Is the US running out of weapons? Inside the strategic pause in the Iran war

Fighting between the United States and Iran eased on Saturday for the first time in a fortnight, bringing 13 consecutive nights of American airstrikes to a halt. Before this lull, Trump had been weighing a "massive attack" that would have significantly widened the campaign, including plans to land ground forces on Iran's central oil hub at Kharg Island and to bomb energy plants, coastal radar installations, civilian railway bridges and the deeply buried Pickaxe Mountain nuclear facility. Instead, after a critical White House meeting with cabinet members and senior advisers, the president chose a strategic pause as the war neared its fifth month.

The principal reason for this sudden lull is the alarming depletion of American military stocks across the Middle East. During deliberations on July 24, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine and Vice President JD Vance raised urgent warnings about the Pentagon's dwindling supply of Patriot air defence interceptors and other critical munitions. General Caine reportedly said that although the United States could carry out a major escalation, doing so would dangerously exhaust the interceptors available to Central Command. The scale of consumption has been severe: by late April, the Pentagon had already fired more than 1,200 Patriot missiles in this war. At over $4 million apiece, the drain on stockpiles has alarmed defence officials and members of Congress alike, and the situation is reported to have deteriorated further since then. The risks of this shortfall were made starkly clear when three American soldiers stationed in Jordan were killed by an Iranian ballistic missile that slipped past overstretched US defences. A wider offensive would likely draw heavier Iranian retaliation, straining air defences further and leaving American forces in Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates dangerously exposed.

Beyond the immediate logistical pressures, figures close to Trump, including his son-in-law Jared Kushner, are pressing for a return to diplomacy and sustained economic pressure rather than further military action. An official involved in the mediation efforts said serious talks were under way, with both Washington and Tehran keen to revive the interim ceasefire struck in June. At the heart of the proposed compromise is a loosening of restrictions on Iranian vessel transit through the Strait of Hormuz. Trump has publicly insisted the United States remains "locked and loaded", while also suggesting Iranian negotiators are growing "more and more serious", and he has privately told his team to keep talking. Several senior US officials, meanwhile, are sceptical that renewed bombing would force Iran into submission, noting that military strikes tend to unite the Iranian public behind a fractured leadership rather than splinter it under pressure.

Even as the skies over Iran fell briefly quiet, tensions elsewhere in the region continued to escalate, underlining the conflict's capacity for spillover. In Yemen, the Iran-backed Houthis have effectively entered the wider war, breaking a fragile truce that had held since the 2022 civil war. Over the weekend, Houthi drones and ballistic missiles struck energy facilities along Saudi Arabia's Red Sea coast, hitting the Aramco refinery at Jizan and targeting oil installations near the port of Yanbu. Saudi Arabia responded by bombing Houthi positions in Hodeida, while Yemeni government forces struck Houthi launch sites in Marib and al-Jawf. The Houthis have declared a maritime blockade on Saudi shipping and closed the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. In a separate development, Ukraine struck an Iranian cargo vessel in the Caspian Sea, a route long used to move military supplies between Iran and Russia, killing one crew member.

The combined closure of the Straits of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb has severely disrupted global shipping and rattled oil markets. Brent crude climbed above $100 a barrel for the first time since May, pushing up domestic petrol prices in the United States. This economic shock poses a real political liability for Trump and the Republican Party ahead of November's midterm elections. Although the president insists he is "not in a hurry" and that "elections take care of themselves", the economic toll of the conflict remains deeply unpopular with American voters.

The pause faces significant pressure ahead. Israeli officials, who had prepared for a major American escalation, still regard a wider war as inevitable, with one senior figure describing the prospects of a US-Iran diplomatic settlement as "virtually non-existent". That tension will be tested directly on Tuesday, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits the White House with fresh intelligence on Iran's accelerated efforts to rebuild its military and pursue nuclear weapons capability under its new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei.