times, and it would seem to me that the United States has made it clear that their policy objectives, strategic policy objectives, and again, just a quick background, remember, part of the reason why we withdrew from Afghanistan in August of 2021 is that we were delinking ourselves from a two decade long commitment to the middle. We were going to lower our profile there as part of our pivot to the Pacific to confront China. And so we have, we no longer are actively implementing the Carter Era doctrine of guaranteed American military intervention.

(06:21)
Anytime something in the Middle East goes south that we don't like, we don't do Desert Storm anymore. We don't do Operation Iraqi freedom anymore. We don't do the invasion of Afghanistan anymore. We're not looking for a fight. We're looking to avoid a fight. And one of the reasons is that Iran has emerged as a very significant regional power with a tremendous amount of military capability. Iran is also a major player in the regional and global economy, and it's incumbent upon the United States to do what we can stabilize this economy to make sure that it doesn't go south, especially in an election year where the old James Carville mantra, it's the economy stupid factors in so large. So we don't want a war or a conflict with Iran that could lead to the shutting down of the straight or moves. This would've a devastating impact on global energy security.

(07:20)
Oil prices would go through the roof at a time again to remind people when Joe Biden has lowered the strategic petroleum reserve down to less than 17 days worth of reserves. So if there was suddenly a shutdown in oil transit, we'd be in trouble. Huge trouble in an election year, which is for Joe Biden. So it doesn't, what I'm trying to say is a long way of saying that there's a lot of reason to believe the reporting that's put out by Pepe Esquire. And again, when I say believe the reporting, I'm not challenging Pepe Escobar. I understand I'm saying that every journalist has sources and some sources are better than others. But what I'm saying is my assessment of the information that Pepe is reporting from the source would be that this is extraordinarily plausible, that it makes sense that this would indeed happen.

Wilmer Leon (08:15):
That was my takeaway, whether it was Bill Burns or whether it was Mr. Burns from whatever that cartoon is. I was really focused more on the point that there was a dialogue between the United States and the parties involved, and that those parties came to a consensus. In fact, when I read, it might have been, I guess it was Thursday, that Iran had seized an Iranian cargo ship in the Straits of Horus. Then there was the missile launching, and then that drones were used as the kind of foray or entree into all of this and that the drones traveled as far as they did. I said, oh, well, Iran was really sending a message more than they were an attack. And I think the message was, and is if you're looking for trouble, you found it and you found a very big bag of it, and you really don't want to mess around with this. It seems as though the Biden administration is starting to get that message. I don't know that Netanyahu, I think it seems like it's falling on deaf ears in Israel.

Scott Ritter (09:45):
What Iran did here is I have said that I've called it one of the most impressive military victories in modern history.

Wilmer Leon (09:57):
In fact, let me interrupt and say, folks, you need to read Scott's piece, the missiles of April. You can find it in Consortium News, Scott, you can tell me where else, but it's a phenomenal assessment of what recently transpired. Scott Ritter.

Scott Ritter (10:14):
Well, thank you very much. It was originally put out on my substack, it's scott ritter extra.com, but then Joe Luria, who I have a very good relationship, he's the editor of Consortium News, asked permission to publish it with Consortium News. And then he and I had a discussion and he asked some questions, follow on questions based upon the article, and I gave him some answers.

(10:38)
So he added some material. So for anybody who read my article on my substack, there's additional material in on the consortium news variant. You might want to read that as well. It's just basically an update when you write things about moving targets such as breaking news, you write based upon the data that's available. And in the time between, I published on my Substack and I spoke with Joe Lauria, there was additional information necessary that provided additional clarity to some of the points I made. So it's not that I changed anything in terms of my assessments, although that's possible too. When you get new information, assessments can change, they should change, and you shouldn't be afraid to change them. But my assessment regarding the Iranian, the efficacy of the Iranian attack remains the same, one of the most impressive military victories in time. Now, people say, well, wait a minute, how could that be?

(11:29)
They didn't blow up Israel. They didn't destroy anything. War is an extension of politics by other means. That's what everybody needs to understand. Military victories basically mean that you have achieved something through the use of military force. That's impressive, especially an impressive military victory. What Iran did on April 14th, on April 13th, 14th, and this attack is established deterrence, supremacy over Israel. Iran has had a problem with what I would say, making the world understand its declaratory policy regarding deterrence, it's deterrence strategy. Deterrence is basically a policy posture that says, if you want to hit me, understand that I'm going to come in afterwards and pummel you to death, that the price you're going to pay for hitting me is going to be so great that you don't want to hit me. I'm not threatening to hit you first. I'm sitting here saying, live and let live, but if you attack me, the price you're going to pay will be so overwhelming that it won't be worth what you thought you were going to achieve by hitting me in the first place.

(12:44)
Iran has established this deterrence superiority over the United States. We saw that when the United States assassinated QM Soleimani in 2020, the Iranians responded with a missile attack against the Alad airbase that didn't kill any Americans. It was telegraphed well in advance, but the purpose was to demonstrate the Americans that we can reach out and touch you anywhere, anytime with devastating force, and there's nothing you can do to stop this, nothing you can do. So now we get to William Burns meeting with his Iranian counterparts, and when they say, and we will strike American bases, burns is going, and they can, and if they do, there's nothing we could do to stop it and we will suffer horrific losses. Therefore, Mr. President, we should heed what the Iranians are saying. This is deterrent superiority over the United States, that the United States understands the consequences of attacking. Iran is not willing to live with those consequences.

(13:45)
They'll be severe even more so in an election year where any disruption of the economy is politically fatal to the incumbent seeking reelection. So they have successfully done that with the United States. Iran has also used missiles. Again, part of declaratory policy. It doesn't have to be necessarily spoken policy, but demonstrative, and we've seen Iran use missiles to strike targets in Iran, in Syria, Pakistan, in Pakistan.

Wilmer Leon (14:17):
In fact, on that Pakistan point, that was what about a month ago, maybe month and a half ago, and when I heard that Iran had sent, I think it was a cruise missile into Pakistan, I did my best to calculate how far that missile traveled. And then I checked, well, what's the distance between Tehran and Tel Aviv? It was about the same distance. And I said, I think Iran is sending a message to the Israel that we can strike Tel Aviv if we so choose.

