As the war against Iran reaches the 160-day mark, President Donald Trump insists the United States military is fully armed and prepared.
“The U.S. has massive amounts of ‘munitions,’ especially of certain types. Additionally, large amounts are being manufactured and shipped to the U.S. as needed,” the president wrote on Truth Social on Thursday. “Defense companies are building up the largest number of plants and factories in our country’s history. The ‘leakers’ of these treasonous statements are being hunted down. Long term jail sentences will be sought!”
The Washington Post reported Wednesday that the president’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.
The Post said Trump vented at Hegseth that he thought the munitions issue had been fixed and that Hegseth defended himself and blamed his deputy.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called it “a B.S. story” that “was shopped to many outlets by someone clearly out to disparage the Secretary, for whatever reason.”
“Unfortunately for them, the President loves the Secretary and thinks he’s doing a tremendous job,” Leavitt wrote on X.
After two weeks of U.S. strikes against Iran, the president has backed away and claimed peace talks have resumed.
“We were all set for the biggest attack since World War II, and they called me, and they said, ‘Please don’t do it. Let’s talk,’” the president said on Wednesday.
But critics of Trump’s strategy claim the pauses are connected to munitions shortages.
Virginia Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, posted on X this week: “New reporting indicates the U.S. has used ‘virtually all’ of our precision long-range missiles during the Iran War. We’re running low on critical munitions and spending millions every day this war of choice drags on.”
Democratic Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly told CBS News’ Face the Nation he blamed Hegseth “who decided a good metric at the beginning was just to drop as many munitions as he could on as many targets, and now we’ve got a munitions shortage. Big surprise.”
Reuters and CNN have also reported about the shortages.
Vice President JD Vance has publicly expressed broader concern about shortages, too, even as he backs the president’s approach to this war.