US Ran Low on Missiles in Iran War, Trump and Hegseth Clash

The stock of missiles America used to strike Iran for five months has fallen to a level that, according to US press reports, caught the president himself off guard. The Washington Post reported on August 5, citing two sources familiar with the conversation, that Donald Trump clashed with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the shortage of munitions, and did so in a place rarely associated with confrontation, the presidential retreat at Camp David.

For readers in Serbia this is not a distant administrative matter. How much ammunition Washington still holds will decide whether a new wave of strikes on Iranian positions follows, and that in turn affects the shipping regime through the Strait of Hormuz, whose reopening on two routes and sixty-day deadline we have already covered. Oil moves through that strait, and its price shows up a few steps later at Serbian gas pumps, in freight costs and in food prices.

What happened at Camp David

The clash took place, according to the Washington Post’s sources, on Friday, July 31, on the sidelines of a cabinet meeting. Trump demanded answers about the ammunition shortage and said he thought the issue had already been resolved, adding that he felt misled. Hegseth shifted the blame to his deputy, Steve Feinberg, both for the shortage itself and for the fact that the president had not been briefed on it.

The shortage, the same sources say, was one of the reasons Trump backed away over the weekend from a new round of bombing Iranian positions, a strike he had earlier described as the largest since World War Two. The decision to call it off, then, was not made at the negotiating table but in the warehouse.

How much ammunition has been used

Figures published by US media in recent days sketch out an arsenal draining faster than it can be refilled:

• more than 850 Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired in the first month of the war
• more than 1,000 THAAD interceptors were fired in the same period
• at least 1,300 tactical ballistic missiles were used
• stocks of ATACMS missiles have fallen to practically zero, and replacing them takes up to two years to produce

Interceptors are running out on a separate ledger. Reuters reports that between February and July about 65 percent of America’s Patriot interceptors were used up, while CNN estimated on August 4 that close to 80 percent of THAAD interceptor stocks and about half of the Patriots had been spent since the war began. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) estimates the United States held around 2,200 Patriots in its two most advanced versions and 452 THAAD missiles before the war.

Put those two sets of numbers together and you get what nobody in Washington says out loud: a system that for decades guaranteed America could cover Europe, the Gulf and the Pacific at the same time is now having to choose where to spend.

Why does the White House say the conversation never happened?

The response came the same day and it was categorical. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and Pentagon Press Secretary Sean Parnell dismissed the entire story as fabricated, and Leavitt said she had been present at Camp David together with the president and the defense secretary.

This is one hundred percent fake news. It literally never happened.

Leavitt added that the story had been shopped to a number of newsrooms, in her view by someone looking to damage the defense secretary. Trump himself publicly claimed the opposite on August 6 of what is attributed to his conversation with Hegseth, insisting America has enormous quantities of munitions and that a record number of factories are being built.

Our defense companies are producing more munitions right now than ever before.

That sentence does not refute the consumption figures. Production capacity and warehouse inventory are two different things, and the two-year timeline for restocking ATACMS missiles comes from the very industry the president is praising.

Ukraine is footing the bill for the Iran war

The consequence shows up fastest thousands of kilometers from the Persian Gulf. The Patriot interceptors Kyiv has been requesting since spring draw from the same pool that supplies air defense for US bases in the Middle East, leaving Washington without a reserve it could hand over. Trump offered Ukraine a license to produce its own interceptors in early July, only to deny last week that he had agreed to transfer the technology.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky linked the shortage of interceptors to Russian strikes on Kyiv, saying the lack of air defense is encouraging Russia to carry out attacks that cost lives.

Every single day, people’s lives here in Ukraine depend on the resolve of our partners in Europe and America.

What this means for Europe’s side of the ledger

European offices are reading this as confirmation of what has been said in Brussels since the war began: the transatlantic relationship is not a question of political will but of stockpiles. A country that used up 65 percent of its interceptors in five months cannot simultaneously guarantee Gulf security, supply Ukraine and serve as Europe’s air defense reserve.

For the Western Balkans that means discussion of European defense capacity, until recently confined to budget sessions, will increasingly spill into talks about enlargement and candidate country obligations. The next date worth watching is the expiry of the sixty-day deadline for shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, since that is when it will become clear whether Washington has the means to back up its own terms.