Scott Ritter (14:57):
Yeah, I mean, first of all, just so people understand historically during the Gulf War, and not too many people know this, so Israel was very perturbed about Saddam Hussein's scud missiles hitting Israeli cities and locations, and they were threatening direct military intervention, which would've destroyed the coalition that George W. Bush had built up. And so we were doing everything we could to convince the Israelis that we had the scud problem under Control Pro. And you mean that you were personally involved in doing that? Yeah, no, this was my part of the war that, I mean, first of all, I wasn't a general, I wasn't a colonel. I wasn't lieutenant Colonel. I wasn't a major, I was just a captain. But as a captain, I played a bigger role than one would normally expect from a captain. I mean, when my name gets briefed to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, and when General Schwarz cov not only fires me, but arrests me because of what I'm doing, I'm having an impact larger than what I was wearing on my shoulder, and I'm pretty proud of the work I did during the Gulf War, but that's beside the point.

(16:04)
The point is that Israel was being told, don't intervene because we've got it under control. But Israel needed to make a statement, and it was a statement being made not to Iraq, because what they did is they brought out a Jericho missile, which is a nuclear capable missile, but also can have control warheads, and they fired this missile into the Mediterranean Sea, and when you measure the distance that it went, it's exactly the distance from Israel to Baghdad and what the Israelis were telling, not the Iraqis, because the Iraqis couldn't monitor the attack and it wasn't publicly announced. They were telling the Americans who were monitoring that, if you don't solve this problem, we're going to solve it for you, and this is the weapon that we're going to use. And it was a wake up call. I remember when that happened. We're all like, stop.

(16:55)
We were only getting two hours sleep at night. No more sleep at night. Do everything you can to stop these Iraqi missiles from flying. We never did, but Israel stayed out of the war. But my point is, when you talk about, because to the lay person, they might be like, come on Wilmer, you're getting a little too creative. They're a little too conspiratorial.

Wilmer Leon (17:17):
I heard that. I heard that last Saturday night. I was at a buddy's house and he said to me, I walk into his house and CNN is on, as it always is, chirping in the background. And so finally he says to me, so what do you think? I said, think about what he said. What do you think about the Iraq? I said, oh. I said, man, that was collaborated. That was done with collaboration. He said, man, you always come in here with this junk. I said, well, okay. So I hear that a lot.

Scott Ritter (17:53):
Well, but in this case, it's not junk because I'm telling you, as somebody who has been in the technical analysis business of ballistic missiles for some time now, there are various ways to send a message. To give you an example, in the arms control world, sometimes the way to send a message is to open up telemetry channels that are normally closed down and launch a missile test. You're not saying anything. You don't put out a press release, but the people monitor because you don't want to say anything. North Korea does this all the time, all the time. They open up some telemetry channels and they just go, Hey, listen to this. And they send a to the Sea of Japan, and the technicians are going, ohoh. They got, oh, they did this capability. Oh, no. And then they're writing secret reports, and that message gets, meanwhile, the public is just sitting there, going to the beach, surfing, smoking dope, and doing whatever we do because we are not meant to get upset about this or worried about it.

(18:52)
It's a subtle message being sent to leadership through the intelligence agency. So your notion that the distance mattered because Iran didn't need to fire at that distance. They just could have fired at a closer range, whatever, but to fire at that distance is a signal to the people who are that distance away, that what we're doing here we can do here. But the problem is the Israelis weren't listening. This is the problem. Iran has through very indirect and direct means. First of all, Iran has never issued a public declaratory policy on deterrence and ballistic missiles until now. And it's one of the weaknesses of Iran is that they didn't make it clear what the consequences would be. The United States got it because they hit us and we're smart enough to go, oh, we don't want that again. Pakistan sort of gets it, but I mean ISIS and Syria, when they got hit with missiles, ISIS isn't going to sit there and go, oh, you're going to hit us with missiles, so we're not going to carry out terrorism anymore.

(20:03)
No, that was a punitive attack. The same thing with the various missile strikes in Iraq. It was punitive attack. It wasn't meant to be a declaratory policy statement. And so here you have a situation where Israel just isn't getting it because Israel believes that it has deterrent supremacy over Iran. And why would Israel believe that? I don't know. Maybe they've assassinated a whole bunch of Iranian scientists in Iran with no consequence. Maybe they've carried out covert direct action sabotage in Iran blowing up nuclear related facilities with no consequence. Maybe they've struck Iranian revolutionary Guard command positions in Lebanon, in Syria, in Iraq, inflicting casualties with no consequence. So maybe Israel believed that it had established deterrent supremacy over Iran. Therefore, when they saw a meeting at the Iranian consulate in Damascus of these major people plotting the next phase of the operation against Israel, they said, take it out.

(21:04)
There won't be any consequence because the Iranians are afraid of us. The Iranians won't strike us because we have deterrent supremacy. Iran believes that if they attack us, we will come down on them tenfold. And so they struck the consulate and Iran went, guess what guys? Nope, it's over. We're done with the subtlety. We warned you don't attack our sovereign territory. The consulate is sovereign territory. We're going to respond. But now the problem with the Iranian response is you have to put yourself in the Iranian shoes because the last thing Iran wants, it's just like the United States. They don't want a war with Israel. They don't want it, as they said in the Godfather, it's bad for business, it's bad for business. And business right now for Iran is improving. They're members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. China has brokered a reproachment with Saudi Arabia, dismantling an American strategy of creating a Sunni shield against the Shia crescent and provoking permanent conflict that would empower American defense industry, Israeli security credibility and economic co prosperity between that part of the ward and Europe with Israel in the middle.

(22:25)
Israel's going, wow, we're back in the game, guys, when Israel was Benjamin Netanyahu, for all the criticism that people have out there, and I'm one of those biggest critics understand that on October 6th, he was on top of the world on October 6th, he had created a geopolitical reality that had Israel normalizing relations with the Gulf Arab states, Israel becoming a major player in a major global economic enterprise, the India, middle East, economic C and the world, not talking about a Palestinian state anymore. Israel was entering, becoming legitimate. It was like Michael Corleone and the Godfather when he was saying, I'm going to put all that behind me and I'm going to become legitimate, reached out and just drag them back in by October 7th. And then Israel was exposed for the criminal enterprise that it is, and now Israel has collapsed. But Iran, that was the Israeli process.

