Al Mayadeen | September 30, 2026

The US-Israeli war on Iran has exposed a widening gap between Washington’s promises to protect its allies and its ability to sustain that protection, with expensive missile interceptors being consumed faster than American manufacturers can replace them, The Atlantic reported.

In an investigation titled “The THAAD Delusion,” Christopher Leonard argues that the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system became a cornerstone of US security arrangements in the Middle East despite being developed for a more limited battlefield role.

Iran’s ability to maintain missile attacks has challenged the assumption underpinning that role: that American forces would survive an opening barrage, then rapidly destroy the launchers responsible.

Instead, a prolonged conflict has placed mounting pressure on interceptor supplies, exposing weaknesses in US military planning, weapons procurement, and industrial capacity.

A missile shield built around a short war

According to the report, THAAD was originally intended to protect critical military deployments during the initial phase of a conflict, allowing US aircraft and naval forces time to respond.

Washington subsequently promoted the system as a central component of broader missile shields for regional allies, including the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

The distinction has become consequential during the war on Iran. While THAAD has intercepted ballistic missiles effectively, Leonard writes that Washington neither accumulated enough interceptors for sustained operations nor established the manufacturing capacity needed to replace them quickly.

US interceptor stocks depleted by sustained warfare

Drawing on estimates from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the report says US forces used more than 150 THAAD interceptors during the 12-day war in 2025 and another 190 to 290 during “Operation Epic Fury.”

CSIS estimated that approximately 250 interceptors remained in the US stockpile. The report notes that additional deliveries could affect those calculations, while Washington has not disclosed its remaining inventories.

The depletion extends beyond THAAD. The investigation also described heavy consumption of Patriot interceptors and offensive weapons, including Tomahawk and JASSM missiles, placing pressure on multiple parts of the US arsenal.

Iran’s sustained attacks strain expensive defenses

The investigation identifies Iran’s combination of ballistic missiles and comparatively inexpensive drones as a major challenge to American defensive planning.

THAAD interceptors cost about $12 million each, according to the report. Repeated Iranian missile launches therefore impose substantial financial and logistical costs even when interceptions succeed.

At the same time, Shahed drones, which the article puts at $20,000 to $50,000 apiece, require separate defenses because THAAD cannot intercept them.

This combination forces defending militaries to confront different threats simultaneously while managing limited ammunition. The report describes regional forces using helicopters and costly air-to-air missiles against drones as pressure on their defenses increased.

Leonard’s central argument is that interception accuracy alone cannot deliver the lasting security Washington offered its partners when the attacker can sustain successive waves.

Industrial weaknesses slow replenishment

The article traces the shortage to years of budget decisions that favored major weapons platforms over ammunition reserves, alongside a concentrated defense industry dependent on vulnerable networks of specialized suppliers.

THAAD missiles require intricate assembly and components sourced from hundreds of companies. Expanding production involves increasing capacity throughout that network, rather than simply adding workers at a final assembly plant.

Pentagon assessments cited in the report found that substantial increases in production for several missile systems could require billions of dollars and take years.

The investigation also scrutinizes defense contractors’ spending priorities. Lockheed Martin distributed $6.8 billion through dividends and share buybacks in 2024, while RTX returned $3.7 billion to shareholders, even as industry representatives argued that factory expansion required advance funding or long-term government contracts.

Washington’s protection promises face scrutiny

The implications reach beyond ammunition shortages. US weapons sales helped bind allied militaries to Washington through shared equipment and reliance on American supplies, the report notes.

However, delayed deliveries and competing wartime demands have prompted some partners to seek alternatives, raising questions about the reliability of those arrangements.

In the Middle East, Leonard argues, attacks on infrastructure and military installations have also challenged the perception that hosting US forces guarantees security.

Stephen Wertheim, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told The Atlantic that the consequences could reshape Washington’s regional position.

“We could be moving away from a Middle East that can be fairly described as being an American-dominated region,” he said.

RT | September 30, 2026

Increased NATO military exercises near Russia’s Kaliningrad Region and aggressive rhetoric from members of the US-led bloc are raising the risk of a direct armed conflict, Moscow has warned.

Russia has sent NATO a warning stressing its determination to protect the Russian exclave in the Baltic region “with its entire available arsenal,” according to a statement published on Monday by the Russian Embassy in Belgium, which hosts the bloc’s headquarters.

The message alluded to remarks made earlier this month by Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, who said there are “hardly any troops” in Kaliningrad Region and urged NATO to increase its military posture near Russia’s borders so that Moscow would be “uncertain of what we will do.”

NATO spokesperson Allison Hart confirmed receiving the Russian message and accused Moscow of irresponsible rhetoric.

