DID Press: Scott Ritter, former US Navy intelligence officer and UN weapons inspector in Iraq, has cautioned that maintaining Patriot missile defense systems in the Middle East amid escalating Iranian attacks amounts to “suicide” for deployed forces.
Speaking to TASS, Ritter argued that the scale and intensity of Iran’s strikes reveal prior assessments of Tehran’s military capabilities were underestimated. He added that keeping the systems in their current positions and relying on automatic modes accelerates missile depletion, reflecting a lack of precise planning at the outset of the conflict.
Ritter also compared the situation to Ukraine, noting that Iran targets a wider array of objectives than Russia has in its selective military operations, underscoring the elevated threat to U.S. and allied forces.