(23:27)
Iran is sitting here saying, we don't want to war. We're members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. We normalized relations with Saudi Arabia. We have an axis of resistance that's holding Israel in check and these plans, Hezbollah is very strong. The militias in Iraq and are strong. The Anella movement in Yemen, the Yemen strong, but we don't want to provoke war. What we want is to become economically viable again. The promise that we, the theocracy have made to the Iranian people over time that trust us, things will get better. We're in that, Hey, you trusted us. Now things are about to get better. We're joining bricks together with Saudi Arabia, so we're going to work with Saudi Arabia and these powerful economic interests that no longer are turning their backs on us to create economic opportunity. And the last thing Iran needed is a war with Israel. It's bad for business.

(24:29)
It's bad for business. And so now the Iranians are like, how do we set declaratory policy to achieve deterrent supremacy? I mean, not supremacy, superiority supremacy is where you have everybody just totally intimidated. Superiority is where you put the thought in people's mind, and they now need to tell the Israelis, you can't attack us or the price you're going to pay is tenfold. Normally you do that. It's like going in the boxing ring. Mike Tyson, even now, I don't know if you've been watching his training videos of him getting ready for this fight he's got in July 20th. The man's a beast. I'm intimidated if I could 57, what he's doing.

Wilmer Leon (25:10):
Well, lemme tell you. I don't know if you saw the report of the guy that was kicking the back of his seat on the airplane, and he came over. He kept asking the guy, Hey man, can you stop kicking my seat? And the guy wouldn't leave him alone. And the folks on the plane said, finally he came over the top of that seat like Iran and pummeled the guy. They had to carry the guy off the plane and a stretcher.

Scott Ritter (25:42):
Well see, that's deterrence supremacy. There you go. Deterrence supremacy is when I jump into the ring with Tyson and Tyson knocks my face in, kicks my teeth out, and I'm on the ground hospitalized and bites your ear, pardon? And bites your ear. That is a bonus. Yes.

(26:02)
The deterrence superiority is where I jump in the ring, ent Tyson comes up, takes the fist right to my nose and just touches it. But he doesn't in a way that I'm in my stance, but he's already there and I'm like, oh, oh, I got a problem. Yeah, okay. I don't really want to be in this ring, Mike. It was a misunderstanding. I'm backing off. I'm just going to go out here and pee my pants in the parking lot. So that's what Iran needed to do. But how do you do this? It's very delicate operation. That's why this was one of the most impressive military opera victories in modern history because what Iran did was make all the demonstration necessary to show potential, and in the end, they hit a base nem. And this is important for your audience to understand. The Naam airbase is the single most heavily protected spot on earth when it comes to anti-ballistic missile defense.

(26:55)
There's no spot on earth that's better defended than nem. It has at the heart of this defense, a and I'll give you a fancy name, a N TP Y two X-Band radar sounds like, well, not one, not one, but two. Well, it's the number two radar, not two radars.

Wilmer Leon (27:13):
No, I'm saying because I got one over my house. Yeah, they got two over 2.0. This is 2.0 man.

Scott Ritter (27:20):
They got this radar there that has the ability to do overheard the horizon surveillance, but it's not just the radar, which is the most sophisticated radar of its type in the world. It's linked into the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization in the United States Strategic Command and the satellites that we have over hanging over the area. So all of that's linked in into a common command center that's shared with the Israelis. So this data is fed to the Israelis and around Nati.

(27:48)
And why is Naam important? I don't know. The F 35 I fighters are there. This is Israel's best fighter plane, their strategic deterrent. They have F fifteens, F sixteens, and they do other secret things there as well because of the notice that they were given, if I understand it, they were able to move those F 35. So the F, again, it was coordinated 100%. I mean, we'll get to that in a second. But they have the arrow two and arrow three missiles, which are joint Israeli American projects are deployed around Nevada. David Sling, which is another anti-ballistic missile capability, is deployed around Nevada. Advanced Patriot missiles are deployed around Nevada. And the US Thad system is deployed around Nevada. The bottom line is they have, and there's Iron Dome as well. So what they have is this multi-layered defense using the world's best anti-ballistic missile technology linked to the world's best surveillance and tracking technology.

(28:56)
And you read the literature on this stuff, we hit a bullet with a bullet. Okay, wow, you guys are good. Now here's the other thing. It's all specifically tailored for one threat and one threat only. Iranian medium range ballistic missiles. That's all it's geared to do. It's not like there's confusion. It's not like you have a multitude of missions. One mission, Iranian medium range missiles. Okay? So now that's like me watching Mike Tyson training videos, and I'm watching the training and I'm like, I got 'em. I can move. I got this guys, I got this. I go into training, bullet, hit a bullet, hit a bullet. I got this. And so now, Mike Tyson, Iran, they go a step further. Not only do they do the Pepe Escobar advanced notice, they build the attack in a way that says, Hey, this is really happening. They announce that the launch of the drones, and these aren't just any drones, guys.

(29:57)
These are slow, moving, loud drones. So you couldn't get a better air alarm system than what Iran gave Israel. They unleashed the drones, and here the drones go. Now Israel's got, they're like flying bumblebees six hours of advanced notice, which gives the United States time to say, take your F 30 fives out, anything value out. But the other thing the Iranians did is they told the United States, see, I think they went a step further. The Iranians made it clear that they will only strike military targets that were related to the action. Iran's whole argument. And again, I know in the West, we tend to rule our eyes, like when Russia says, we acted in Ukraine based upon Article 51, self-defense, preemptive self-defense, the Caroline Doctrine, all the people who hate Russia go, no, no. That was a brutal roar of aggression. Unprovoked. No, the Russians actually have a cognitive legal case because that's how Russia operates based upon the rule of law.

(30:57)
Now, the rule of law, Wil, as we all know, can be bent, twisted, manipulated. I'm not saying that the Russians have the perfect case. What I'm saying is the case that Russia has made is cognizable under law, right? It's defendable. You could take it to a court and it's not going to be tossed out asr. It's not Tony Blinken rules based order. It is not. And so now the Saudis, or not the, I'm sorry, the Iranians, they have been attacked and they have cited Article 51 of the UN charter as their justification. But now you can't claim to be hiding behind the law and then just totally break the law yourself. If Iran had come in, you can. You're the United States, correct? But that's the rules based international, not the law based international. That's the difference between the two. The rules say we can do whatever we want.

