US watchdog flags depleting weapons stockpiles on West Asia conflict
A US Government watchdog released its first report on the impact of the Iran war on Monday, acknowledging the military’s advanced weapons shortfalls and offering the first public look at the damage to American aircraft, bases and diplomatic outposts in West Asia.
Much of the information has been previously reported over the past six months, but the Pentagon inspector general’s report offered the fullest official accounting so far of the conflict’s costs in American lives, taxpayer dollars and physical damage. It included information from the watchdogs for the Defence and State departments as well as the US Agency for International Development.
The report, whose publication was first reported by NBC News, noted that the US war with Iran “has resulted in strategic inventory shortfalls and revealed industrial base bottlenecks for munitions resupply” in regard to advanced weapons. Experts have previously said it will take about three years for military contractors to replenish advanced missiles and defensive missile interceptors to prewar levels.
The report, which covers April 1 to June 30, also acknowledged that Iranian strikes damaged and destroyed hundreds of buildings and other structures at US bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman and Jordan. Dozens of American aircraft and drones also were destroyed or damaged.
Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told Congress in late July that the war had cost $37.5 billion so far.
The costs to US diplomatic facilities, however, had not been previously publicly released. Such outposts in Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE took the brunt of the physical damage, with an estimated cost of Rs 184 million, according to the report. The State Department reported in early June that its overall costs from the conflict came to $113 million, with nearly $80 million used to respond to contingency plans, including evacuation expenses for US personnel and their families as well as other American citizens and eligible third-country Nationals.
The State Department reported that in the weeks and months after the US and Israel first struck Iran on February 28, the Trump administration evacuated about 9,000 US citizens from countries in the Middle East and Europe.
Through private and commercial flights as well as land and water travel, the cost of the department’s evacuation operation was more than $11 million as of late June.