”We strongly denounce the threat of force, including any irresponsible nuclear rhetoric,” she said.

Western officials have frequently described Russian statements invoking its nuclear deterrent as “blackmail,” while presenting NATO’s own nuclear-sharing arrangements as a pillar of collective defense.

France has offered to discuss the possible deployment of its nuclear weapons in other European NATO countries, arguing that this could reduce the bloc’s dependence on the US. Under NATO’s existing nuclear-sharing arrangements, American nuclear bombs are stored in several European countries, while personnel from non-nuclear member states train for missions involving their potential use.

Russia has repeatedly rejected Western claims that it intends to attack NATO before the end of the decade, describing such warnings as warmongering aimed at persuading voters to support sharply higher military spending.

Moscow, in turn, views NATO’s military preparations as potentially paving the way for an attack on Russia. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has repeatedly warned that any such conflict would be extremely brief, implying that Moscow could resort to nuclear weapons.

The Russian Embassy in Ireland used more direct language, saying on Tuesday that Moscow is prepared to use nuclear weapons in response to an attempted NATO blockade of Kaliningrad Region and may consider pre-emptive military action in such a crisis.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday it was “natural for our diplomats to try and remind hotheads in Europe about our doctrinal documents,” in response to the rhetoric coming from Poland and other nations.

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

“God help the Nation when it has a President who doesn’t know as much about the military as I do,” – President Dwight D. Eisenhower speaking to his White House Staff Secretary, Gen. Andrew Goodpaster.

These words are quoted in a book about Eisenhower’s foreign policy called “Ike’s Bluff—President Eisenhower’s Secret Battle To Save The World,” by Evan Thomas.

In the same paragraph as the words above are these: “When Defense Secretary Neil McElroy warned him that further cuts would harm national security, Eisenhower acerbically replied, ‘If you go to any military installation in the world where the American flag is flying and tell the commander that Ike says he will give him an extra star for his shoulder if he cuts his budget, there’ll be such a rush to cut costs that you’ll have to get out of the way.’”

In a speech to the Canadian Club in Ottawa on Jan. 10, 1946, Eisenhower said these words: “I hate war only as a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”

In a speech broadcast from London in 1959, Eisenhower said: “I think people want peace so much that one of these days, governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.”

Because of these and many other things he said and did, I think a very strong case can be made that Eisenhower was our most antiwar President.

Certainly his most famous remarks were given in his farewell address from the White House on Jan. 17, 1961. He talked of the “grave implications” of “an immense military establishment and a large arms industry.”

Then he added these famous words: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

I think Eisenhower would be shocked at how far we have gone down the road against which he warned, especially since the Pentagon is now wanting a one-year budget of an incomprehensible of more than one trillion, four hundred billion.

Less famous than his farewell address is his first major speech after his inauguration. It was given on April 16,1953 at a meeting in Washington to the American Society of Newspaper Editors and was probably the most antiwar speech ever given by an American President.

He gave several examples of wonderful things that could be done with war money and then said: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

He added: “This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children…This is not a way of life at all…it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

This speech is quoted above Eisenhower’s grave and in a book by Brett Baker entitled “Three Days In January—Dwight Eisenhower’s Final Mission”.

In addition to his inspiring words, Eisenhower ended the Korean War and even went on national television shortly before the 1956 election to refuse Israel’s request (demand) to join a war against Egypt over the Suez Canal.

Mitchell Bard wrote in The Times of Israel in 2014: “Eisenhower went on television to criticize Israel’s failure to withdraw from Egypt and warned he would impose sanctions if it failed to comply. Eisenhower was prepared to cut off all economic aid, to lift the tax-exempt status of the United Jewish Appeal, and to apply sanctions on Israel.”

Israel withdrew, and war was averted .

I think it is very significant that possibly our other most antiwar President was our other most famous General, George Washington. His farewell address has been read in a ceremonial session of the Senate every year since 1862.

In that speech, he warned against “overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.”

He added these very important words: “A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest…betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.” (Israel?)

Finally, in Scott Berg’s lengthy biography of Woodrow Wilson is a statement about World War 1 made by Winston Churchill to a New York newspaper editor: “America should have minded her own business and stayed out of the world war.”

Then Churchill added: “If you hadn’t entered the war the allies would have made peace with Germany in the Spring of 1917. Had we made peace then there would have been no collapse in Russia followed by Communism, no break-down in Italy followed by Fascism, and Germany would not have…enthroned Nazism.”(p583)

I wish we could have more political and military leaders who would mind our own business and not be so eager to go to war.

Original article: ronpaulinstitute.org