(31:50)
The law says no, you're constrained by the law. So in order to justify self-defense, Iran had to limit its retaliation to the immediate threat that was posed by those who attacked them, which means you can hit the two air bases where the airplanes flew out. And there's a third site that nobody's talking about yet. Is that the CIA site? Well, it's the 8,200, the Sgin site on Golan Heights that's looking out into Damascus. And according to the Iranians, that's the site that gathered the intelligence about the Iranians being in the consulate and then shared that intelligence with the airplanes coming in. And so these three targets are the three. Now, in addition to that, Iran is allowed to strike facilities and locations that are involved in the defense of these three things. So the ballistic missile defense capability becomes a legitimate target. But now, so Iran has to hit these three, and so they've broadcasted, we're coming, we're coming.

(32:55)
And that gives the United States do something politically smart, which is to tell the Israelis, we will defend you, but we will not participate in any Israeli counter attack. So we've limited the scope and scale of our participation in this. And so we came together, we started shooting down these drones, creating a fiction of Iranian incompetence, Iranian lack of capability. So this is part of the plan. This is all part of the plan. Now, Iran didn't sit down with the United States and say, this is what we're going to do. This is what we want you to do. Iran is scripting it for them. I mean, this is basically United States going, damn, I forgot my lines. Here you go. Here come the drones. Here come the drones. Shoot them down. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. And so we're shooting it down, and then we're sending the cruise missiles, just in case you don't know, we're launching them live on TV Here.

(33:51)
Let me show you a closeup of what they look like so you understand the operational parameters of the system. And off go, the cruise missiles. Don't shoot pigeons, shoot cruise missiles. So now they're shooting. But then as they're doing this, the Iranians are sitting there going, okay, so we sent the drones. What's lightening up, guys? First of all, what people don't understand is before all this happened, the Iranians did a very targeted cyber attack and shut down. They attacked the Iron Dome system. Now, why do you want to attack the Iron Dome system but not attack the others? Because the Iron Dome system isn't designed to take down big ballistic missiles. It's designed to take down the other stuff. Medium range cruise missiles. No, well, cruise missiles and drones, low flying. It's actually designed to take down kaka rockets and the Hamas rockets. Okay? That's what it's supposed to do.

(34:44)
So you disrupt this so that the other systems have to take priority, and then the arrives, you go, oh, thank you very much. Now, some of the drones that were sent in aren't armed with explosives, but armed with radars and signals intelligence collection, which they're broadcasting the data back to Iran. These are guys are very sophisticated ladies and gentlemen. These aren't amateurs you're dealing with. And so they're sitting in going here. They come turn it on, collect, thank you. And now they have their targeters looking at a big map going, okay, we got a radar here. We got here. Okay, now they're shooting. Okay, we got missile launchers here, boom, boom, boom. It's all there. And they've looked at all. Then they say, okay, remember, because the goal now is to get the glove to touch the nose. The goal isn't to hit the knockout.

(35:33)
So they say, what do we need to do to demonstrate capability the Iranians used? Now, there's some mixed reporting out here. The problem is I like everybody else, I'm held hostage with the Iranians. I don't get to go on the ground anymore and look at the debris and do technical analysis. I used to do that, and I used to be able to come back. One of the things we did with the Iraqis, just so people understand, I am not the dumbest marine in the world. I'm one of the dumbest Marines in the world, but I do have some capability based upon experience. And when my time as a weapons inspector, I worked with the Israelis, their technical intelligence people on looking at debris of the missiles that Iraq fired against Israel. And we were able to ascertain several different variants of scud missiles that have different capabilities that the Iraqis had been denying or not declaring.

(36:27)
And by coming back to them with the technical intelligence from the debris on the ground, the Iraqis had to admit to certain capabilities that they had been denying. And this is important when you're trying to be able to stand before the world and say, we understand the total picture of Iraqi ballistic missile capability, and we can certify that we can account for it all. Because imagine going before the security council and saying that only to have the Israelis go, yes, but what about variant 3D alpha four? Well, I don't understand what you're talking about. What's 3D alpha four? That's the point. You're making a report and you don't understand what we're talking about, which means you don't know everything, do you? I don't like to be in that position as an expert, or I want to know everything. And so we did, and we got the Iraqis to come clean.

(37:14)
So when I say we could account for Iraq's ballistic missile program, we could account for every aspect of it. So I don't get to do that right now. So I'm at a disadvantage where I have to rely upon information. So I don't know if Iran used their hypersonic missiles or not. I don't know that, okay, reports, it's reported. There's reports that they did, and then there's reports that they didn't, and it's conflicting. The most recent press TV report and press TV is a organ of the Iranian state, says that they did use the fat two missiles against thetan airfield. So I'm going to run with that, but I want to put a big caveat on that, that I don't know for certain.

(38:01)
But we do know, just looking at the characteristics of the missiles that came in, that they used at least three different kinds of, they used more than that, but three that were designed to put the glove on the nose, other missiles that were sent were designed to be shot down again as part of the intelligence collection process. So you send in an older ballistic missile that comes on a ballistic missile trajectory. The first thing that you do by doing that is you are training the defense systems. These Iranians are smart. They understand these things. You're training them because you see, there's a whole bunch of computers, software, artificial intelligence. This is the proof that ai, please don't do it better than ai. Is the brain a train brain? Because ai, listen to what everybody's talking about. I mean, I get this phone call. I don't know if you get this up, Scott, I'd like to take the transcripts of your discussions and use them to train my ai. I don't know if you've ever received that request. And I'm like, no, I don't want you to do that. But I just personally go. But the point is, that's how ai, it's not artificial intelligence, ladies and gentlemen. It's just programmed, just programmed in a different way. And you can program in stupidity, which the Iranians said, which they usually do. Let's program in stupidity.

