As a new series of American strikes against Iran begins after 9 days, the Trump administration is quietly facing an issue that has never been discussed its lack of available weaponry for the war it's now considering.

Officials at the Pentagon are also developing plans for a larger push against Iran as the Defense Department admits its arsenal of air-defense interceptors and long-range missiles has shrunk to "insufficient" to conduct operations safely, according to a report in the Washington Post that cites a current U.S. government official. More stunningly, the White House may be unaware of the extent to which its reserves are depleted. The hardware required to support an escalating aerial campaign is not yet on par with the ambition to deploy them in the region in greater numbers.

This is not a one-off warning. It reflects worries that reportedly were raised directly with the president and senior officials by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine in recent weeks that depleted munitions and lack of allied support could increase the dangers of any new prolonged advance into Iranian territory. The independent analysis has been reaching the same conclusions, albeit from a different perspective. The Center for Strategic and International Studies says the first phase of the campaign, dubbed Operation Epic Fury inside the Pentagon, used up over 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles a figure more than 10 times the number the United States has purchased each year in the last decade. Restoring that stock to prewar levels will likely take a long time, to be extended to 2030 or 2031, CSIS says. As many as 290 interceptors from the THAAD system were fired to fend off Iranian counterattacks to Israeli and Gulf airspace, which will not rise back to the earlier count until 2029, at the latest.

Those first days were costing them $5.6 billion in munitions, according to three US officials who spoke to the Post in March and the price could only be higher as the fighting has continued for months, not weeks. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has acknowledged publicly that replenishment of the arsenal will take "months and years, depending on the system," as the Administration seeks to speed up production in the push for a historic $1.5 trillion defense budget proposal for 2027. According to one CSIS assessment, the issue is "not money, it's time. Making a Tomahawk production line is no one-day project, and Beijing must necessarily be interested in how fast American stock could be used up in one theater.

The impact on the human toll is rising with the physical toll. More than 400 Americans have been wounded and 17 have been killed since the war resumed last Friday after two troops were killed and a third missing during an attack on Jordan's Muwaffaq Salti Air Base and a U.S. American serviceman was killed while disposing of an Iranian drone in northern Iraq. Washington has sent its first strikes of the war against Tehran since the Jordan attack to retaliate for the strike on Iranian command centers, air-defense sites, missile and drone launch facilities, and coastal surveillance networks threatening shipping through the Strait of Hormuz for the ninth time in its history. Iran, on the other hand, says it has sunk oil tankers trying to pass through the strait and damaged unspecified assets in Kuwait, and Tehran estimates that it has lost about 3,000 people, including civilians, since the beginning of February.

The economic fallout is clear. Brent crude has also ticked down a bit, settling around $85 as Iran reiterates it is still in talks with Washington via mediators a top Iranian official announced a ten-day truce to resume the memorandum of understanding that briefly defused the strait earlier this year. American drivers have been feeling the pinch as the average price of gas in the country has hit $4 a gallon during the heaviest period of disruption. If shipping confidence fades even more, it could push prices all the way up to $150 and beyond, energy analysts have warned, even a genuine, prolonged Hormuz closure carries nearly one-fifth of global oil traffic.

None of it indicates that Washington is ready to back down. Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said this week the U.S. has no interest in de-escalation it has been building up American forces in the region, he said, which shows that the U.S. is more interested in a broader conflict than a narrower one. While that's not outlandish considering the reported plans for expansion, it doesn't quite fit with insider fears about drying up at the Pentagon. What you get is a war effort stuck between two conflicting forces, the political and strategic hunger in Washington to see it through to the end and a supply chain that's not kept up with the beat of the war. Congress has been uneasy about the amount of spending exposed by the disclosures in March, and it's likely to keep getting pushback on the Defense Department's slow bid for munitions contracts.

It will depend more on the current truce negotiations than this more muted, less conspicuous restriction the White House's arsenal may have fewer bullets than it realizes.