ABNA24 - The Washington Post has reported that the Pentagon has warned about the consequences of continuing the war with Iran, stressing that prolonged large-scale operations risk undermining US military capabilities in other parts of the world.
A new Washington Post report based on a confidential Pentagon assessment paints a stark picture of the staggering costs of continuing the war with Iran. According to the classified document, which was included in the August 14 edition of the “Secretary of War Orders Book,” several senior US military commanders warned Secretary of War Pete Hegseth that continuing large-scale operations against Iran had become not only “unsustainable” and “untenable,” but would also severely undermine the United States’ ability to respond to threats elsewhere in the world, including defending its own territory.
The warning, issued in a classified document addressed directly to the United States’ top defense official, points to a deepening divide between the White House’s political push to maintain pressure on Tehran and military commanders’ more realistic assessment of the armed forces’ increasingly depleted capabilities.
Months of uninterrupted troop deployments in West Asia have depleted the United States’ strategic reserves across multiple areas. According to the assessment, months of continuous operations have sharply reduced stocks of missiles, drones, and air defense systems, while simultaneously disrupting military readiness in Europe and Asia.
At a time when some US forces deployed in West Asia have been ordered to remain in the region until September 2026, while the deployments of others have been extended into 2027, Army and Air Force commanders, despite accepting these extensions, have stressed that the decision carries “significant risks.”
The US Navy has issued an even more explicit warning, saying that the current operational tempo is unsustainable and that only about one-quarter of the country’s warships are currently ready for deployment. This figure points to serious attrition within the naval branch of US military power, which is considered the backbone of the country’s overseas presence.
The dimensions of this crisis extend beyond West Asia and even beyond mere equipment shortages. Commanders of US units in Europe, the Indo-Pacific, and Latin America have warned that diverting ships, aircraft, personnel, and other military assets toward the conflict with Iran has affected their combat readiness. Put simply, the war with Iran is not merely a parallel front; it has become a “diversionary destination” for resources that were supposed to be deployed in other strategically important parts of the world. The redeployment of the US Navy’s only aircraft carrier assigned to the Pacific to West Asia — a carrier that plays a key role in the strategy of deterrence against China — illustrates how Washington’s strategic priorities have been forcibly reshaped by the war of attrition with Iran.
Meanwhile, the sharp depletion of Patriot missile stocks — as a result of six months of war with Iran and previous assistance to Ukraine — has constrained Trump’s ability to escalate the war again, as Tehran has demonstrated its capability to carry out effective retaliatory attacks.
Perhaps the most significant aspect of this confidential warning is the explicit opposition of senior commanders to extending the deployments. According to The Washington Post, commanders from the Army, Navy, and Air Force, along with four-star commanders of US forces in Europe, the Pacific, and Latin America, recorded their “non-concur” votes in the Secretary of War Orders Book, expressing their opposition to Hegseth’s orders.
This symbolic vote came despite the fact that they are ultimately required to carry out the orders. Nevertheless, the unprecedented move indicates that field commanders, contrary to the White House’s political strategy, do not consider continuing the war to be in the US interest. One source familiar with the commanders’ assessment was quoted as saying that operations in Iran had become “too much for too long.”
This brief phrase encapsulates the entirety of the US military’s concerns: a war that has continued beyond the military’s capacity and beyond its useful timeframe.
The Pentagon’s response to the report is itself another indication of the depth of the divisions. Sean Parnell, a spokesman for the US Department of War, dismissed The Washington Post report as “fake news” and “riddled with inaccuracies,” while stressing that the Pentagon does not comment on internal operational processes, including the Secretary of War Orders Book.
This defensive response, which appears to focus less on addressing the substance of the warning than on discrediting its source, is itself evidence of the issue’s high sensitivity and Washington’s desire to conceal the rift between the military establishment and political decision-makers.
The confidential Pentagon warning appears to paint a clear picture of the strategic dilemma facing the United States: continuing the war with Iran would mean draining resources from other fronts and undermining military readiness in the face of more serious threats such as China and Russia. However, halting or scaling back operations could be interpreted politically as a retreat in the face of Tehran.
What this classified document reveals is the widening gap between Trump’s political ambitions and the United States’ actual military capabilities. If this gap cannot be bridged, it could seriously jeopardize not only the future of the war with Iran, but also America’s global standing.
With this blunt warning, senior commanders have drawn their red line: the US military can no longer afford to expend its resources on one front at the expense of abandoning all the others.
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