Pentagon Panics That Iran War Will Use Up All Air Defense Supplies

Attacking Iran has severely diminished America’s air defense supplies, a predictable outcome that has Pentagon officials panicking mere days into the conflict.

Donald Trump declared war on Iran without congressional approval early Saturday. He has so far failed to provide a timeline—or clear reason—for U.S. involvement, stressing military leadership in the process.

“The mood here is intense and paranoid,” one person familiar with the situation told The Washington Post Monday.

In the weeks leading up to the explosive hostilities, Trump’s top military adviser—Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dan Caine—warned the White House against such an attack, arguing that it could entangle America in a prolonged conflict.

“There is concern about this lasting more than a few days,” another source told the Post, adding that it often takes several air defense interceptors to stop an incoming missile. “I don’t think people have fully absorbed yet, like, what that has done with stockpiles.”

Representative Adam Smith, the House Armed Services Committee’s ranking member, warned that the war would only serve to further strain U.S. munitions supplies.

“At this point, it’s on. It’s not like we can say: ‘Hey, Iran, we’re out of missile defense systems now so we’re going to pause for a moment. Is that OK?’ It will stretch our ability to defend everything that we need to defend,” Smith told the Post, describing the American resources as “stretched thin.”

Despite his criticism of the offensive, Caine acquiesced to the president’s whims. Over the last month, he assembled the largest military presence in the Middle East since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, a hardware collection across a web of U.S. bases that includes numerous ships—including naval destroyers and aircraft carriers—and more than a dozen jets in the region, reported CNN.

So far, four American soldiers have been killed in the conflict, as have more than 20 Iranian officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The current mobilization is the Trump administration’s second attempt to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, which the White House has claimed is for weapons development. The first attack took place on June 22.

At the time, Trump celebrated that the strike had “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s three nuclear sites, publicly rejecting a battle damage assessment by the Pentagon that determined that the impact of the missile barrage on the larger program was minimal and had only set Iran’s nuclear program back by a few months.

The White House has thus far failed to explain the discrepancy, or why it needs to spend more taxpayer funds attacking a site that has already been eviscerated. In fact, as of Monday morning, Trump still has yet to address the American people regarding the war—a major departure from his predecessors, who immediately recognized the need to justify the case for military intervention.

Before the June attack, Iran had argued that it was seeking uranium for peaceful purposes, such as expanding its nuclear energy program. The nation has undergone years of nuclear site inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, and mere weeks before the U.S. bomb strike had allowed the agency’s inspectors to remain in the country, according to the U.N. entity.

Trump scrapped a potential nuclear deal with Iran during his first term, pulling out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in May 2018.

Fewer than one in three Americans trust Trump a “great deal or quite a bit” to make good decisions with America’s military, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll published Thursday. Just 27 percent said so, while 56 percent of respondents said they trust the president “only a little or not at all.”