US bleeding billions in Iran war, may divert weapons meant for Ukraine vs Russia to West Asia conflict: What that means
The United States military is reportedly considering redirecting weapons intended for Ukraine in its defence against Russia to the conflict in the West Asia/Middle East region sparked by the US-Israeli attack on Iran. The month-long ongoing war against Iran is draining some of the most coveted and scarcest ammunitions in the American arsenal, The Washington Post said in a report on Thursday about the Pentagon’s mulling.
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The potential diversion of weapons includes air defence interceptor missiles, used in the marquee systems Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD). These were ordered from the respective manufacturers by the US through its Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List (PURL), a NATO-led programme under which European countries pay for these American-made weapons to be delivered to Kyiv.
The Pentagon is seeing “a real live discussion” on this, the Post reported citing three people familiar with the matter.
The scale of ammunition consumption is already staggering. Since US and Israeli forces launched strikes on Iran on February 28, the US Central Command has struck more than 9,000 targets in about four weeks.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed this week that US-allied nations in the Middle East fired more than 800 Patriot interceptor missiles in just three days, exceeding the total stockpile Ukraine has held across its entire four-year war with Russia.
The Pentagon has reportedly notified the US Congress on Monday that it intends to divert approximately $750 million in NATO-contributed PURL funding to restock its own military inventories, rather than send additional weapons to Ukraine. Whether European countries contributing to the PURL are aware of this is or not is unclear, the Post further reported.
Burn rate staggering
The US spent at least $12 billion on the war in its first two weeks alone, according to Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, with Pentagon officials telling Congress in a classified briefing that the operation cost $11.3 billion in just the first six days, US media has reported.
The burn rate thus is estimated at $2 billion a day, and the Pentagon has since asked Congress for a supplemental budget of $200 billion to replenish missile stocks and sustain the campaign.
It’s not just financial strain, but a fundamental production problem too. Lockheed Martin currently manufactures roughly 600 PAC-3 interceptors per year. This was widely described as insufficient even before the current Iran conflict. The company agreed to scale up to 2,000 units annually under a deal announced in January, but that will take time, CNN has reported.
The destruction of a key $300 million AN/TPY-2 radar — essential to directing THAAD batteries — at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan in the opening days of the war has intensified the pressure, HT has earlier reported.
The US operates only eight THAAD batteries globally. With the radar gone, interception duties have fallen further on Patriot systems already stretched thin. As Tom Karako of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies noted in a Bloomberg report, “There aren’t exactly any spare TPY-2 lying around.”
Democrat Senator Mark Warner of Virginia had put the situation bluntly over 10 days ago: “Our munitions are low. That’s public knowledge.”
Defence analyst Ryan Brobst of the Foundation for Defence of Democracies estimated that roughly 25% of the entire THAAD interceptor stockpile was consumed during the 12-day Iran confrontation last June alone.
“These were already in very high demand and we had not procured enough before the conflict,” he said.
Ukraine goes from leverage to losses
The crisis had at first handed Ukraine a rare bit of leverage on Donald Trump’s America. Forced by four years of Russian drone bombardment to innovate cheaply and at scale, Ukraine developed a battlefield-tested interceptor drone capable of destroying Iranian-designed Shahed attack drones. The cost was between $1,000 and $2,000.
A single Patriot interceptor missile costs several million dollars; a Shahed drone itself costs approximately $30,000.
That means using Patriots to intercept Shaheds is increasingly unsustainable.
The US had earlier requested “specific support” against Shaheds, prompting Zelensky to deploy Ukrainian equipment and specialist personnel to the Gulf. The US, alongside the UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, made repeated requests for Ukraine’s domestically produced interceptors, according to three Ukrainian weapons producers cited by news agency AP. Marco Kushnir, spokesperson for Ukrainian manufacturer General Cherry, said his company could be ready to supply “within days” and had the capacity to produce “tens of thousands” of interceptors per month.
Zelensky framed it as a bargain: “We’d like to quietly receive the Patriot missiles we have a deficit of, and give them a corresponding number of interceptors.
Trump, however, publicly rebuffed the offer. “We know more about drones than anybody,” he said, deploying a version of one of his signature phrases.
Now, the US is considering diverting its own weaponry away from Ukraine’s defence.
Russia benefits either way
This squeeze on Ukraine’s air defences comes at a strategically dangerous moment. Russian overnight missile strikes in February reached their highest intensity in four years of war. Russia is also openly allied with Iran, and is apparently providing its with intelligence support.
Meanwhile, Russian oil revenues have surged as crude rates climbed following the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and the US thus had to remove sanctions not just on Russian oil but even Iranian supplies.
The PURL, which has supplied 75% of the missiles for Ukraine’s Patriot batteries since last year, is a critical lifeline as the Trump administration has already halted direct US military assistance. European nations have committed approximately $4 billion to the PURL supplies. But the math may not be working out for the US as it bleeds money in the Iran war, or “military operation” as Trump calls it to avoid legal scrutiny at home.
Also read | Trump says he won’t call Iran conflict ‘war’ because he doesn’t have ‘approval,’ triggers outrage: ‘Colossal failure’
Other regions may face diversions too
Ukraine is only the latest on focus; the US began transferring parts of its THAAD system from South Korea to the Middle East in early March, local media reported. South Korean President Lee Jae Myung told his cabinet that he “expressed opposition” to the redeployment. But he acknowledged that “the reality is that we cannot fully push through our position”, Reuters reported citing CNBC. This means the South’s defence readiness against North Korea loses some of its edge.
As for if and when the Iran war may end, there continues to be lack of clarity after Pakistan offered to host mediation talks upon Trump’s cue. Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, reportedly spoke directly with Trump, and PM Shehbaz Sharif declared on social media that Islamabad was “ready and honoured to be the host to facilitate meaningful and conclusive talks.”
The US has floated a 15-point plan, offering relief from sanctions in return for curbs on Iran’s nuclear and missile programmes. But Iran, which has choked up to a fifth of global oil supplies via the Strait of Hormuz, rejected this and sought war compensation in turn. As of Thursday, either Turkey or Pakistan remained under consideration as a possible venue for such talks, multiple news agencies reported.