Wilmer Leon (39:24):
Well, for example, just for a quick example, that's why facial recognition technology fails to the degree that it does. It's limited by the abilities and capabilities of the people that are programming it. That's why facial recognition technology doesn't work on Asian people, and it doesn't work on people of color. Dammit, I'm the wrong race. I could have put that a long time ago. Go ahead,

Scott Ritter (39:57):
Touche. So the Iranians are programming the ai. They're sending missiles in, and the system is starting to normalize to come up with a, because it's wartime now. So now you're actually detecting tracking and firing. Then what you do is you throw in, it's like a pitcher, fastball, fastball, fastball, changeup, and here comes the changeup. First changeup they do is, and I don't know the sequence that they did this, but we see the video evidence. There's a warhead that comes in, and again, it's about timing. So you're sending these missiles in. Now they have separating warheads. So what happens when a missile has a separating warhead is the radar's picking one target.

(40:44)
All of a sudden, the radar is dealing with two targets, but it's not just two targets. When you separate the warhead from the missile body, the missile body starts to tumble and it starts sending differentiating signals, and it's no longer a ballistic trajectory. So the computer's going, oh my God, what's happening here? Meanwhile, this warhead's going this way, it's tracking that, and it has to make a decision. Which one? Which one? Which one, which one, which one? This one, pick this warhead. So now they've trained it to discriminate onto this warhead, which is what they want. Now, you'd say, why would they want to look at that warhead? You'll find out the warhead comes in and they're timing. It's like a track coach got the timer, warhead comes in, and the missiles fire up to hit it, and you go, we got it. We now know what the release point is for the missiles being fired.

(41:29)
So now they send in this other missile, it comes in, warhead separates the AI says, go with the warhead baby. They ignore this thing, which is good. It's just a distraction. They're focused on the warhead, they're on the clock. Everything's getting queued up just the way it's supposed to be. Everything's optimized. We're going to take this thing, a bullet hits a bullet baby, and all of a sudden, the warhead right before the launch on the ground, fires off a whole bunch of decoys. It's like a shotgun shell. And the computer goes, damn, what the hell just happened? We don't know. It's going crazy, trying to differentiate between all this stuff. And they're firing a whole bunch of missiles now in panic overload, and they're trying to deal with this. And meanwhile, they have a warhead here. They accelerated these shotgun shells out. So they're going faster.

(42:17)
Now, the computer's adapting to that. Oh God, what do we do? Fire, fire, fire. That warhead's hanging back. It's not the priority right now. And then once everything's committed, you see it on the film, boom. It has a booster engine on it. It gets fired through the chaff. Nothing's intercepting it, bam hits the ground. But not only that, as it comes in, it makes an adjustment. I don't know if people saw that. It comes in and you see it go up, up. Again, terminal adjustment to hit the precise target it wanted to hit. Iran sent a couple of those in, and they took out the Iron Dome sites, et cetera. A signal just got you. And they know that the Israelis are smart. They know that there's a bunch of Israeli guys who were smarter than I am that I used to work with who were looking at all this stuff going, oh God, they got us.

(43:11)
They got us. Damn. Now we come to Nevada, and it's the same thing. They send in the missiles. This is the most heavily layered system in the world. They send in the missiles, and this one's not even as sophisticated. It just comes in. They release it, hyper accelerates down. Then wham hits the ground and the Israelis, because the Israelis are like, okay, we got it. We got it. We don't have it. It's like a catcher used to catch 70 mile an hour fastballs, and it hits him in the head, and then the guy fires the 102 mile an hour. Bam. What happened? I wasn't ready for that. It comes in and it hits it.

Wilmer Leon (43:47):
Well catcher called a change up, and a fastball came through. Fast ball came in.

Scott Ritter (43:52):
So then they came into Na, Nevada, and they touched Naum at least five times. The Iranians were saying seven times. I would probably go with five. And the reason why I say this is that there is a chance the most heavily defended space on earth, there's a chance that they got two of 'em. I'm going to concede that point to the Israelis and the Americans that you put all these hundreds of billions of dollars into building something, and you got two out of seven, but five hit. But the idea, none of them were meant to be a knockout blow. Each one was just a, Hey, hey. And the Israelis know that They're sitting there going, and now they've come to the realization, and this is the whole point. After all of this, the Israelis have come to the realization that Iran can reach out and touch us anytime it wants to, any place it wants to, and there's nothing we can do to stop them. So now the Israelis are in a quandary because Iran has war is an extension of politics by other means.

(44:51)
So Iran has established a political reality using military means to establish a deterrence superiority without creating the conditions that mandate an automatic Israeli response. You see, they've allowed the situation a narrative to be developed by the United States and Israel that says, Iran sucks. He sent everything in there. We shot it all down. We're better than they are. We actually established deterrence over Iran by telling the Iranians that no matter what they do, you thought you were Mike Tyson. You came in and swang gave us all your punches. You miss, you, miss you, miss you, miss you, miss. It's like, Ali, I'm still here. You didn't touch me. You punched yourself out. Can't touch this. That's the narrative that Iran was allowing the West to do. But the reality though is that the Israelis got down there, and there was an interesting text, I don't know if you saw it by, not text, but a post by an Israeli insider who has connectivity with the war council.

(45:58)
And he said, if the Israeli public heard what was being said in the War Council, 4 million people will be leaving Israel right now. I'm going to tell you right now what was said in the war Council, Iran can destroy us. Iran can flatten us. There's nothing we can do if we allow this to happen to remain unanswered. We've lost everything that we've fought for over the past several decades. This deterrence, supremacy that we thought we had has gone forever. Nobody will ever respect us. Nobody will ever fear us, and therefore people will attack us, and we will be in an untenable situation

Wilmer Leon (46:39):
Wait a minute. That's that's very important politically, because that is part of the whole Zionist ideology, is we we're the persecuted people, and you all need us to protect you because the wolves are always at the door. And now what is the reality is all that insurance money you've been paying for those insurance policies, you've wasted your money.

Scott Ritter (47:15):
Absolutely. I used to live in Turkey, and when I've traveled through the planes of Turkey, they have shepherds with their flocks, and out there amongst the flocks are the sheep dogs. I don't know if you've ever seen a picture of an Anatolian sheep dog. Yes, big.

Wilmer Leon (47:34):
I'm a big dog guy. Yes.

