Scott Ritter and Ray McGovern on The World This Week. Tensions soar between Tel Aviv and Ankara over their designs on Syria; would Trump really nuke Iran? Gaza and Ukraine updates and the Pentagon punishes Stars & Stripes by firing its editor and publisher.
Judge Andrew Napolitano with Larry Johnson, Scott Ritter, and Joe Kent. They discuss the reported Air Force One threat (Israeli warning, CIA skepticism, Trump taken off the plane), Israel's influence on US intelligence, the Iran war and Hormuz blockade, and Putin's Far East order that Russian ships may seize European vessels if Europe seizes Russian ones.
Former UN weapons inspector and US Marine intel officer Scott Ritter on Danny Haiphong — an alleged Iranian attempt on Trump’s life, and the crisis aboard the USS Lincoln as 5,000 US sailors face catastrophe.
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Scott Ritter discusses the desperation mounting for the Trump administration as it pursues a potential nuclear option for Russia and China following its massive defeat in Iran. Meanwhile the USS Lincoln is reportedly in crisis, further complicating the war designs of the American empire.
Scott Ritter is a former UN Weapons Inspector and US Marine Corps Intelligence Officer now widely renowned for his searing critiques of US foreign policy and pursuit of peace.
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Why does religious faith decide who wins wars in the Middle East? Former Marine intelligence officer and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter argues the "axis of resistance," Israeli hardline politics, and US Christian Zionism are all shaped by deep, often overlooked religious conviction — and that Western policymakers consistently misread it.
In this episode of Deep Dive Perspective, Scott Ritter draws on his own intelligence background preparing for a potential US-Iran conflict in the 1980s, explaining how Shia theology and the concept of martyrdom rooted in the Battle of Karbala shaped Iranian combat resilience. He traces how this same religious lens explains the rise of Hezbollah out of Amal's resistance to Israeli occupation, and the complicated, more recent alignment between Iran and Yemen's Ansarullah movement.
Ritter also discusses what he describes as the growing influence of religious hardliners within Israeli politics and the eschatological beliefs of Christian Zionism within parts of the US administration, arguing both distort strategic decision-making around the region. He is critical of US policymakers and institutions for failing to understand the ideology of adversaries, and offers his own view on which strands of religious extremism — across multiple faiths — he considers most dangerous to regional stability.
This episode contains strong personal opinions and characterizations of religious and political movements. These are presented as Scott Ritter's own analysis, not verified facts or the position of Deep Dive Perspective, and should be weighed against other reporting and primary sources.
In This Episode:
- The faith behind the "axis of resistance"
- Shia theology, martyrdom, and Iranian combat resilience
- How Hezbollah emerged from Amal's resistance to Israeli occupation
- Iran and Yemen's Ansarullah: allies, but not natural ones
- Religious hardliners' growing influence in Israeli politics
- Christian Zionism and eschatology in US policy circles
- Why Washington keeps misreading the region
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Scott Ritter discusses the new fronts of war emerging in the Iran war despite US retreat from striking deeper into the country.
What has been a catastrophe for the Pentagon is set to get a lot worse and the former UN Weapons Inspector and US Marine Corps Intelligence Officer breaks it all down.
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Recent government-assisted censorship began under Biden but Donald Trump has now unleashed the return of full-blown McCarthyism in which "communism" is once again the greatest menace to the United States. Joe Lauria's guests this week are Scott Ritter and Patrick Henningsen.
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Scott Ritter discusses Iran's new ballistic missile and the massive destruction of Patriot batteries, air defenses, radars, and billions in military hardware as the blown open cover up of US troops casualties sends Trump scrambling toward all out war.
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Scott Ritter, Former UN Weapons Inspector and Marine Corps Intel Officer, discusses the massive escalation in the Iran war as Yemen enters into renewed conflict with a US-backed Saudi incursion, and Iran strikes back hard after Trump declared war following day 3 of CENTCOM strikes.
