Report: Outdated Intel Behind US Airstrike on Iran Girls’ School

https://murica.website/2026/03/report-outdated-intel-behind-us-airstrike-on-iran-girls-school/

U.S. Deploys Largest Middle East Military Build-Up Since 2003 Amid Rising Iran Tensions

https://defensemirror.com/news/41150/U_S__Deploys_Largest_Middle_East_Military_Build_Up_Since_2003_Amid_Rising_Iran_Tensions

#USMilitary #MiddleEast #IranTensions #DonaldTrump #MilitaryDeployment #F16 #F22 #F35 #USSNavy #CarrierStrikeGroup #AWACS #TomahawkMissiles #StraitOfHormuz #NuclearProgramme #MissileDefence

Monday, December 22, 2025

https://activitypub.writeworks.uk/2025/12/monday-december-22-2025/

Tomahawks to Ukraine: The Brink of Nuclear Escalation and NATO’s Twilight

Tomahawks to Ukraine: Scott Ritter Warns of Nuclear War & NATO Collapse | 2025 Analysis

In the shadowed corridors of global power plays, where the line between proxy conflict and outright catastrophe blurs, few voices cut through the noise like Scott Ritter’s. A battle-hardened former U.S. Marine Major, intelligence officer, and UN weapons inspector, Ritter has spent decades dissecting the machinery of war—from the scorched sands of Iraq to the frozen tensions of the Cold War. In a recent interview with Professor Glenn Diesen, host of the “Greater Eurasia” podcast, Ritter lays bare the perilous path the West is treading by considering the transfer of Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine. This isn’t just about hardware; it’s a story of hubris, desperation, and the ghosts of treaties long buried, all converging on a potential nuclear precipice. As Ritter puts it with his trademark bluntness, “We’ve crossed the line already. We are at war with Russia. We just don’t acknowledge it.”

The conversation, aired just days ago amid the ceaseless drumbeat of the Ukraine conflict, unfolds like a thriller scripted by history’s harshest lessons. Diesen, a Norwegian academic specializing in Eurasian geopolitics, probes Ritter on the dual specter haunting 2025: the U.S. flirtation with exporting Tomahawks—those storied cruise missiles born in the Reagan era—and the looming expiration of the New START Treaty, the last bulwark against an unchecked nuclear arms race. At stake? Nothing less than the fragile equilibrium that’s kept Armageddon at bay since 1945.

Let’s start with the Tomahawk itself, that sleek harbinger of precision strikes, which Ritter knows intimately from his Gulf War days. Developed in the late 1970s as a response to Soviet intermediate-range threats, the Tomahawk family boasts air-launched, sea-launched, and once, infamously, ground-launched variants. The ground version, deployed to Europe in the early 1980s, was a direct counter to the Soviet SS-20 missile, tipping the scales in a theater where escalation could spiral into oblivion. “These were extraordinarily destabilizing,” Ritter recalls, echoing the rationale behind the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, signed by Reagan and Gorbachev. That pact, a cornerstone of arms control, mandated the destruction of all such systems—over 2,000 missiles in total—eliminating ground-launched intermediates from Europe’s arsenal. For official details, the treaty’s text remains a sobering read on the U.S. State Department’s archives: https://2009-2017.state.gov/t/avc/trty/102360.htm.

But history, as Ritter laments, is a cycle of unlearning. In 2019, under Trump, the U.S. withdrew from the INF, citing Russian violations with the 9M729 missile—a claim Moscow vehemently denied. Weeks later, the U.S. tested a ground-launched Tomahawk from a Mk 41 launcher, the very system now dotting NATO’s eastern flank in Poland and Romania under the guise of “missile defense.” Today, with Ukraine’s front lines bleeding dry, whispers in Washington and Brussels suggest funneling these missiles through a NATO ally like the Netherlands, which has inked a deal for hundreds by 2028. Ritter scoffs at the hype: “It’s an old system… they can shoot it down.” Drawing from classified insights he can’t fully disclose, he reveals its spotty record—from blanketing Iraq’s Taji facility with scores of Tomahawks in 1991 without total destruction, to the 2017 Syria strikes where most were intercepted or missed.

Yet capability isn’t the core peril; perception is. To Russia, a Tomahawk streaking from Ukrainian soil isn’t just conventional—it’s nuclear-capable, evoking Cold War decapitation scenarios where Pershing II missiles and Tridents would gut Soviet command in a first strike. “How do you know it’s not nuclear?” Ritter asks, his voice laced with the gravity of someone who’s inspected WMDs under fire. Moscow’s updated nuclear doctrine, signed by Putin in November 2024, explicitly treats attacks by non-nuclear states backed by nuclear powers as acts of nuclear aggression, warranting full-spectrum retaliation. For a deeper dive, the Arms Control Association’s analysis underscores how this lowers the threshold: https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2024-12/news/russia-revises-nuclear-use-doctrine.

This isn’t abstract saber-rattling. Ukraine, in Russian strategic calculus, is no mere buffer—it’s the “fist in the Russian womb,” as Ritter vividly puts it. Soviet-era infrastructure sprawls across what was once shared territory; NATO’s eastward creep has stripped away that depth, leaving Moscow’s heartland exposed. Recall December 2021: Russian demands to bar long-range NATO weapons in Ukraine were rebuffed, igniting the February invasion. Now, Tomahawks targeting drone factories in Kazan or missile plants in Votkinsk? Ritter estimates 60-100 missiles per site, with no guarantees—and that’s before Russian S-400s vector in. Politically, it’s dynamite: a strike on the Kremlin or St. Petersburg would mirror if Russia armed Venezuela to hit the White House. “We’d eliminate them forever,” Ritter says, unflinching.

