Scott Ritter Says Iran Deliberately Showed U.S. Military Their Fast Attack Boats For ONE Dark Reason

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:00]Forget everything the mainstream media has told you about what is happening in the straight of Hormuz right now.

[00:00:08]Because this morning, the 10th of May, 2026, the Islamic Republic of Iran did something so strategically reckless, so operationally revealing that it has fundamentally changed the calculus of this entire conflict.

[00:00:28]They didn't hide. They didn't conceal.

[00:00:32]They didn't disperse.

[00:00:34]Instead, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps took 130 fast attack boats, the backbone of their remaining asymmetric naval capability, and placed them in two massive, tightly coordinated formations in plain sight, visible from orbit, visible to every intelligence system, every commercial satellite platform, every analyst with a laptop. top and a Sentinel 2 subscription.

[00:01:08]And I want you to understand something with absolute clarity before we go any further. This was not an accident. This was not a mistake. This was a deliberate, calculated decision made at the highest levels of the Iranian military apparatus.

[00:01:26]The IRGC just handed the United States military the exact targeting coordinates of their own fleet.

[00:01:37]And the question I'm going to answer for you today is why and what happens next.

[00:01:45]In my years working military intelligence, I've seen a lot of things that didn't add up on the surface. But I've sat in rooms where analysts argued over imagery, debated intent, tried to separate signal from noise. What landed this morning in those fresh Sentinel 2 images is not ambiguous. There is no debate to be had about what we're looking at.

[00:02:14]130 fast attack vessels positioned near Keshum and the Rock Islands arranged in formations so deliberate, so unmistakably geometric that they could only have been placed that way on purpose.

[00:02:29]The IRGC's so-called mosquito fleet, the asymmetric naval force Iran has spent decades building as its primary deterrent against American naval power in the Persian Gulf is now sitting in the open, exposed, photographed, cataloged, and almost certainly already loaded into every targeting system the United States military operates in the theater.

[00:03:00]At the exact same moment those images dropped, United States Central Command responded with its own imagery release.

[00:03:09]F-16 Vipers flying active sorties over the straight. FA18 Super Hornets on combat air patrol from the decks of the Abraham Lincoln, the George HW Bush and the Gerald R. Ford. the largest concentration of American carrier aviation ever assembled in the Persian Gulf. AH64 Apache attack helicopters operating in the very same waters where just 7 days ago on the 3rd of May, they sent the first wave of IRGC fast attack boats straight to the bottom of the sea.

[00:03:50]two simultaneous image releases. One from Iran showing what it still possesses, one from the United States showing precisely what will answer it.

[00:04:02]Let me be clear about what this is. And this is not normal military movement.

[00:04:08]This is a deliberate visual conversation, a strategic dialogue conducted not through diplomatic back channels in Doha or Islamabad, but through satellite imagery released in real time for the entire world to see. And I have been watching strategic communications long enough to tell you exactly what each side is saying.

[00:04:37]The reality is that before this conflict began 71 days ago, Iran operated more than 160 naval vessels of various classes. Their conventional navy included frigots, corvettes, and larger surface combatants that could at least theoretically challenge American destroyers in open water. That capability has been systematically dismantled.

[00:05:07]What you are looking at in those Sentinel 2 images is not a show of strength. I want you to understand this point with total clarity because the mainstream media will not frame it this way. What you are looking at is a confession.

[00:05:28]130 boats in open formation is Iran's way of saying this is what we have left.

[00:05:35]This is the remnant, the survivors, the mosquito fleet that has been fighting and bleeding for 71 days while everything else was stripped away by American air power, missile strikes, and the most devastating naval campaign the Persian Gulf has seen in modern history.

[00:05:58]By bringing these boats together in plain sight, the IRGC is simultaneously demonstrating their remaining asymmetric capability and admitting to anyone who understands military operations that their traditional naval power has been largely destroyed.

[00:06:19]They no longer have the luxury of conventional deterrence. So they have fallen back on visibility itself as a weapon.

[00:06:31]They are gambling that showing us what remains will make us hesitate before eliminating it. That gamble tells us as much about their weakness as it does about their remaining threat potential.

[00:06:48]Now do not misunderstand me. I am not dismissing these boats. Having served in military intelligence and studied asymmetric naval doctrine extensively, I can tell you without hesitation that 130 fast attack vessels represent a real dangerous and tactically significant threat. That would be an act of criminal negligence to underestimate.

[00:07:17]These are classic IRGC mosquito fleet units.

[00:07:21]Most of them run between 60 and 75 feet in length, powered by diesel engines, capable of reaching 50 to 60 knots. That speed is not trivial in the confined narrow waters of the straight of Hormuz where the navigable channel for large warships is less than two miles wide in certain sections. That kind of speed creates genuine tactical problems for American surface combatants.

