MOSCOW, March 28. /TASS/. Remaining in position for Patriot air defense crews in the Middle East is effectively suicide, Scott Ritter, a former US Marine Corps intelligence analyst and former United Nations arms inspector in Iraq, told TASS in an interview.

He explained that many people did not believe Iran "would be capable of doing what it's doing," but it is now becoming clear that there is no defense against Iran's attacks, and the Iranians themselves "are pressing home their attack in a very aggressive manner."

"It's suicide to stay in place. But the irony is, by putting it on automatic, you expend far more missiles than you would through manual operation. So we’re burning through the inventory even faster. This just proves that we didn’t really think this war out when we started it," Ritter emphasized.

He added that the intensity of the Iranian attack on US air defense is higher than the intensity of Russian strikes on Ukrainian air defense. "The Russians are very selective in their application of violence, the Iranians are more broad spectrum, they're hitting more targets," he added.

The United States and Israel launched a military operation against Iran on February 28. Major Iranian cities, including Tehran, were struck. The White House justified the attack by citing alleged missile and nuclear threats from Iran. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced a retaliatory operation, targeting sites in Israel. US military bases in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were also hit. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and some other key Iranian leaders were killed in the joint US-Israeli attack.