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President Donald Trump ominously said on Monday that the U.S. has the weaponry to fight “forever,” as the administration’s refusal to state a definitive timeline or end goals for its war on Iran sparks worries of yet another prolonged, disastrous U.S. conflict in the Middle East.
In a post on Truth Social just before midnight on Tuesday, Trump said that the U.S. has a “virtually unlimited supply” of munitions — which reports have said is not true — that would allow the U.S. to continue fighting indefinitely.
“Wars can be fought ‘forever,’ and very successfully, using just these supplies (which are better than other countries finest arms!),” Trump wrote.
Contradicting himself, he said that President Joe Biden gave away too much of the U.S.’s munitions to Ukraine and “didn’t bother to replace it.” But Trump added that “I rebuilt the military in my first term, and continue to do so” — ignoring the fact that he himself has depleted U.S. munitions stores in defending Israel, striking Iran, continuing to send weapons to Ukraine under previous agreements, and conducting strikes in at least six other countries so far.
According to Responsible Statecraft, the U.S. depleted a huge amount of its missile stockpiles in operations against the Houthis in 2025, as well as through heavy use of interceptors to defend Israel from strikes from Iran in 2024.
Dan Caine, Trump’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reportedly told Trump and his top aides at a White House meeting in February that the munitions stockpile was, in fact, running low, which may limit the U.S.’s options regarding war with Iran.
Analysts say that the duration of the war may indeed end up being decided by which side runs out of munitions first, meaning that Trump’s claims may just be a show. However, Trump has called for an absurd increase to the military budget for 2027, urging Congress to pass a record-shattering $1.5 trillion budget.
Regardless of the veracity of his claims, Trump’s pledge for “forever” war raises alarm about his intentions with the U.S. and Israel’s war with Iran. It calls to mind the pejorative term for the United States’ decades-long “war on terror” that has killed 4.5 million people, cost trillions of dollars, and reshaped the world by embedding militarism and a vast network of surveillance at home.
According to the Institute for Policy Studies, just daily operations for naval and aircraft deployment for the Iran war are costing nearly $60 million a day — and this doesn’t include the enormous costs for other factors like operating the assets already in the region or the cost of munitions. The amount is enough to fund Medicaid for 4 million Americans each day, the group found.
Trump published the post just hours after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth tried to contain political fallout from the war, saying in a press conference on Monday: “To the media outlets and political left screaming ‘endless wars,’ stop.”
“This is not Iraq. This is not endless. Our generation knows better and so does this president,” said Hegseth. The defense secretary refused to give an idea of the timeline for the war, however, with Trump saying it would last four to five weeks and Hegseth saying, instead, that it could be longer or shorter than that.
Trump’s boasting about the unlimited nature of the U.S.’s weapons stockpiles comes as he and his administration are calling for the Iranian government’s missile stockpiles and manufacturers to be completely destroyed.
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