(CNN) — Just days before the Iran war began, the United States’ top military official, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, expressed misgivings.
One of Caine’s biggest concerns? How war with Iran could further deplete munitions stockpiles that had already been reduced by helping Ukraine and Israel in their wars in recent years, The Washington Post and CNN reported.
That warning is looking increasingly prescient and pivotal, as the Trump administration struggles to wind down a war that has lasted much longer than it previewed.
But the administration is struggling to reconcile exactly where things stand on the all-important issue of munitions.
On the one hand, it has claimed the US has more than enough munitions — even that Trump has vastly increased the munitions and that the number is “unlimited.” On the other, it has blamed the Biden administration for depleting the stockpiles and asked for a ton of money to help replenish them, while warning about shortfalls if Congress fails to provide it.
“We’re in very good shape,” Trump said Monday. “But for some of the more sophisticated stuff, we’d certainly like to have more. (Former President Joe) Biden gave a lot of it away.”
The president claimed his predecessor had given away “numbers that nobody’s ever seen before.”
US Ambassador to the United Nations Michael Waltz’s interview on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” on Sunday was also a case in point for the administration’s confusing messaging.
When asked about reporting from CNN and others that Caine had again raised concerns about the stockpile in recent days — shortly before the US paused its strikes on Iran on Friday — Waltz, like Trump, blamed the Biden administration.
“(Defense) Secretary (Pete) Hegseth inherited a depleted situation from not only Ukraine, but also the ongoing fight with the Houthis under the Biden administration, and a depleted military under the Biden administration,” Waltz said.
But when pressed by NBC’s Kristen Welker on whether he was admitting the stockpiles were indeed depleted, Waltz claimed he wasn’t.
“No, I want to be crystal clear: The US military — and I’ve verified this every which way — has everything that it needs to conduct this campaign as effectively as it needs to be,” he said.
Waltz’s comment walks a fine line.
As CNN has reported, the risk with the munitions stockpile isn’t so much that the United States won’t have enough to finish prosecuting the Iran war; it’s in how much the war might deplete the stockpile for future wars the United States might feel compelled to get involved in.
That includes exigencies like if China were to invade Taiwan. A depleted US stockpile could even embolden China to do something it might not otherwise attempt.
The administration’s confusing comments about munitions date to the earliest days of the conflict with Iran.
After multiple reports about such concerns around the time the war started, the administration dismissed the issue out of hand.
“We have massive amounts of ammunition,” Trump said on March 4.
Hegseth added March 5 that there was “no shortage of munitions” and that “our munitions are full up.”
“We have tremendous amounts of ammunition,” Trump said March 26, adding that “we’re packed.”
But even in his March 4 comments, the president also seemed to suggest — as he did Monday — that certain types of munitions could be an issue.
While he said the United States had “unlimited middle and upper ammunition,” he cast the “high end” munitions slightly differently. There, he said, “we gave away a lot of high end, but we have plenty.”
By April 21, CNN reported that classified Pentagon data aligned with a Center for Strategic and International Studies analysis showing sharp declines in some of those “high end” munitions. The analysis said the administration had used at least 45% of its Precision Strike Missiles, at least half of its THAAD missiles, almost 50% of its Patriot air defense interceptor missiles and about 30% of its Tomahawk land-attack missiles.
By April 30, Hegseth at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing seemed to confirm it would take “months and years” to replenish certain types of munitions (before trying to emphasize the “months” rather than “years”).
At a House hearing May 12, Hegseth said the munitions issue had been “foolishly and unhelpfully overstated” in the media, saying, “We have plenty of what we need.”
But Caine was more circumspect at the same hearing. He merely said that the military had “sufficient munitions for what we’re tasked to do right now” — with the phrase “right now” potentially looming large.
By June, Hegseth told CBS’ “Face the Nation” that “our stockpiles are great, and they’re only getting stronger” — despite having said less than two months earlier that it would take months or years to replenish them.
But then, while asking Congress for more money at a Senate hearing last week, Hegseth said that without the money, “we face critical shortfalls that threaten our ability to … rapidly replenish equipment and munitions.”
At the same hearing, Appropriations Chairwoman Susan Collins in her opening statement twice cited “shortfalls” in munitions and said they had been “known to this committee for some time.” Hegseth did not correct the Maine Republican.
The munitions issue is undoubtedly a difficult one.
On the one hand, it’s potentially alarming if the administration is significantly depleting important types of high-end munitions — especially by continuing to use them in an unpopular war that doesn’t seem to be nearing an end.
It’s a bit like throwing good money after bad. And replacing those munitions, as Hegseth acknowledged at one point, isn’t just a matter of money; it’s also a matter of the time it takes to produce them.
That raises the prospect that the Iran war hasn’t just been a lost cause, but also that it has potentially harmed national security and the United States’ ability to deter nefarious foreign actors in the near-term future.
On the other hand, if the munitions are being significantly depleted, it’s not particularly helpful to the US for those foreign actors to know that.
Whatever the true state of the munitions stockpile, it’s a sleeping giant of an issue for the Trump administration.
It’s one that not only looms large over how long the administration can continue the Iran war. But it could also linger over American foreign policy whenever the war concludes.
The-CNN-Wire
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