The “triumph” in Donald Trump's inner circle has turned sour into a state of bewilderment 6 months into a war that was supposed to be brief. Earlier this week, the Washington Post reported that the president confronted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, cornered him on the sidelines of a Cabinet meeting at Camp David last Friday and demanded to know why he had been informed the shortage of long-range missiles and air-defense interceptors "had been fixed" when, in fact, it hadn't. Two sources close to the exchange tell us Hegseth deflects and blames his own deputy, Stephen Feinberg, for not keeping the president well-informed. But in its separate report, NBC News said a president who is "exasperated" with aides who can no longer agree on what winning looks like anymore.

It all is repudiated by the Pentagon's public image. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt labelled the Post story as “100% fake news,” and said Trump has the “ utmost confidence” in his defense secretary. But Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell went even further, dismissing the entire story line of the depleted stockpiles, the internal squabbling, Hegseth's rumblings to the side and the rest, as "equally fictional. But the denials come with stats you can't shrug off. This week, CNN reported that the US has depleted nearly 80 percent of interceptors for its THAAD missile shield and about half of the Patriot interceptors. Figures from the Center for Strategic and International Studies bring the numbers into even starker relief: The US started out with about 2,330 Patriot interceptors and 452 THAAD interceptors; by late July, it was down to 759 to 827 Patriots and 234 to 278 THAAD rounds. This is no rounding error. It's a pace at which that force is flowing down its magazine, faster than American industry can replenish it.

It's the same with money. Last month Hegseth appeared before a Senate Appropriations panel and testified that the anti-Iran effort has already taken about $37.5 billion, adding that he's seeking $67 billion more from Congress, including funds for the restoration of the very stockpiles the source of the Camp David blowup. Production lines are established under multi-year contracts and the specialised parts; you can't just order more THAAD rounds and have them sitting on a shelf next quarter. The gap is the very weakness that is why Trump has backed down from his threat to launch "the biggest attack since World War II" only days ago, according to officials quoted by the Post.

The real issue is that the top guys don't appear to agree on what the endgame is. The administration has never decided whether stopping Iran's nuclear program is enough or it should open the Strait of Hormuz or even destroy Tehran's missile and drone arsenal, and that's why the military is "preparing for a renewed major offensive without clear guidance," a US official told NBC. It was a succinct statement by the same official that, "We're winning a series of tactical fights and losing a strategic battle with no real policy guidance. That's by no means a minor grievance. It reflects a larger argument this month among foreign policy analysts and regional commentators that Iran did not need to match the firepower of the United States, ship for ship or missile for missile, but rather just contest the Strait of Hormuz long enough to make the economic and political costs of any war greater than the military logic. Evaluated on that metric, the campaign's five-plus months of indecision and inaction seem more like a war of attrition being waged on the balance sheet than on the battlefield.

And the balance sheet is not pretty. Pre-war, about 20 million barrels of oil transited the Strait of Hormuz every day, or approximately 20% of the world's petroleum liquids. The price for dated Brent crude, paid by importers in Asia and the Middle East, has hit a $132 high since the end of February when the strait was effectively closed, and some analysts have predicted $150 to $200 if the shutdown continues. Based on independent economic models, the total global GDP loss would be approximately $20 billion a day if the strait remains closed, and as much as $6.95 trillion depending on the duration of the conflict. The most affected are the Jordan and Lebanon, which rely almost exclusively on crude from the Gulf, as well as the hubs of refining, such as Singapore, and import dependent economies, such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, where the price of fertilizer has reportedly increased by over 30 per cent, threatening food security for tens of millions of people who are far removed from the conflict.

In this context, Trump says progress is real. In an interview with a Fox affiliate on Wednesday, he reported that the indications with Iran were “doing very well,” and they were “trying to avoid the biggest attack since World War II, and instead they are trying to negotiate.” For its part, Iran says it has been working on a deal with Oman that could partly restore the ceasefire and allow Tehran some control over shipping in the Iranian port of Hormuz, but officials briefed on the talks say that is only a temporary measure to give talks about Iran's nuclear program some breathing room. This is now more important to the world than what is going on in Iran itself, and that Omani bridge is now arguably more important to global markets than anything else is going on in Iran itself. What's becoming evident to Washington's war planners, the hard way, is that war stocks and war strategy are not two distinct issues and a war with no end in sight has a way of gnawing away at both.The scale of the drawdown is illustrated above, thanks to CSIS, and these are the numbers that led to the Camp David standoff in the first place, and may be a limiting factor for Washington's next steps in Iran as much as White House determination.