Trump threatens to jail leakers who reported US military munitions shortages during Iran war
President Trump posted on Truth Social late Wednesday threatening to seek "long term jail sentences" for what he called "treasonous leakers" who provided information about US military munitions shortages to news organizations. Multiple outlets, most recently Reuters, have reported that stocks of key precision munitions — including ATACMS, Precision Strike Missiles, Patriot interceptors, and THAAD interceptors — have been significantly depleted during ongoing US military operations against Iran. The White House and Pentagon denied a Washington Post report that Trump berated Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the munitions issue at Camp David last week.
Single source · Not corroborated
Trump's midnight Truth Social post vowed that leakers are "being hunted down" and insisted media reports about munitions shortages are false, asserting that "the U.S. has massive amounts of 'munitions,' especially of certain types" and that defense companies are building factories at a historic rate. Reuters, citing two sources, reported that the US Army has used "virtually all" of its ATACMS and Precision Strike Missiles, both of which cost more than $1 million each.
The Washington Post reported that Trump confronted Hegseth at Camp David last Friday on the sidelines of a Cabinet session, demanding to know why he had "apparently been misled" on munitions shortages that may have factored into Trump calling off what he described as "the biggest attack since World War II." According to the Post's sources, Hegseth blamed his deputy, Stephen Feinberg, for the shortages and for not keeping Trump fully informed. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell both denied the account, with Leavitt stating "this literally never happened" and Parnell describing the story as "fake, anonymously sourced BS."
Think tanks such as the Center for Strategic and International Studies have calculated the munitions drawdown using publicly known pre-war inventory figures and the number of targets struck, which Reuters described as straightforward subtraction. The Washington Examiner noted that the US military has stopped publicly reporting how many targets it has hit in recent strikes.