Scott Ritter (47:35):
Okay, so these are like bears, right? Some of them are bigger than bears. And I remember we were walking once in a Kurdish village and we got too close to the sheep, and all of a sudden, these two things coming at us, and they're bigger than we are. I mean, these are bigger than humans, and they're coming at us, and they're going to kill us. And we knew that it was just all over. Then you hear, and the shepherd gives whatever signal, and the sheep dogs stop, and then they come up and they sit down and you pet 'em.

(48:04)
They have no ears because their ears have been chewed off. Their noses are scars their faces. They got these giant collars with spikes on to protect their throat, their faces like that, because they fight wolves. They hold the wolves off. Israel has been telling the world that we are the anatolian sheep dog. We are here and we will protect you. The rest of the world, the sheep from the wolves, they're getting ready. What Iran just did is went, took off the cloak, then went, you're just a sheep. You're just a sheep. We are the wolves. You're just a sheep. And the sheep's going, I don't want everybody to know this. We were faking them out, that we were the anatolian sheep dog, but we're really just a sheep. So that's a political problem for the Israelis, and this is important, and this is probably the most important part of this discussion, believe it or not, this isn't about Israeli security. This isn't about a real threat to, because Iran is a responsible nation. When Iran talks about deterrence,

Wilmer Leon (49:07):
oh, wait a minute now, wait a minute. Now, Scott, now you've crossed the Rubicon is Iran is responsible? Yeah, Iran is a, they're ravaging. Crazy. Raghead. Come on, Scott.

Scott Ritter (49:25):
That may be true, but they're ravaging, crazy Raghead who operate based upon a law-based system as opposed to a rule-based system. Not only that, a law-based system that is based on thousands of years of history and culture, right? I mean, that's their own national culture. I mean, a lot of people go the theocracy, the theocracy, theocracy, yes, but Persian. Persian, Persian. I understand that this is a civilized people who have been around. They invented cataract surgery. They invented a lot of stuff. They invented the agrarian watering system, the irrigation, the irrigation system. They invented the wheel. I think they probably did.

(50:20)
We've been reinventing the wheel over time. But mathematics, psychology, the whole thing, sociology, all comes out of there. And today, you see it when you Google International Math Olympics, the teams that are coming in at top are Chinese teams and Iranian teams, MIT, California technology, they're coming in down at the bottom. They're not one in this thing behind it. The Indian Institute of Technology, the Indians are getting up there too. They have good applied science and good applied skills. And it's not just that. I mean, to give you an example, the Iranians have the highest percentage of peer reviewed, not percentage, the highest number of peer reviewed PhD thesis published per year. So it's not like, excuse me, Iraq, I, forgive me for this, but under Sadam Hussein, where you went to an Iraqi university, it used to have a good reputation, but they were just punching out, handing out diplomas to Kuai.

(51:26)
And the thugs who went in there and said, I went to school. Here's your diploma. See, I'm a doctor. No, in Iran, you earn it. You go to the school, you earn it, and you earn it the old fashioned way, peer reviewed, which means your thesis leaves. Iran goes out of ranks the world, the experts, they review it, they come back and they say, this is PhD level work.

Wilmer Leon (51:46):
I just had a conversation with another dear friend. And when you look at their diplomats, when you look at their leadership, many of them are engineers. President Amad, the first time I went to Iran, I got to sit for two hours with then former president Amadinijad has a PhD in engineering and teaches engineering at the University of Tehran. I sat there for two hours listening to this cat going, oh my God. Yeah, he's not what?

(52:22)
He was sold deep. He's not some short madman. He's a short, brilliant man.

Scott Ritter (52:31):
A brilliant madman maybe. But the point is, brilliant dude, genius. No, they're all that way. They all have extraordinary. First of all, let's stop picking on Ayatollahs. If people understood what it took to become an ayatollah in Iran, the level of seminarian study, what you have to know, not just about. And here's the important thing about the Shia theocracy for all the Shia people out there, if I got this wrong, please forgive me, but it's my understanding, especially in the Iranian model, they have something called the Marja, which is basically, it's like your flock.

(53:14)
What do they call it? A diocese in the Catholic church, right? Congregation. Thank you. There's what we want, congregation. It's a congregation. Now, you have to, because in Iran, it's not just about knowing the religion, but having a philosophy that is derived from absolute understanding of the religion that is approachable to the people. It is religious democracy, because now I've done my ayatollah training and they go, Huma, I can't do the cross. Sorry, God, I just made a huge mistake. Forgive me. But they anoint you. They say, you're the dude. You're the guy that can do it. But now, to survive, you have to write a document that says, this is my religious philosophy as it applies to something today. There's a name for that, the, or something. Again, I apologize, but they put that out there. Now. People read it, the public, it's there for the public.

(54:10)
And then people go, I like this guy. I'm going to hang out at his marja for a little bit and see what he does. Now, if they come to the Marja and he's not impressive, then the Marja dissipates and they shut 'em down. They say, you failed. You couldn't win the people. It's not just about imposing religion on people. It's about getting the people to buy into what you're saying religiously.

Wilmer Leon (54:35):
That's what the Ayatollah Khomeini was doing when he was in exile in France.

Scott Ritter (54:39):
Bingo. Okay. But you have compete, for instance, Al Sistani in Iraq, he has a competing the Najaf. Marges compete with the coal Marges that compete with Carval, which compete with, there's competing margins. And even within Comb, there's different margins.

Wilmer Leon (54:59):
I'm drawing a blank on the guy in Iraq that was raising all kind of hell. Muqtada al Sadr. There you go. Yeah. Who is the son, if I have it right? He's the son of a the, Grand Ayatollah

Scott Ritter (55:17):
yeah, yeah, yeah. And he, in order to become credible, had to go to Cole and study and learn things because everybody, when he was out there talking, he had a lot of personality. He had the name, but people are going, you don't have the credentials, man. You can't sit here and play religion because we take our religion seriously. So we had to go disappear and go to calm and train up and all that.

Wilmer Leon (55:45):
Had to coach him up a little bit.

Scott Ritter (55:48):
But he also then has to go out and sell himself right? To an audience. And a lot of people weren't buying what he was selling. I mean, he's a very popular man, very influential in Iraqi politics today. But it's earned. It's not given. But the point is, the Iranians are a responsible nation, and if Israel was smart, they would've said, okay, we're in a bad position here, bad position.