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Scott Ritter is a former Major, Intelligence Officer, US Marine, and UN Weapons Inspector. Ritter discusses the intense war propaganda by NATO to sell the narrative of a victory in Ukraine, even as Russia's position is improving significantly.
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The NATO summit in Ankara this week recommitted to provoking direct war with Russia by 2030, with or without the US it seems. Meanwhile Trump's fruity Iran policy plays in a loop as Israel stands ready to again launch full-scale war.
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Former UN Weapons Inspector & US Marine Corps Intel Officer Scott Ritter discusses being targeted by drones on recent travel to Russia, the state of the two biggest wars in the world at this moment, and why defeat in both is irreversable for Trump & Washington.
In St. Petersburg this week, the Russian president spoke frankly about Ukraine, NATO and the course of the war: there is no end in sight. Scott Ritter reports live from Moscow after arriving there from St. Petersburg.
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Is NATO provoking a direct war with Russia? The ultimate aim of Project Ukraine has always been to weaken Russia and overthrow Vladimir Putin. To launch the economic, information and ground proxy war on Moscow, NATO needed Russia to invade Ukraine. Now it needs Russia to attack a NATO country to justify direct war on Putin.
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Former UN weapons inspector and US Marine Corps Intelligence Officer Scott Ritter joins the show to discuss the latest round of strikes between Iran and the US as Trump & Israel's war of aggression escalates to a point of no return.
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Ukraine violated the Law of War in attacking the Starobelsk College. And Russia adhered to the Law of War in striking Kiev. There is a difference.
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The Russian and Chinese leaders declare unilateral attempts to dominate the world “have failed” and “a new type of international relations” is emerging. Meanwhile Trump loses it over Iran, while he mulls invading Cuba.
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Former UN weapons inspector and US Marine Corps Intelligence Officer Scott Ritter joins the show to discuss the rapid descent toward escalation by Trump & Israel, and how Iran has decisively responded amid massive geopolitical shockwaves.
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Scott Ritter is a former Major, Intelligence Officer, US Marine, and UN Weapons Inspector. Ritter discusses how Europe has now crossed the line and made a Russian retaliation inevitable.
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Scott Ritter says Russia has no choice but to strike command centers in Kiev and German and English munition factories after Ukrainian attacks inside Russia have cut Russia's oil exports by 20 percent. Ray McGovern disagrees, saying Russia will continue to cautiously avoid hitting Germany or England to prevent a NATO-Russia war.
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Ukraine is writing cheques the West can't pay, says Scott Ritter. The latest barrage of drones on Moscow threatens nuclear reprisal attacks, and not just on Ukraine. Russia is done playing games, as is Iran. All the orchestrator, the US, brings to the world is trouble
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A brash, expansionist Donald Trump returned from two days in China, having been schooled by Xi Jinping in what global stability looks like.
In his January 2025 inaugural address, Donald Trump blared the trumpets of the American Empire, putting the world on notice that the William McKinley era of U.S. territorial expansion was back. Not that the American imperium had gone anywhere under preceding presidents. But Trump would no longer hide it.
“The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation, one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons,” he said, not stopping at planet Earth. “We will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars.”
At Munich last fall, his secretary of state Marco Rubio, stirred the ghost of Cecil Rhodes, loudly proclaiming Western supremacy was back in control.
“For five centuries, before the end of the Second World War, the West had been expanding – its missionaries, its pilgrims, its soldiers, its explorers pouring out from its shores to cross oceans, settle new continents, build vast empires extending out across the globe,” Rubio said.
“But in 1945, for the first time since the age of Columbus, [the territorial expansion] was contracting. Europe was in ruins. Half of it lived behind an Iron Curtain and the rest looked like it would soon follow. The great Western empires had entered into terminal decline, accelerated by godless communist revolutions and by anti-colonial uprisings that would transform the world and drape the red hammer and sickle across vast swaths of the map in the years to come.
Against that backdrop, then, as now, many came to believe that the West’s age of dominance had come to an end and that our future was destined to be a faint and feeble echo of our past.
