POLITICO: Allies fear Iran war will leave them without US weapons they bought

European and Asian countries worry the Pentagon is burning through munitions so fast that it won’t have enough to send the weapons they have purchased, POLITICO writes.

American allies are watching in disbelief as the Pentagon reroutes weapon shipments to aid the Iran war, angry and scared that arms the U.S. demanded they buy will never reach them.

European nations that have struggled to rebuild arsenals after sending weapons to Ukraine fear they won’t be able to ward off a Russian attack. Asian allies, startled by America’s rate of fire, question whether it could embolden China and North Korea. And even in the Middle East, countries aren’t clear if they will get air defenses from the U.S. for future priorities.

Nearly a dozen officials in allied nations in Asia and Europe say they can’t win. The Trump administration has put them under extreme political pressure to raise defense budgets and buy American weapons — from air defense interceptors to guided bombs — only to quickly burn through those munitions in a war of its own.

Weapons production is a complex process that takes years of planning and runs through a supply chain riddled with bottlenecks. Trump’s reassurances that the U.S. has a “virtually unlimited supply” of munitions to fight Iran has done little to soothe allies’ fears.

“It is very frustrating, the words are not matching the deeds,” said an Eastern European official, who like others interviewed, was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “It is pretty clear to everyone that the U.S. will put their own, Taiwan’s, Israel’s, and hemisphere priorities before Europe.”

The joint U.S.-Israel war, officials warn, could accelerate the distancing between America and its allies when it comes to defense.

“The Europeans still live in a dream world in which the U.S. is a gigantic Walmart, where you buy the stuff and you get it immediately, and that is simply not true,” said Camille Grand, a former top NATO official who now heads the Brussels-based Aerospace, Security and Defence Industries Association of Europe.

Allies in the Pacific — where China has built the world’s largest Navy and now has missiles that can attack American troops on Guam — are worried that the Pentagon will run out of ammunition in Iran and won’t have any left to deter a war in Asia.

“It’s natural that the longer the conflict, the more urgent the supply of munitions and its inevitable for the U.S. to mobilize its foreign assets to maintain the operation,” said a Washington-based Asian diplomat, who warned it would affect “readiness” in the region.

The congressional aide briefed by the Pentagon said the U.S. was using precision strike missiles and cutting-edge interceptors in “scary high” numbers. The weapons also include Tomahawk land-attack missiles, Patriot PAC-3 and ship-launched air defenses fired by the Navy.

“The idea of doing a larger campaign with Iran was not on anyone’s mathematical bingo card as we were looking at munitions implications,” said a former defense official. “I struggle to see a way that layering on the Iran element makes the math problem get any better.”

Some defense hawks in Congress are worried. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) warned Wednesday on the Senate floor that the military is “not prepared” to deter aggression from both Russia and China at once due to the munitions shortfall.

Others cautioned that the defense industrial base can’t be turned on with a switch to start mass producing the sophisticated missiles and air defenses that the U.S. and its allies desperately need.

read more in our Telegram-channel https://t.me/The_International_Affairs