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Donald Trump Told Us He Was Warned about the Missile Shortage Before He Started the Iran War
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There have been three important stories about the missile shortage that currently prevents Trump from trying to reverse the humiliating defeat he has suffered in Iran.First, WaPo describing a spat at Camp David, in which Trump laid into Whiskey Pete Hegseth because Trump’s Fox News Host didn’t tell him about the missile shortages.
President Donald Trump’s frustration over the Iran war boiled over at Camp David last week, where he demanded answers from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on why he had apparently been misled on extreme munitions shortages that now threaten to limit military options with Iran, two people familiar with the exchange told The Washington Post.
The encounter took place on the sidelines of his Cabinet meeting at Camp David on Friday where Trump vented at Hegseth that he thought the munitions issue “had been fixed,” according to both people familiar with the conversation, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation.
The shortages, particularly in long-range guided missiles and air-defense interceptors, have been part of the reason Trump has pulled back from launching additional massive strikes against Iran in recent days, one of the sources said.
[snip]
Back at Camp David, as he was confronted by Trump over the bare weapons stockpile, Hegseth defended himself and blamed his deputy, Stephen Feinberg, for the shortages and for not ensuring Trump was fully apprised of the issue, both people familiar said.
The exchange underscored Trump’s increasing frustration with his defense secretary, who was one of the biggest early advocates for taking military action against Iran, convincing Trump it would be a quick and relatively easy win, according to multiple officials.
The story has been updated to reflect the aftermath: Sean Parnell’s accusations that the story is not true, multiple statements affirming Trump’s support for his Crusader Secretary of Defense, Trump’s insistence both that the US has all the missiles it needs and that the people who said differently committed treason.
The especially weird part of Parnell and Karoline Leavitt’s attempt to deny the flap, though, is shouldn’t the President be angry with a Secretary of Defense who conducted the war in such a dumbass way, losing the war while blowing the missile reserves?
And in case Trump’s threats to hunt down the people who revealed the missile shortage — which has been publicly reported over and over and over — didn’t already make clear the shortage is real, midway through the week there was the Reuters story that said almost all long range missiles are gone.
The U.S. Army has used up much of its global stockpile of highly accurate long-range missiles during its five-month war with Iran, according to three people familiar with the data, raising concerns about the military’s readiness for future conflicts.
The missiles are principally the Army’s surface-to-surface weapons, known as Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) and Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM). The U.S. has used “virtually all” of these weapons, according to two of the sources.
CNN matched with a story saying that nearly 80% of THAAD interceptors are gone.
Finally there’s the CNN story describing that Dan Caine wants to find an off-ramp from the Iran war because of the missile shortage.
Over the last few weeks, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Dan Caine has privately made clear to other top Trump advisers that the US needs to find an off-ramp from the war with Iran — because the military options on the table to escalate the conflict could backfire and airpower alone is unlikely to achieve President Donald Trump’s stated objectives, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
“Caine is looking for an off ramp,” one of the sources said bluntly.
Caine is not alone in his view that the war has reached a crossroads. He has discussed concerns about the military options for escalating the conflict and raised the prospect of finding an off-ramp from the war with other key Cabinet officials, including CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance, two of the sources said.
The top US general has recently side-barred with some of those key, like-minded Trump advisers in an effort to facilitate interagency coordination and ensure they are on the same page ahead of meetings with the president. The aim has been to make clear the limitations and pitfalls of the available military options, including those that do not involve putting US boots on the ground, the sources said.
Thanks in part to the squealing Trump and Sean Parnell are doing, the buzz has focused on the recriminations, as if it is unknowable how much of a surprise this missile shortage is.
It’s not. Trump told us himself, on February 23, five days before he started this war. As I laid out in April, after first Axios and then WaPo (including some of the journalists on this week’s story) and also — as I noted when they got subpoenaed — WSJ all warned about the missile shortages, and other risks to the Iran invasion. And that same day, Trump responded.
Mostly, Trump attempted to deny that Caine was against the war. But in the process, he basically said he would decide whether or not to go to war, not Caine.
- I am the one that makes the decision
- [I]f [Caine] is told to do so
- [H]e only knows […] how to WIN
Donald Trump told us on February 23, before he started this war, that he was reading the stories describing that he was warned, including about the missile shortage. And his response was to say that the decision was his, that if we went in spite of the warnings, the decision was his.
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