But together, our predecessors recognized that decline was a choice, and it was a choice they refused to make. This is what we did together once before, and this is what President Trump and the United States want to do again now, together with you.”
Trump bullied Greenland. He bullied Canada. He took part in genocide in Gaza. He took control of Venezuela. He threatens Cuba. He twice attacked Iran.
And then he went to China.
This week Xi Jinping spelled it out for him: Put away the tough guy act. You’ve run up against China now. The two of us better get along or the world is in for a lot of hurt.
According to the Chinese readout, Xi asked Trump:
“Can China and the United States overcome the Thucydides Trap and create a new paradigm of major-country relations? Can we meet global challenges together and provide greater stability for the world? Can we build a bright future together for our bilateral relations in the interest of the well-being of the two peoples and the future of humanity? These are the questions vital to history, to the world, and to the people. They are the questions of our times that the leaders of major countries need to answer together.”
As a sort of reversal of the outcome of the Boxer Rebellion, which failed to expel Western imperialists from China, Xi echoed boxer Mike Tyson who said everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.
Joining The World This Week to discuss Mr. Trump’s trip to Beijing, and the week’s developments on Iran and Ukraine, are Ray McGovern, former C.I.A. analyst and Oval Office briefer; and Scott Ritter, ex-U.S. Marines counter-intelligence officer and a chief U.N. weapons inspector.
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1. U.S. Says Iran War Over, But Continues to Fire.
2. Whose Victory Day Is It?
3. Are We Already in a World War?
There was a strange series of events over the past seven days in the war in the Gulf. U.S. officials insist that the war is over. SoS Marco Rubio held a press conference on Tuesday to declare that Operation Epic Fury (some call it Operation Epic Failure) was over.
It “is concluded,” he said. “We achieved the objectives of that operation.” Something we will talk about on this show.
Instead a new operation had begun, the U.S. is now in a defensive posture under Project Freedom, said Rubio. This sounded like a Rubio Ruse to get around the War Powers Act, to pretend one war is over and another, separate one could begin with a fresh 60 days on the clock.
He was asked about that and called the Act “100 percent unconstitutional.” Getting a declaration of war from Congress is constitutional. But the Trump administration didn’t get that either.
A day later, Trump ended Project Freedom too, we later learned, because Saudi Arabia wouldn’t allow U.S. jets to fly over their country.
It’s been a strange ceasefire, which Trump himself still insists is in place, what with Iran and the U.S. shooting at one another nearly everyday now.
Trump is indeed playing with fire if he lets Israel talk him into restarting full-scale war, which is virtually guaranteed to destroy the Gulf’s energy industry and the world economy.
Meanwhile they are still shooting at each other in Ukraine in a war that Russian political analyst Sergei Karaganov says is linked to Iran: the European theater and the Middle East theater in a new world war. A war in which Trump plays with the flames of a potential nuclear conflict (which Karaganov says Russia must prepare for.
The end of the last world war was celebrated in Moscow today. The question is, Whose Victory Day was it? Is it only Russia’s? Where are its allies that helped the Soviet Union defeat Nazi Germany? How does Russia view Germany today?
The Red Square parade went off without incident after Zelensky had said the Russians “fear drones may buzz over Red Square,” which Russia understandably interpreted as “aggressive and threatening.”
From the Kiev Post on Friday:
“President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree excluding Moscow’s Red Square from Ukraine’s target list during the Victory Day parade. The move is framed as a humanitarian step linked to ongoing negotiations, including a prisoner exchange and temporary ceasefire. … The decree, published on Friday, authorizes the parade to take place in the Russian capital and designates a specific geographic area around Red Square as off limits for Ukrainian during the event. The temporary restriction applies during the parade timeframe, beginning at 10 a.m. Kyiv time, and outlines exact coordinates covering the Red Square area.” [Emphasis added.]
Trump then got into the act announcing a three-day ceasefire. But what role did he play in it?
