Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter discusses the likelihood of a U.S. attack on Iran and the smokescreen of diplomatic progress, how Iran’s recent promise of retaliation has raised the stakes by ensuring limited U.S. strikes would be inadequate, how facts and reason are irrelevant since the neocons in command believe they can generate their own realities, the need for Congress to reduce the level of tension not increase it with their current pending Iran war resolutions, how the War Party’s aggressive rhetoric towards Iran only helps their hardliners, Iran’s nuclear program as pretext for regime change, the dubious origins of the “smoking laptop,” the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons by the U.S. against Iran and the need for American business to demand Congress put an end to the march to war.

MP3 here. (47:29)

Scott Ritter was a Marine Corps intelligence officer from 1984 to 1991 and a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. He is the author of numerous books, including Iraq Confidential (Nation Books, 2005), Target Iran (Nation Books, 2006) and his latest, Waging Peace: The Art of War for the Antiwar Movement (Nation Books, April 2007).