The White House renewed its support for US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in the face of a memorandum submitted by Republican Representative from Kentucky, Thomas Massie, to begin impeachment proceedings, while Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed that Hegseth “is doing an exceptional job.” This political development comes in conjunction with the issuance of official reports that revealed the severe financial and military repercussions of the war with Iran that has been ongoing for seven months, which has cost Washington billions of dollars and caused a shortage in the US army’s stock of ammunition.
In the first official government acknowledgment of a shortage in the military arsenal since the start of the conflict, a report issued by the Inspector General of the US Department of Defense (Pentagon) showed that intensive consumption led to a decline in the strategic stock, revealing bottlenecks in the defense industrial base that impede rapid resupply operations. The report explained that these obstacles are concentrated in the production of solid-fuel missile engines, the provision of high-quality explosives and propellant materials, in addition to the shortage of skilled workers, indicating that the Pentagon’s plans to expand production require long periods of time. These results contradict previous statements by President Donald Trump and the Secretary of Defense in which they denied the existence of any ammunition shortage.
On the financial and economic level, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the total cost of the war at about $38 billion, of which $21.7 billion was spent to replace spent munitions (including $13.1 billion for missile interception systems). The office indicated that continuing the war for an additional month would require between two and three billion dollars, with the conflict likely to raise the inflation rate in the country by 0.5 percentage points to reach 3.2%, in addition to the costs of repairing damaged facilities and infrastructure. In the face of these burdens, the White House requested from Congress additional funding for the Pentagon exceeding $67 billion, of which $21 billion was allocated for munitions.
In an assessment of the course of the field confrontation, General Kenneth Wilsbach, the highest-ranking officer in the US Air Force, acknowledged the difficulty of military operations, explaining that destroying Iran’s conventional air and naval forces “was not an easy task,” stressing that “Iran is not an easy opponent.”