(56:12)
It's not a good position for us to be in. We need to take a step back, take advantage of the fact that the Iranians have written a script that makes it believable that we did some amazing stuff. And then we have to reassess where we are. What do we have to do to get our defenses back up? What do we have to do to get capabilities to strike Iran? When do we want to do it? Because the United States isn't on our side right now, behavioral modification to get the world to love us. Again, things of this nature, strategic thinking. But Israel's governed by a crazy man named Benjamin Netanyahu, who doesn't care about Israel. He doesn't care about the Israeli people. He doesn't care about Israeli security. He doesn't care about alliances with the United States. He's a 76-year-old man in bad health who only cares about Benjamin Netanyahu.

(56:58)
And he right now has his butt in a sling because he got embarrassed on October 7th, and now he was just humiliated by the Iranians. And he can only stay in power as a wartime prime minister. And if they're going to either, they have to ratchet it up in Gaza. Every Israeli knows that they lost in Gaza that they haven't won Harts the day before, the Iranian attack front page headline, we lost. We lost everything. We haven't won anything we've lost. And that's the assessment of the Israeli intelligence service. And people who don't know need to know that Harts is a very prominent Israeli newspaper with a very good reputation of like, well, you said good reputation. I was about to compare to the New York, used to have, right? There you go. There you go. Like it used to have. But so he's lost in Gaza.

(57:52)
He was looking to maybe promote a conflict against Hezbollah to expand the war. And there's always that hope that we can drag the United States into a larger war with Iran. But the United States, it says, no, we're not doing that. Hezbollah now is linked to Iranian deterrence, superiority. So you can't do the Hezbollah thing like you wanted to do anymore. You're in a, and now you've got Ansara Allah in the Red Sea shutting down the Red Sea, shutting down the Israeli economy.

Wilmer Leon (58:22):
And on the other side, you have Iran shutting down the strai of Harmouz. And that's why I go back to that ship that they captured because they wanted the United States to understand will shut your oil off.

Scott Ritter (58:36):
And the United States, remember, we've been running guardian prosperity or something like that, whatever the name of our wonderfully named operation to deter the Hootie. And we, I don't know if everybody understands, we had to approach the Hoothie last week and beg them to stop it. Please, please, please, please, please. We'll stop bombing you. We'll do everything. We'll lift the terrorism thing, but just stop this, please, because we can't force you to stop it. And the Hootie went, no. Yeah. They said, here's another one. The missiles, you guys are deterring. That's a failure. But that's the thing. The failure of deterrents policy has been played out with the Hoothie and it's being played out. See, America no longer has deterrents, superiority. We no longer have deterrence. We can't deter a minute.

Wilmer Leon (59:25):
Wait a minute. We sent the Eisenhower into, now this takes me back to, so we sent a couple of aircraft carrier groups into the region when I think it was the Eisenhower. Oh, it was Gerald Ford. We first sent the Gerald Ford in President Putin says to Joe Biden, why did you do that? You are not scaring anybody. These people don't scare. And oh, by the way, we can sink your carrier from here with our Kenjal missile. Hypersonic missile. So stop it, Joe. You're not scaring anybody.

Scott Ritter (01:00:08):
But here's something else that happened, and I'm glad you brought this up. This is an important thing. The United States linked at least two of its ships to this system, and this is part of the American anti-ballistic missile strategy. We do this with Japan, we do this with Korea, we do this with Europe. We have a whole bunch of ages, class destroyers in Spain that we now are going to fan out to protect Europe from Russian missiles. And we're telling everybody, no worry. We got this. We got this. Remember guys, when that satellite was coming down, we shot it down. We're that good? We can pull it, hit a bullet kind of stuff. So we went to the Israelis and we plugged in to the world's most sophisticated anti-ballistic missile shield in the world. We plugged in and the Iranians went.

(01:00:55)
What the Iranians proved, and I just want this to sink in there, they can hit any American ship anytime they want with a warhead that will sink that ship. They just sent a signal to the United States that we will sink every one of your aircraft carriers. We will sink every one of your destroyers, all these wonderful ships you have. You can't stop it. The missile we sent in and touched, Nevada can sink any one of your ships. And how do we know? Because you plugged your ships into the system. Guys, up until then, we might've been theoretical about this, but now you plugged it in and you were playing the game. You committed your best anti-missile ships to the defense system, and you didn't stop us. We went in and went pop, pop, pop, pop, pop five times on the target. If Nevada had become the Gerald Ford or become the Eisenhower or the Carl Benson, we would've sunk that ship.

(01:01:52)
That's the other thing that the Iranians did here that nobody's talking about, because this is the scariest thing in the world to the United States. Iran just told the United States, your Navy is useless. Useless. It's done and now, but it's not just the Iranians, the North Korean, China China has everybody out there who has hypersonic missile capability is now basically saying, oh yeah, we can sink American ships too. And this is important thing.

Wilmer Leon (01:02:22):
I was talking to KJ Noh last week, and KJ was talking about the United States sending all kind of hardware into Taiwan and that the United States may even wind up sending personnel in Taiwan and in anticipation of China making a, I think this is what KJ said, making a land invasion in Taiwan. And I said, kj, why would China do that when all they got to do is sink an aircraft carrier with a hypersonic missile? And he said, well, that's a good point.

Scott Ritter (01:02:58):
No, I mean the United States, but now we come to, because America's facing the same problem that BB Netanyahu is, except there's not a political dimension to it. BB Netanyahu right now has to do something to stay in power politically so now

Wilmer Leon (01:03:15):
and not be prosecuted for theft.

Scott Ritter (01:03:19):
Correct. For his corruption. Yeah. Second, he leaves office, he gets arrested and he gets put on trial.

Wilmer Leon (01:03:25):
Ala Donald Trump.

Scott Ritter (01:03:27):
Except, yeah, I mean, yeah,

Wilmer Leon (01:03:32):
that's a whole nother story. But I'm just saying that right now is what Donald Trump is facing.

Scott Ritter (01:03:38):
Correct.

Wilmer Leon (01:03:38):
And I'm not saying it's legitimate or not legitimate.

Scott Ritter (01:03:41):
Yeah. That's my only reason why I did that is I don't want to get into the, no,

Wilmer Leon (01:03:47):
it's happening.

