The Iran War Has Left America Dangerously Exposed

Six months into its war with Iran, the United States has burned through so much of its air-defense stockpile — roughly 1,500 Patriot interceptors fired, with about 1,700 left — that President Trump reportedly confronted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the shortfall at Camp David. Foreign Policy argues the deeper cost is strategic, not material: as in Russia's war on Ukraine, a far weaker adversary's cheap drones and missiles have shown they can bleed a superpower's most expensive systems. A separate Washington Post tally released the same week found the US has lost 45 of its roughly 185 MQ-9 Reaper drones in the war, about a quarter of the fleet, at a cost north of a billion dollars. Gulf states that absorbed Iranian strikes on American bases and civilian infrastructure are now openly reassessing whether hosting US troops still buys them protection, eroding a security bargain Washington has relied on for decades. The Pentagon's munitions pipeline takes years, not months, to refill, leaving planners exposed elsewhere even as Washington insists it holds “total control” over the Strait of Hormuz — a claim most tankers still ignore in favor of Iran's own approved route. The result, the magazine argues, is a war fought to restore deterrence that has instead advertised its limits.