loading . . . Allies fear Iran war will leave them without US weapons they bought 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.
“It shouldn’t be a secret to anyone that the munitions that have been and will be fired are the ones that everybody needs to acquire in large numbers,” said one northern European official.
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 European Union already has approved rules to favor its own arms-makers over American contractors — risking tens, if not hundreds of billions in future U.S. sales. Even major companies, such as the German drone-maker Helsing are touting “European sovereignty.” Poland, a longtime American ally, has bought tanks and artillery from South Korea instead of U.S. contractors such as General Dynamics.
It’s been a wake-up call for officials in Asia and Europe who once took Pentagon arms sales for granted.
“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 fears of depleted weapons stockpiles extend to the U.S., where some Pentagon officials are warning about the state of the military’s munitions stockpiles, according to a congressional aide and two other people familiar with the dynamic.
Defense Department officials warned Congress this week that the U.S. military was expending “an enormous amount” of munitions in the conflict, according to two of the people familiar with the conversations.
The congressional aide briefed by the Pentagon said the U.S. was using precision strike missiles and cutting-edge interceptors in “scary high” numbers despite the Iranian military’s relative weakness. 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.”
The Pentagon referred questions to the White House.
Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson, said Iran’s retaliatory ballistic missile attacks had fallen by 90 percent because of U.S. strikes. “President Trump is in close contact with our partners in Europe and the Middle East, and the terrorist Iranian regime’s attacks on its neighbors prove how imperative it was that President Trump eliminate this threat to our country and our allies,” she said.
But 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.
McConnell did not reply to a request for comment.
Trump said in a social media post that he met with defense executives on Friday, including Boeing, Northrop Grumman, RTX, and Lockheed, who agreed to quadruple their production of “Exquisite Class” weapons. He did not explain which systems that entailed or how the U.S. planned to rapidly build factories, hire workers and increase weapons production.
Some allies worried about weapons are hoping that’s more than an empty promise.
“It seems that U.S. defense primes are still challenged to produce at the speed of demand,” said Giedrimas Jeglinskas, a Lithuanian member of Parliament who is also a former deputy Defense minister. “We welcome any effort by the administration to incentivize defense companies to get into war mode of production.”
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.
“There’s always this idea that there is a world in which we just have to go World War II,” said Grand, the former NATO official. “But [in] World War II, producing Sherman tanks was pretty close to producing tractor engines. Producing a Patriot is not pretty close to producing a Tesla.”
Paul McLeary contributed to this report. https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/07/allies-fear-iran-war-will-leave-them-without-u-s-weapons-they-bought-00817204?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication
