As America’s war with Iran enters its fifth month, the U.S. military is running out of munitions — or maybe it’s not.
Over the weekend, NBC’s Kristen Welker asked U.N. Ambassador Mike Waltz about press reports that President Donald Trump called off a major military strike against Iran because U.S. munitions stockpiles were depleted.
“A lot of our stockpiles were depleted because of Biden,” he said.
But, asked if he was acknowledging that stockpiles were depleted, Waltz said, “No.”
No one has flip-flopped on this topic quite like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Confused? Join the club. Since the beginning of this conflict, Trump administration officials have been performing this rhetorical tap dance.
“We’re in very good shape,” Trump said on Monday about America’s munitions supply. But then he added that “for some of the more sophisticated stuff, we’d certainly like to have more. Biden gave a lot of it away.”
But no one has flip-flopped on this topic quite like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. In the first days of the Iran war, he declared that there was “no shortage of munitions” and that “our munitions are full up.” In April, however, he told lawmakers it would take months or years to replenish America’s weapons supplies. In June, he went back to his earlier position, saying on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that America’s munitions “stockpiles “are great, and they’re only getting stronger.” And in congressional testimony last week, Hegseth couched the administration’s Pentagon budget request of$1.5 trillion by attacking the Biden administration for “four years of underinvestment and mismanagement.”
If all of this seems contradictory, it’s because it is. The Trump administration clearly wants to hide that it went to war with a diminished supply of weapons and now, as the conflict drags on, this precarious and completely foreseeable situation is directly influencing the administration’s decision-making.
Indeed, reports of diminished supplies started circulating well before the Iran war began. In July 2025, the Pentagon held up arms shipments to Ukraine over concerns that military stockpiles had declined too dramatically.
In February, days before the war began, The Washington Post reported that Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, cautioned Trump and his top aides that “any major operation against Iran will face challenges because the U.S. munitions stockpile has been significantly depleted by Washington’s ongoing defense of Israel and support for Ukraine.”
Just this past April, the Pentagon asked Congress for a 42% increase in military spending to $1.5 trillion, with 52% of the total request focused on purchases of “munitions, planes, tanks and ships.”
U.S. stockpiles were declining before Trump took office, but the Trump administration has made the situation far worse.
In other words, the White House was well aware that munitions stockpiles were depleted. And Trump’s team knew that, in an extended conflict, the shortfalls could impinge on the military’s ability to wage war against Tehran. It’s no wonder that now, the administration is seesawing between blaming former President Joe Biden for the problem and denying the problem exists at all.
Even the Trump administration’s criticism of the previous administration is highly dubious. U.S. stockpiles were declining before Trump took office, but the Trump administration has made the situation far worse.
Upon his confirmation as defense secretary, Hegseth signed a directive removing constraints on overseas commanders to order airstrikes. At the time, CBS News described the move as an effort to give “commanders greater latitude to decide whom to target while relaxing the multi-layered centralized control former President Joe Biden implemented over airstrikes and raids by American special operation forces.” On X, Hegseth linked to the CBS report with one word: “Correct.”
In the near-term, U.S. strikes on al-Shabab Islamic rebels in the Horn of Africa substantially increased. Moreover, Gen. Michael Kurilla, head of U.S. Central Command, asked for authority to conduct a long-term campaign against air defense systems of Houthi rebels in Yemen, followed by targeted assassinations. The Biden administration had denied Kurilla’s request to escalate; Hegseth gave the go ahead.
The subsequent air campaign used more than $200 million of munitions in the first three weeks alone. The attacks soaked up so many precision munitions that U.S. military planners grew concerned about dwindling supplies of weapons and the possible need to move long-range missiles from the Asia-Pacific region to the Middle East. Trump eventually pulled the plug on the operation in April with little to show for the massive use of military force.
That sounds a lot like where things are heading with Iran — with none of the major U.S. objectives achieved and Iran, arguably, in a stronger strategic position than it was before the war. As in Yemen, the administration went to war against Iran without a good plan for success — only an incoherent belief that dropping enough bombs and killing enough people would solve everything.
Along the same lines, the Post reported this week on a Drug Enforcement Administration assessment finding that U.S. airstrikes on drug boats, which have killed more than 220 alleged drug smugglers, “had failed to affect the supply or price of cocaine in the United States and had led traffickers to diversify” their smuggling tactics.
There’s a consistent theme here: the Trump administration orders a ramp-up in military action — or, as Hegseth likes to call it, “lethality.” The military efforts fail to achieve the stated military goals. Rinse, wash, repeat. No wonder the Trump administration wants to deny the obvious and blame everyone else for their problems — when it comes to fighting wars, they haven’t got a clue.
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