[00:07:52]These vessels are armed with 107 mm rockets, 127 mm heavy machine guns, and 23mm autoc cannons. Several variants carry the C 802 anti-ship missile, a Chinese origin weapon that skims the sea surface at subsonic speed, carries a 160 kg warhead, and has a range of approximately 100 kilometers. That is a genuine ship killer. That is a weapon system that under the right conditions can punch a hole in a destroyer.

[00:08:33]I am not telling you these boats are harmless. I am telling you something far more important. I am telling you exactly how the IRGC intends to use them and why that intention, as dangerous as it is, is not going to produce the outcome they are hoping for.

[00:08:55]The doctrine behind these vessels is called swarm tactics.

[00:09:01]The concept is deceptively simple but operationally complex to counter. Rather than sending boats in a single file formation that an Aegis combat system can engage sequentially, target fire, target fire. The IRGC doctrine calls for splitting into multiple simultaneous approach vectors from different directions at exactly the same time. Their goal is saturation.

[00:09:33]They want to force American defensive systems to engage so many threats from so many angles simultaneously that the mathematical probability of interception degrades.

[00:09:47]They are betting that sheer volume and vector diversity can overwhelm a point defense architecture that was designed to handle a finite number of simultaneous engagements. In theory, it is a legitimate tactical challenge. In practice, it requires perfect coordination, significant communications infrastructure, and the assumption that the attacking force will survive long enough to reach firing range.

[00:10:21]On the 3d of May, the first wave of IRGC boats discovered what happens when those assumptions collide with Apache gunships and a fullyworked American kill chain.

[00:10:36]They did not reach firing range. They reached the bottom of the straight of Hormuz.

[00:10:43]But here is what I need you to stay with me on because this is where the analysis gets truly significant. The IRGC knows what happened on May 3rd. Every one of those operators sitting in those boats near Keshum right now knows exactly what fate met their colleagues one week ago.

[00:11:05]And yet they are still there sitting in open formation in plain sight waiting.

[00:11:15]That tells you something profound about the internal decisionmaking process happening inside the Iranian military apparatus right now. And I'm going to take you deep inside that process because it is the hidden layer that explains everything happening on the surface.

[00:11:36]Stay with me here because what I'm about to explain about the internal architecture of the Iranian military decision-making chain and the specific individual who may be the most important person in this entire conflict right now is going to completely change how you understand these 130 boats and what they actually represent.

[00:12:03]But first, let me walk you through exactly how the United States military has structured its response to this threat. Because the American answer to 130 fast attack boats is not simply a matter of we have more firepower.

[00:12:22]It is a sophisticated layeredworked killing architecture that begins long before a single boat engine starts and ends with the destruction of the target at whatever point in its engagement envelope makes the most tactical sense.

[00:12:43]The American defensive architecture begins with detection and it begins high above the straight long before any boat moves. The E2D advanced Hawkeye serves as the airborne early warning and battle management platform for the carrier strike groups operating in the Persian Gulf.

[00:13:07]Its powerful radar system paints a complete continuous air and surface picture tracking every vessel, every aircraft, every moving signature in the operating area. That data flows in real time into the kill chain. It does not wait for a decision to be made. It feeds directly into targeting solutions that are continuously updated as the threat picture evolves.

[00:13:36]Supporting the Hawkeye are F-35 Lightning 2s operating with their APG-81 active electronically scanned array radars. These are fifth generation fighters that can simultaneously track dozens of surface targets while remaining effectively invisible to the enemy's detection systems.

[00:13:59]The F-35 does not need to broadcast its position to acquire its targets. It simply sees them, processes them, and shares that data silently through the link 16 network that connects every American platform in the theater, fighter, helicopter, drone, destroyer into a single integrated cohesive combat system.

[00:14:27]That network integration is the decisive edge. It is not any single platform or any single weapon. It is the fact that every asset in the theater operates as one organism rather than as isolated units that must coordinate through voice communications and hope the information gets to the right place at the right time. The RQ4 Global Hawk adds persistent long endurance intelligence use surveillance and reconnaissance coverage from above, orbiting for hours, filling in the gaps when fast attack boats attempt to hide behind islands or use coastal terrain to mask their movement. Nothing in those waters is invisible to this system. Nothing.

[00:15:23]Once boats commit to an attack profile, the tactical response shifts to what I would describe as sector assignment.

[00:15:32]A pre-planned geographic division of the strait into designated kill zones, each assigned to the most suitable platform based on weapons load, range, and threat density in that particular area. If a boat crosses from one sector boundary into another during its approach, engagement responsibility transfers immediately to the platform responsible for the new sector. This prevents wasteful overlap, eliminates coordination delays, and ensures that no target slips through a seam in the response architecture because two platforms were both waiting for the other to engage.

