US resumes Iran war with air, sea, ground-ready troops in place

www.offthepress.com

President Donald Trump vowing Wednesday to intensify air strikes against Iran – after the sides traded attacks the day before and him declaring the countries’ roughly three-week ceasefire “over” – has the U.S. appearing to be returning to war footing.

“We’re gonna hit ’em hard tonight,” Trump said at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, after conceding to reporters hours earlier about the ceasefire, “To me, I think it’s over. I don’t want to deal with them.”

The return, as expected, has raised immediate concerns from economic – like will gas prices skyrocket again? – to military ones such as: Does the U.S. have enough air, sea and ground-ready assets in place and enough munitions, after months of rocket attacks that started Feb. 28?

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth testified to Congress in May that the U.S. has enough munitions, amid such military concerns.

“The munitions issue has been foolishly and unhelpfully overstated,” he said. “We have all the munitions needed to execute what we need to execute.”

The concern appears to be more about the next battles.

A Center for Strategic and International Studies published in June found the U.S. has enough missiles to continue fighting Operation Epic Fury “under any plausible scenario.” However, the report also stated “the risk – which will persist for many years – lies in future wars,” according to CBC News.

The U.S. began moving assets into the Middle East in late winter – including the over 2,000 Marines and sailors aboard the USS Tripoli, amid attacks on ships going through the region’s Strait of Hormuz – a key, international shipping channel for oil and natural gas. Along with the Tripoli, a Navy assault ship, came aviation assets and equipment for troops to launch amphibious landings and rapid-response combat missions, according to Military.com.

Elements of the 82nd Airborne Division also have reportedly been deployed to the region including a unit trained for emergency-response operations and early-stage combat deployments.

Despite intermittent skirmishes since the start of the war. Iran and the U.S. signed a Memorandum of Understanding in mid-June that was meant to extend the ceasefire by 60-days while the combatants negotiated a longer-term agreement.

The deal collapsed, however, amid continued fighting in Lebanon, which Iran insisted was a red line. Continued skirmishes across the Gulf also contributed to the eventual breakdown in talks and Trump ordered strikes on Iran on Tuesday evening.

Analysts have warned for years that the sustained military support to Ukraine since 2022 and Israel since 2023 have depleted U.S. stockpiles, and some analysts have indicated that the U.S. expended years worth of production itself in the earlier stages of the Iran war.

Trump also seemed to indicate Wednesday that the U.S. was unable to render specific forms of aid to Ukraine against Russian aircraft, the two-countries’ most recent conflict that began in early 2022. Instead, he floated granting Ukraine a license to produce its own Patriot missiles, a key air defense system that has faced high attrition in that conflict.

Additionally, the administration’s prior invocation of the Defense Production Act during the Iran war seemed to signal industrial shortcomings in the U.S. defense base for a sustained conflict. A Washington Post analysis found that the U.S. had used as much as 40% of its air defense munitions already and 30% of its ground strike munitions.

That analysis specifically addressed U.S. stocks available at the start of the Iran war and attributed the depletion to the roughly six-weeks of active conflict that preceded the ceasefire.

In June, the Trump administration sought an additional $350 billion in defense spending to supplement the military amid the Iran war. The White House has also quietly acknowledged the shortcomings in the existing defense industrial base that may complicate efforts to resupply and refill American stockpiles.

In a June memorandum to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, the White House warned that “limited production capacity, fragile supply chains, long-lead dependencies” were hindering the production of adequate munitions.

Trump said at the start of the war that the U.S. had a “virtually unlimited supply” of munitions and would be able to fight the war “forever.”

But he has also acknowledged the U.S. gave much of its stockpiles to Ukraine during the Biden administration.

“At the highest end, we have a good supply but are not where we want to be,” he said. “Much additional high-grade weaponry is stored for us in outlying countries.”

On the other hand, the munitions picture for Iran may be equally ugly. Part of the U.S.’s strategic objective has been to deplete the country’s ballistic missile and drone arsenals.

American forces have repeatedly targeted launchers and production facilities throughout the conflict and U.S. leaders have touted their success in reducing Iran’s conventional military capabilities, though the exact scope of those efforts remains unclear.

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