waggawoody wrote on Mar 20
th, 2026 at 6:09am:
Brilliant analysis.
Ritter, it needs to be said, is a pro-Russian agent. He's heading over to Russia to advise Vlad on how he can capitalize on DL's failure in Iran.
Vlad will too. He's now rearming with the billions in oil revenue he's currently raking in each day. Ritter's heading over to consult - obviously for a well-earned fee. His little donations pitch at the end was pretty cute.
Still, Scott Ritter's knowledge of Iran's capabilities is unquestionable. His prediction on Trump's next moves is prescient:
1. Withdrawal from Iran and the middle east
2. A retreat to the so-called Western Hemisphere
3. An invasion of Cuba
The Don's Palm Beach crowd has been egging him to invade Havana for years.
Iran, with a population of 92 million, has over a million well-trained troops. Cuba has less than nine million people, most of them old, and a ragtag army of 50,000 - tops. Which fight's the bully going to pick?
Trump's retreat from the middle east will leave Iran triumphant. The regime intact, they now hold sway over the Gulf states, the Saudis, Iraq and Syria. They can bully, berate, bore and pretty much demand any concessions they want. Iran now holds a sword over the entire middle east.
As Ritter points out, Iran has saved its biggest, and most creative, missiles for later. Iran has shown it can get around Israel's Iron Dome defence shield. Accurate Israeli casualties have not been published, but Iran has done significant damage - just enough to prove its capacity to cause significant harm.
The Gulf states are bent over, their arses exposed. Their biggest beef now is with Uncle, not Iran. Israel and America started all this.
Iran can legitimately say its strikes have been defensive. The strikes on Saudi and other military installations are a proportionate response. The hotels in Dubai and Abu Dhabi housed US officers and military contractors. The neighbourhoods in Tel Aviv held military targets. Iran is under an illegal foreign attack - what's it supposed to do?
The mullahs can even parrot Israel's human shield case back to them. Any future attacks can be "pre-emptive". Israel has nukes, refuses inspections, refuses to even confirm their existence. By its own rhetoric, this makes Israel a legitimate target for invasion.
Ritter is right to end on diplomacy. The US has lost this war, its only way out is a deal. Ritter is optimistic that Iran will put its nuclear ambitions on the table, but why not? Iran already had a deal under Obama, and according to the UN AEA, were compliant. Iran can say sure, we give up on the nukes, we want sanctions removed. Trump would be a fool not to go ahead with it - anything to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
But that would be the sensible thing to do.
Iran has already won the war. It has shown it can bring down the global economy with conventional weapons alone - or no weapons at all.
From now on, all Iran has to do to stop shipping is
threaten attacks. This prevents exports from the Arabian Gulf - a third of the world's fuel, fertilizer, plastics and other essential chemicals.
All Iran has to do to stop business is
threaten strikes. This conflict has destroyed the Emirates, Qatari and Saudi tourist economies for the next year at least. Sporting events cancelled, airline routes changed, travel plans scrapped. Even future foreign guest workers will be weighing up the risk. One of the world's biggest transit and tourist hubs - ghosted.
The enmity the Gulf states must now feel towards Israel and the US upends the legacy of Trump term 1. To save their own necks politically, Netanyahu and Trump have given up on the premise of the Abraham accords: security through economic growth. The truly wealthy can retreat to Kensington, Monaco and Santa Monica. But the upper-middle cliques of Abu Dhabi, Doha, Dubai and Kuwait City have just been brought down to earth.
Most of them live in high-rise apartments, ripe for the picking. They have no military defense whatsoever. Iran has just shown the world what it's capable of, and now, Trump is planning on leaving them high and dry.
US plans for withdrawal have already begun - the USS Gerald Ford just pulled out, forced to retreat to
Malta for repairs.
After all the gold medals, the billions of bribes in TrumpCoin, the Trump property-licensing deals, the Qatari 747 - Donnie plans to leave them stranded.
The Gulf states must now know how the Kurds felt in Syria. Iranian Kurds learned their lesson well, refusing to get involved in any plans made by Trump. They know he'd drop them in a heartbeat, and they know they can't possibly defeat the Revolutionary Guard alone.
The Trump brand will never have the same status it once held to the sheiks. Instead, it now reeks of lies, duplicity, backstabbing and betrayal. You know, pretty much how the rest of the world's known Trump since the 1980s.
The obsession of nouvelle-rich Gulf Arabs with gaudy displays of wealth may have run its course. Recessions tend to do that. With the oil wells and gas plants shut down, what else are you going to do?
For Trump, it's off to invade Cuba. But for the middle east, things will never be the same.
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