Iran’s Cheap, Plentiful Weaponry Puts US Military Under Strain

When the first cruise missiles began detonating inside Iran, the strikes had all the hallmarks of previous successful US military campaigns — unstoppable, overwhelming force delivered without warning.

But as the conflict extends toward a third week, the US war effort is showing unexpected signs of strain against an adversary whose military budget is smaller than the GDP of Vermont — but which has an arsenal of missiles and drones unlike anything the US has ever faced.

US forces have been forced to dig deep into inventories of expensive, hard-to-replace interceptors to counter the Iranian barrage. Even with the Pentagon saying Iran’s attacks are down more than 80%, hard-to-spot anti-aircraft missiles have prevented the total aerial dominance Washington is accustomed to.

“The United States led the long-range precision strike revolution, and this is the first war where we’re seeing the adversary have that kind of capability,” said Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center. “It’s putting stress on the system that we haven’t seen before.”

Tehran is still hitting valuable military installations and energy infrastructure across the Mideast daily, part of its strategy to raise oil prices to economically punishing levels. A strike in the United Arab Emirates near one of the world’s biggest oil refineries halted operations there Tuesday. The following day, the UK navy said three commercial ships had been struck by “projectiles” in the Strait of Hormuz and Persian Gulf. President Donald Trump has warned Iran against placing mines in the strait after reports that it had done so. Iran spent years building its missile and drone arsenals, spreading them around the country and concealing them. Some of its sophisticated ballistic missiles — perfected with designs and technology from China, Russia and North Korea — have broken through US allies’ defenses across the region. Low-cost Shahed-136 drones have forced the US and its allies to use protection systems designed primarily to combat more advanced weapons. The US Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain has been struck by several ballistic missiles and Shaheds, a rare and expensive early warning radar in Qatar was destroyed, and the radar for a $300 million THAAD battery — the most advanced ground-based mobile missile defense system in the US inventory — was hit in Jordan.

“It’s a race to see will our inventories get low before the Iranian missile inventories get low,” said Mark Cancian of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

US officials insist that’s a contest Iran can’t win, but every day that Tehran’s weapons continue to threaten populations, military bases and oil installations across the Middle East, they ratchet up the political pressure on the White House. Leaders around the world are rushing to ensure oil supplies, with the International Energy Agency announcing the largest release of oil reserves in its history. With oil prices spiking to the highest level in four years on Monday, Trump signaled he may be looking for an off-ramp from the conflict, providing some reassurance to financial markets. But the next morning, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said the US was delivering its most intense strikes of the war so far.

“We're crushing the enemy in an overwhelming display of technical skill and military force,” Hegseth said. “We will not relent until the enemy is totally and decisively defeated.”

On Wednesday, Trump said, “We’re not finished yet,” but offered no specific timeline for how long the conflict will last.

Read More: How Iran War Is Disrupting Global Oil and Gas Supply: Explainer

The US hasn’t provided an estimate of how much the campaign is costing, but discussions of as much as $50 billion in additional funding are already underway in Congress. The Washington Post reported Pentagon estimates put the US tab at about $5.6 billion for munitions alone in just the first two days of the war. German defense giant Rheinmetall AG put the total value of munitions used by the US in the first 72 hours at $4 billion, including about 400 cruise missiles and 800 air defense interceptors.

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