Diesen presses: When does proxy become direct? Ritter’s answer is a gut punch: “We’ve crossed that line already.” U.S. intelligence, targeting data, and even F-16 pilots embed this as a de facto war. Trump, once vocally against ATACMS (those shorter-range kin to Tomahawks), now entertains escalation via proxies. Why the flip? Desperation, Ritter argues, born of a regime-change fantasy that’s crumbled. Since Putin’s 2000 election—narrow, democratic, not dictatorial—the West has schemed containment: the Obama “reset” to sideline him, CIA ops like Nemtsov, sanctions to starve Russia post-2014 Crimea. The 2022 “special military operation” was Moscow’s red line on NATO expansion; instead, the West bet on collapse. It backfired spectacularly.

Russia didn’t fold. Sanctions boomeranged, forging BRICS ties and a war economy humming with Sarmat ICBMs and hypersonic Avangards—systems designed to evade U.S. defenses. Putin, at Valdai in October 2025, exuded four hours of unyielding confidence: a leader who’s rebuilt from Yeltsin’s ashes, crediting himself (as Gorbachev once did) with averting 2000s implosion. Western hawks like Keith Kellogg and Marco Rubio, blinded by Russophobia, cling to delusions of coups among “disenchanted elites.” Ritter dismantles this: “Nonsense. Western fantasy land.” With Putin’s approval north of 80%, who’d replace him? A pliable Yeltsin 2.0? Unlikely—and destabilizing for all.

This myopia infects policy. CIA Russophobes peddle weakness: “Putin’s bluffing,” they whisper, ignoring Russia’s attrition mastery. Why no decapitation strike on Kyiv, as foreign generals at Valdai puzzled? Ritter invokes Slavic kinship: Ukraine is the “third sister” to Russia and Belarus, astray but redeemable. “You don’t kill your sister,” he says. The goal? Denazify the nationalist regime, reintegrate under the “Slavic trilogy”—not raze a hero city like Kyiv, scarred by WWII’s Nazi horrors. Western shock-and-awe contrasts sharply; America would’ve “blown it into ashes.”

Europe, meanwhile, teeters on twin horns: escalate to survive, or fold and fracture. NATO’s post-Cold War atrophy—coasting on U.S. largesse—leaves it hollow. Germany’s €100 billion military infusion in 2022 vanished without a dent; France cycles prime ministers, the UK implodes under Starmer. A RAND study on escalation risks warns of NATO’s deterrence gaps exposed by Ukraine: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_briefs/RBA2800/RBA2807-1/RAND_RBA2807-1.pdf. Ritter predicts collapse: “NATO doesn’t have the ability to reconstitute… It’s too expensive.” The EU, buying elections in Romania and Moldova but flopping in Czechia and Poland, fares no better. Without Russia as foe, transatlantic bonds fray; with it, Europe remilitarizes into dependency and decline.

Diesen floats the silver lining: New START. Extended to 2026 in 2021, this treaty caps deployed warheads at 1,550 per side, with inspections fostering trust. Official U.S. reports affirm its security value: https://www.state.gov/new-start-treaty. But February 5, 2026, looms. Putin’s September 2025 moratorium offer—a one-year hold on caps—met Trump’s vague nod, but Rubio’s State Department gutting (1,300 jobs axed) stalls progress. Without it, U.S. Minuteman IIIs triple warheads overnight; Tridents swell. Russia, with modern Sarmats skirting the South Pole, is primed; America panics from weakness.

Ritter’s verdict? An arms race we can’t win, fueled by “stupidity.” Biden’s circle eyed nuclear war last fall, per CIA odds on ATACMS; Trump inherits that deep-state echo. War games invariably end in total exchange—no “limited” nukes. “Society will be destroyed. Democracy dead,” as one admiral admitted. Yet hawks posture: “Peace through strength.” It’s La La Land, Ritter sighs—embarrassed leaders seeking face-saves, ignoring Putin’s olive branch.

This isn’t inevitability; it’s choice. Congress blocked ATACMS transfers; it must for Tomahawks. Europe must ditch Ukraine fantasies—never theirs to “own”—and push arms control, tabling UK/French nukes for multilateral talks. Russia awaits: end the defeatist policy, coexist in multipolarity. As Diesen notes, reconsider “strategic defeat” of the world’s top nuclear power before we all pay.

Ritter’s words linger like fallout: “This is a very dangerous situation.” In 2025’s chill winds, his interview isn’t alarmism—it’s a clarion. Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mA1vsz5dq7s. For academic ballast, CSIS’s missile threat database details Tomahawk’s evolution: https://missilethreat.csis.org/missile/tomahawk/. And on NATO’s fraying, this structural realist lens: https://journalisslp.com/index.php/isslp/article/view/330.

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#NATODecline #nuclearDoctrine #TomahawkMissiles

Monday, November 3, 2025

https://activitypub.writeworks.uk/2025/11/monday-november-3-2025/

Pentagon cleared giving #Ukraine long-range #TomahawkMissiles , leaving final decision to Trump | CNN Politics

https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/31/politics/pentagon-tomahawks-trump-ukraine

Monday, October 27, 2025

https://activitypub.writeworks.uk/2025/10/monday-october-27-2025/

Friday, October 24, 2025

https://activitypub.writeworks.uk/2025/10/friday-october-24-2025/

Let's talk about Tomahawk Missiles and Ukraine.

https://youtu.be/G6LHywoGw6k
#tomahawkmissiles #ukrainewar #typhoon #usmilitary