[00:16:18]I want you to think about what that means operationally.

[00:16:23]The IRGC's swarm doctrine depends on creating confusion on overwhelming the defender's decision cycle with more simultaneous threats than the system can process. The sector assignment methodology directly attacks that assumption. It removes the decision cycle from the equation. When a boat enters a kill zone, engagement is automatic. The decision has already been made.

[00:16:54]Now, let me tell you about the platform I want you to remember most when you think about these fast attack boats because it is not the one that will get the most media attention, but it is the one that will define the outcome of any swarm engagement in the straight of Hormuz. It is the A10 Thunderbolt 2.

[00:17:18]That ugly, slow, low-flying titanium armored beast that has been misunderstood by defense analysts for decades and loved without reservation by every ground commander and naval officer who has ever needed close fires.

[00:17:36]Delivered with precision and persistence.

[00:17:40]The A10 carries the GAU8 Avenger, a 30 mm 7barrel Gatling cannon that fires depleted uranium penetrator rounds at 3,900 rounds per minute. A fiberglass hold fast attack boat hit by even a short burst from that weapon system simply ceases to exist as a functional military platform.

[00:18:07]And the A-10's low and slow loiter capability combined with aerial refueling from KC130 tankers allows it to remain on station for the entire duration of a sustained swarm engagement. It was literally designed for exactly this kind of mission. high volume, close-range, persistent surface engagement against maneuvering targets in a confined operating environment.

[00:18:39]Pairing perfectly with the A10 is the AH64 Apache attack helicopter, already proven lethal against IRGC fast attack boats in this very conflict. On May 3rd, the Apache's Hellfire missiles can reach out and destroy boats at ranges where the boat's own weapons cannot touch them.

[00:19:04]The helmet-mounted targeting system allows Apache pilots to engage targets by looking at them. an enormous tactical advantage in the chaotic, disorienting visual environment of a high-speed surface engagement in the confined waters of the straight.

[00:19:26]But if you think the most significant American option is the one that fires after the boats are already moving, you are not seeing the full picture. And the full picture is what separates real military analysis from the commentary you will find on cable television.

[00:19:47]The most strategically significant American option is not in the water and it is not in the air above the straight.

[00:19:55]It is on land or rather it is the option of striking the boats before they ever leave their staging areas.

[00:20:05]The GBU72, the 5,000lb bunker busting penetrator, has already been employed effectively in this conflict against hardened coastal missile sites and underground infrastructure. That same weapon can be delivered against the coes, pens, and command nodes that prepare and coordinate IRGC swarm attacks.

[00:20:33]A boat destroyed in its shelter before the crew receives the launch order never joins the formation. It never reaches the straight. It never forces a single Aegis system to calculate an intercept solution.

[00:20:49]And here is the operational reality that the IRGC leadership is sitting with this morning. the reality that I suspect is causing far more anxiety in Thran than any of the public statements would suggest.

[00:21:07]By releasing those Sentinel 2 images, by arranging their boats in those deliberate, clearly visible formations near Keshum and the Rock Islands, Iran has provided the United States military with the precise locations of every remaining significant naval asset they possess. Those coordinates are now locked into every American targeting system operating in the theater. The option to neutralize them before they disperse, before they scatter back into coastal hiding places and force another week's long cat-and- mouse game is not theoretical. It is a live planning calculation being run right now by mission planners across the theater.

[00:22:00]F-16 Wild Weasels, F-35s, B1B Lancers, all of them already operating in theater. All of them already aware of exactly where those 130 boats are sitting.

[00:22:18]You think you've heard the worst of it.

[00:22:21]You haven't. Not even close.

[00:22:25]Because what I haven't told you yet is the hidden internal fracture inside the Iranian military and political establishment that is driving this entire display and the one man who may hold the key to whether this morning's satellite imagery becomes a historical footnote or the opening frame of the most dangerous escalation. the Persian Gulf has witnessed since Operation Praying Mantis in 1988.

[00:22:59]That man is Brigadier General Mustapa Salami.

[00:23:04]And if you have never heard that name before, I need you to remember it because he is operating in exactly the space where the next critical decision will be made.

[00:23:16]The boats are in the water. The platforms are in the air. The networks are linked and somewhere inside the Iranian command structure, a man who remembers 1988 is looking at this morning's satellite imagery and calculating them a very different kind of mathematics than the hardliners around him.

[00:23:39]Stay with me because part two is where this story truly unravels and where the outcome of everything you have seen this morning will be decided.