Vance doubts Pentagon’s depiction of war in Iran. Germany’s chancellor says U.S. is being ‘humiliated’
In closed-door meetings, J. D. Vance has repeatedly questioned the Defense Department’s depiction of the war in Iran and whether the Pentagon has understated what appears to be the drastic depletion of U.S. missile stockpiles.
Two senior administration officials told us that the vice president has queried the accuracy of the information the Pentagon has provided about the war. He has also expressed his concerns about the availability of certain missile systems in discussions with President Trump, several people familiar with the situation told us. The consequences of a dramatic drawdown in munitions reserves are potentially dire: U.S. forces would need to draw from these same stockpiles to defend Taiwan against China, South Korea against North Korea, and Europe against Russia.
Both Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, and General Dan Caine, who chairs the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have publicly said that U.S. weapons stockpiles are robust, and portrayed the damage to Iranian forces after eight weeks of fighting as drastic. Vance’s advisers, who spoke with us on the condition of anonymity, told us that the vice president has presented his concerns as his own rather than accusing Hegseth or Caine of misleading the president.
Vance is trying, the advisers suggested, to avoid making this personal, or to create divisions in Trump’s war Cabinet. Some of Vance’s confidantes, however, believe that Hegseth’s portrayal has been so positive as to be misleading. In a statement, Vance said that the Pentagon chief “is doing a great job,” and cited Hegseth’s work with Trump to ensure a “warrior ethos” in the military’s top ranks. A White House official told us that Vance “asks a lot of probing questions about our strategic planning, as do all of the members of the president’s national-security team.”
Trump has echoed many of Hegseth and Caine’s positive statements about the war, declaring weeks ago that the damage wrought by U.S. forces already constituted victory and that U.S. stockpiles of key weapons are “virtually unlimited.” Some advisers suggested that Hegseth’s sanguine portrayals and at times combative approach with the press appear designed to give the president what he wants to hear; the Pentagon’s 8 a.m. press briefings take place when Trump is known to watch Fox News. “Pete’s TV experience has made him really skilled at knowing how to talk to Trump, how Trump thinks,” one former Trump official told us.
Pentagon leaders’ positive portrayals present an incomplete picture at best, people familiar with intelligence assessments told us. According to those internal estimates, Iran retains two-thirds of its air force, the bulk of its missile-launching capability, and most of its small, fast boats, which can lay mines and harass traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. At least in terms of resuming stalled maritime commerce, “those are the real threat,” one person told us. [Continue reading…]
The US is being “humiliated” by Iran’s leadership, according to Friedrich Merz, Germany’s chancellor, who suggested the Trump administration was being outwitted at the negotiating table by Tehran.
Two days ago Donald Trump cancelled a trip by US negotiators to Islamabad for indirect talks with an Iranian delegation. A previous round in the Pakistani capital two weeks earlier, when JD Vance, the American vice-president, led the US delegation, broke up without progress.
Merz’s trenchant assessment of the stalled US-Iranian talks, which appeared certain to deepen the severe transatlantic rift between the US and its Nato allies, directly contradicts Trump’s effort to cast the limbo in a positive light. [Continue reading…]