Scott Ritter (01:03:47):
Because Netanyahu is a criminal. He is a corrupt person. Donald Trump is an imperfect human being who may have committed some crimes, but in America, you're innocent until proven guilty. And he has these trials, many of which people believe are politicized, designed, and diminishes. We can move on. We don't need to go down that rabbit hole on this episode. But the fact is Israel right now is desperately looking for a face saving way out of this because the fiction of we were so good that we stopped this Iranian attack is not believable. It's not believable domestically. So now the Israelis are looking for the ability to do something that if not gives them deterrence, superiority they're looking for right now, deterrence, parody. Parody. And so here's the question, because you remember now we come back to Pepe, and this is probably a good way to spin this around.

(01:04:53)
William Burns met with Iranians beforehand and came up with an elegant solution to an extraordinarily difficult and dangerous problem. Iran now has established a deterrence philosophy, and they articulate the second Israeli airplanes take off. We launch our missiles. We're not waiting for Israel to attack us. The second your planes take off, we're firing. And Iran has said, we consider the matter settled. Settled. We consider the matter over. You struck us, we struck back, let it go. Correct. But it's not settled because there's thing called politics. And Iranians, again, are some of the most sophisticated political players in the world. So my guess is as we're speaking, Hey Pepe, if you're out there, call your source. I'm giving you a hint that behavioral patterns, one thing I used to do as an intelligence officer is do analysis and assessments, predictive analysis based upon behavioral patterns. Humans tend to repeat behavioral patterns.

(01:05:59)
And so now the CIA and the Iranians have talked to prevent one crisis. They're talking right now and the CIA saying, guys, what can we do to prevent Israel from doing something really stupid, which is the big attack, which politically we need a safety valve. This is the equivalent of a methane tank getting heat on it. And if you don't have a safety valve that goes, it's going to blow. So how do we get a safety valve? What can Israel do to save face that doesn't impact you? And you see the Israelis now ratcheting it down. It was, we're going to strike nuclear facilities. We're going to strike this, we're going to strike that. And now they're saying, well, what if we strike something outside of Iran? But it's clearly Iran like at seven 11. Yeah, at three in the morning when it's been closed and nobody's there strike at seven 11.

(01:06:53)
And so they're desperately looking for this outlet. The question now is, what will Iran do? My bet is that Iran will facilitate a face saving gesture by Israel because the Iranians don't want and don't need a war, a major war business. Well, it's horribly. The Iranian foreign ministry, just so everybody understands this, their number one priority now, one of their top priorities is they have all of their smart people right now writing papers for the Brick summit in October, which Iran will be attending and will be playing a major role in establishing new global infrastructure and institutions on how the world's going to be governed and a possible international currency off of the dollar bingo. These are big ticket things. Business. They don't need to be business. They don't need to be dragged into this stupidity of a mafia family dispute

Wilmer Leon (01:07:54):
Really quickly. One of the reasons why President Putin went into Ukraine light in the beginning was he doesn't want a war because it's bad for his economy.

Scott Ritter (01:08:11):
But the West didn't pick up on that. Now we got thing.

Wilmer Leon (01:08:15):
And now he's kicking ass and taking names and folks are all befuddled. Hey, you started. You went looking for trouble. You found a big bag of it. And now, so thank you for your time, Scott. Two things I want to hit quickly. One is the estimates are in very simple terms, that Iran spent a million dollars on this attack and Israel lost a billion in their response to it.

Scott Ritter (01:08:50):
I'd say 60 million for the Iranians, about 3.2 billion for the Israelis and the United States altogether.

Wilmer Leon (01:08:55):
Okay. Okay. And this other thing, is it velvet or violet, this AI program that Israel has developed that they assign a score? Are you familiar with this? They assign a score to Palestinians based upon a number of predetermined social behaviors. And when your score gets close to a hundred, you get assassinated. And this is all generated by artificial intelligence. You mentioned ai, so I want to just to quickly drop that one in there before we get out.

Scott Ritter (01:09:31):
No, I mean, again, it's a criminal enterprise. It's about killing innocence. And part of this AI too is that it calculates the number of civilian casualties that'll be assigned to that thing target. And unfortunately for the Palestinians, one would think if you're a rational, look, I keep telling people, I'm not a pacifist, and if you want to go to war, I'm old. You're the guy. But guys, I have no problem killing you. I mean, I know you're trying to kill me, so I will kill you, and I'm not going to weep at night when you die because you wanted to play this game. But I'm not in the business of killing you and taking out innocent civilians. Okay?

(01:10:17)
That's where I draw the line. Now there's collateral damage. If it happens, I'll be upset, but I have my parameters. If I'm going to take you and they're saying, you're going to take out this many civilians, I'm going, that's a bad target. Not the right time. Not the right place. We're not going to do it. But the Israelis have the opposite thing. It's not just when you're going to take out the target, but when you get the maximum impact of civilian casualties. The Israeli approach is AI program is designed to kill the maximum number of family members and civilians to maximize the impact of the attack on the morale of the Palestinian people. But see, that's where AI fails because it doesn't understand the human heart and doesn't understand rage, it doesn't understand hate, and they don't understand that the more Palestinians you kill, the more you train them to hate you.

(01:11:05)
And not only that, the world is turning against you. See, the AI program hasn't figured out the global factor that every time they do this, the world hates Israel even more. Hamas is a political organization. Hamas is a military organization. Hamas is an ideology, and you don't kill an ideology with weapons. You defeat an ideology with a better ideology, which is generally linked to a better lifestyle, better standard of living, economic prosperity. Again, Jane Carville's mantra, it's the economy. Stupid isn't just an American only. It's a global human reality

Wilmer Leon (01:11:52):
about the way of life and quality of life. Yeah. Scott Ritter, my man, as always, thank you so much for joining me today. Greatly, greatly, greatly appreciate your time.

Scott Ritter (01:12:03):
Thank you very much for having me. It was an honor and a privilege. Thank you folks so much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wimer Leon. Stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also, please follow and subscribe. Go to Patreon. Please contribute because this is not cheap to do. Leave a review. Please share the show. Follow us on social media. You can find all of the links and all of the information in the show description. And remember, this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge, talk without analysis is just chatter. And we don't chatter here on connecting the dots. See you next time. Until then, I'm Dr. Woman Leon. Have a great one. Peace

Announcer (01:12:53):
Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.