Meanwhile, European Council President António Costa said he thought there was “potential” for the EU to negotiate with Moscow to end the war, and said Zelensky agreed.
“I’m talking with the [EU’s] 27 national leaders to see the best way to organise ourselves and to identify what we need effectively to discuss with Russia when it comes to the right moment to do this,” he told the Financial Times on Thursday.
“We cannot change the geography. We are in Europe, we are neighbours of Russia, and of course we need to talk with them about the future of the security architecture of Europe,” he added.
Is this a real diplomatic opening, to even mention the security architecture of Europe, or another illusion?
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Former UN weapons inspector and US Marine Corps Intelligence Officer Scott Ritter joins to discuss Iran's missile strikes in the Strait of Hormuz targeting the UAE and US warships, as well as the US response. Is War back on? This stream covers the latest escalation with one of the most important voices in geopolitics.
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The U.S. is holding off Israeli pressure to restart the shooting war against Iran for now and is turning instead to economic warfare. But how long can that last?
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Former C.I.A. analyst Ray McGovern and ex-U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter join The World This Week to discuss the latest developments in the Iran war as Donald Trump cancels his realtors’ return to Islamabad.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was already in Islamabad with a written proposal to end the war to present to the United States. The Iranian foreign ministry said the proposal would have been transmitted through Pakistani mediators and not directly to Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the New York real estate agents that Donald Trump initially was sending to the Pakistani capital on Saturday.
Vice President J.D. Vance, who led the U.S. side in the failed talks earlier this month, was being held behind in Washington “on standby … if we feel it’s a necessary use of his time,” said Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary.
But on Saturday, Trump abruptly canceled Witkoff and Kushner’s departure.
“I’ve told my people a little while ago, they were getting ready to leave, and I said, ‘Nope, you’re not making an 18-hour flight to go there. We have all the cards,’” Trump said in a statement. “They can call us anytime they want, but you’re not going to be making any more 18-hour flights to sit around talking about nothing.”
Having said he would not meet directly with Trump’s envoy, Araghchi had left Pakistan before the cancellation of the U.S. delegations’ flight, according to Western and Iranian outlets. Press TV reported:
“The Iranian delegation left Islamabad before US envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, were expected to travel to the Pakistani capital to meet with mediators.
US President Donald Trump, however, later told Fox News that he had canceled the visit.
Tehran had previously said that there was no plan for the Iranian delegation to meet with the American representatives in Islamabad.”
Huge differences remain in the standoff between the two sides in a war that has been on hold since Trump blinked and extended a ceasefire “indefinitely” last Tuesday. Iran wants sanctions lifted and assets unfrozen; an end to the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports; a vow of U.S. non-aggression and the removal of U.S. troops from the Middle East.
The U.S. wants the Strait of Hormuz opened, an end to nuclear enrichment by Iran and a hidden stockpile of 60 percent enriched uranium. It seems the U.S. is no longer demanding that Iran give up its ballistic missile defense.
There could be room for a deal on the enrichment issue. At the first round of talks, Iran proposed a five-year, monitored suspension of all nuclear enrichment, even though Iran is permitted to enrich under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT). The U.S. countered with a proposal for a 20-year suspension.
Before Trump had agreed to extend the ceasefire indefinitely, he threatened to destroy Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure. Iran has vowed to retaliate in kind against Gulf Arab states and Israel. A resumption of hostilities promises to bring about extensive regional destruction that would plunge the world into a long-term economic crisis of historic proportions.
Despite saying the U.S. “holds all the cards,” the U.S. and Israel had failed to achieve all of its war aims: overthrowing the Iranian government, destroying its ballistic missiles, seizing a stockpile of 60 percent enriched uranium and its capacity to enrich more.
1917 Again in Russia?
McGovern and Ritter will also discuss the battlefield in Ukraine and the domestic situation in Russia after the leader of the main opposition party, Russian Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, told the State Duma: “If you don’t quickly take measures – financial, economic and other measures -then by autumn what await us is what happened in 1917.”
