U.S. officials are scrambling to determine how two leaked, highly U.S. classified documents conveying potential Israeli plans to attack Iran got on the Telegram app. According to the New York Times, the documents were prepared “in recent days” by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which analyzes information and images collected by U.S. spy satellites.
There are several theories regarding these leaked reports.
The first theory reads that the Iranians hacked the U.S. intelligence services and leaked the document as part of their psy-ops against Israel. Given previous Iranian hacks, it is not outside the realm of possibilities that they have the capacity to hack the United States.
Iranians also have a clear motivation, though it also suggests that they may not have the capacity to defend against the planned Israeli attack — even with the forewarning that the hack provides — and instead opted to leak it to forestall Israel’s plans.
Two, an actor within the U.S. government may have leaked it, but the investigation of the U.S. government itself appears to have concluded otherwise. They have moved on to investigating outside actors.
Three, the Biden administration may have orchestrated the leak itself in order to delay the Israeli attack. Biden clearly lacks the courage to say no to Israel, so instead, he sneaks out intelligence with the aim of delaying Israel’s plans at least until after the U.S. elections, at which point he may find the semblance of a spine.
Four, the Israelis may have leaked this themselves with the aim of diverting Iran’s attention by getting them to look for an attack in all the wrong places.
Five, finally, since the U.S. investigation is looking at outside actors, the question is if a close American ally — a Five Eyes state (FVEY) or a NATO ally with access to FVEY intelligence — leaked it. If so, it would suggest that close U.S. allies are so frustrated with Biden’s refusal to stop Netanyahu from starting the largest war in the Middle East since World War II that they are taking matters into their own hands to sabotage Netanyahu’s escalation plan.
A Western diplomat recently told me that the only way to stop the war is to have the players who forced President Biden off the Democratic ticket in July repeat their feat by forcing Biden to stop Netanyahu.
All of this while Washington continues to nurture the mythology that its “leadership” is what holds the world together.
photo : U.S. President Joe Biden attends a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as he visits Israel amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Tel Aviv, Israel, October 18, 2023.
A group of 60 national, state, and local organizations sent a letter to President Biden on Monday urging him to “hold Israel accountable to U.S. law [by] ending arms sales to Israel to protect U.S. interests, achieve a ceasefire, protect civilians, increase aid access in Gaza, and work towards a stable future for the region.”
The policy, humanitarian, and faith-based organizations — which include Amnesty International, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, and the Quincy Institute, publisher of Responsible Statecraft — expressed disappointment with Biden’s policy of “unconditional support of Israel paired with empty threats,” saying the policy has not yielded any meaningful results and serves to harm America’s global reputation.
Rather than curbing Israel’s actions, the signatories say the Biden administration has enabled it to bomb hospitals, schools, and residential areas, block humanitarian aid, and kill tens of thousands of civilians, journalists, and aid workers, all at the expense of the taxpayer.
The organizations say a letter sent by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to Israeli Defense Secretary Yoav Gallant asking Israel to allow humanitarian aid in Gaza “provides an opportunity to course correct U.S. policy” and enforce U.S. law which would require the United States to withhold aid until humanitarian assistance is delivered.
“The longer the U.S. allows its power and global standing to be undermined by this conflict, the more cost the United States will bear in reputation, taxpayer dollars, and possibly servicemember and citizens’ lives,” they write. “In your final months in office, we urge you to do everything in your power to end U.S. military aid to Israel to stop Israel’s assaults on civilians and maintain regional stability.”
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Top photo credit: Sailors lift ammunition during an on-load aboard the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS William P. Lawrence (DDG 110). William P. Lawrence is underway on its first operational deployment to the western Pacific region as part of the Nimitz Strike Group Surface Action Group. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Carla Ocampo) File# 130126-N-ZQ631-628
Regardless of the merits or demerits of the Biden administration’s policies on the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and the wider Middle East, it has become clear that the United States has been using and giving away its missiles faster than it can produce them.
It is also clear that from the perspective of missile inventories and production, the United States is far from prepared to engage confidently in a sustained direct conflict with a peer competitor like China.
This is demonstrated by the fact that U.S. missile and artillery shell reserves are currently inadequate to provide Ukraine with what it needs to keep its missile defense systems supplied with interceptors. Indeed, the inability of the United States and its NATO allies to provide enough air defense missiles — a.k.a. interceptors — has made it easier for Russia to attack and destroy key military targets, as well as cripple Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
This missile deficit parallels the well-documented lack of U.S. artillery shell production that has enabled Russia to increase the rate at which it’s taking control over territories in Ukraine today.
While the United States is not going to run out of missiles tomorrow, its missile inventory, both offensive and defensive, is dwindling. Further, although the U.S. government has not disclosed how many interceptor missiles have been given to Ukraine to supply the billions of dollars’ worth of NASAM, Hawk, and Patriot air defense systems Washington sent there, we do know that it has not been enough.
We also know that between Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, some 740 Patriot PAC-2/PAC-3 missiles per year will be made in 2025, with production theoretically ramping up to roughly 1,100 missiles by 2027. That sounds like a lot, but since February 22, 2022, Ukraine has faced attacks from thousands of drones and missiles.
Moreover, while our proxy war on Russia has strained our resources, an outbreak of hostilities with China could easily increase the burn rate of our ship-based missiles by an order of magnitude over what we have been seeing in the Middle East. And speaking of our supply of ship-based missiles, as of Feb 1, 2024, the U.S. Navy had used at least 100 of its standard series class missiles in the Red Sea.
A July 2024 report reveals that the Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier strike group expended 155 multi-million-dollar standard series missiles, 135 multi-million-dollar Tomahawk cruise missiles, 60 multi-million dollar air-to-air missiles, and an additional 420 air-to-surface munitions with a cumulative cost likely in the hundreds of millions of dollars And this missile expenditure does not include the missiles used by warships not attached to that strike group during this period.
Naturally, since July, the Navy has continued to use overpriced, ridiculously expensive missiles to shoot down cheap Houthis drones and missiles. Adding to our Navy’s missile burn rate, on at least two occasions, April and October of this year, our warships used SM-2 and SM-3 missiles to protect Israel from Iranian ballistic missiles and drones. Additionally, since the beginning of the year, the U.S. Navy has been using the much more expensive SM-6 missiles, along with SM-2s, in its Red Sea operations.
We don’t really know how many missiles have been used to date, but what has been publicly disclosed should be viewed as a very conservative estimate. In addition, we don’t know the exact inventory levels of critical weapons, as such information could be of great use to our enemies. However, according to a report by the Heritage Foundation, up through 2023, the Pentagon had procured roughly 12,000 Standard Missile-2s (SM-2), 400 Standard Missile-3s (SM-3), 1,500 Standard Missile-6s (SM-6), and 9,000 Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles (TLAM). During this same period, the U.S. Navy has expended at least 2,800 Standard Missiles and 2,900 TLAMs. And these figures do not include the previously mentioned expenditures of the last year or so.
Shedding more light on roughly what our current reserves of missiles looks like, the Wall Street Journal estimates that when training exercises and the retirement of older weapons are taken into account, only about 4,000 TLAM remained as of 2020 and since then the U.S. has only produced another 250 or so TLAMs. Consequently, with large numbers of TLAMS, SM-2 and other SM-type missiles having been expended in 2023 and 2024, our nation’s missile stockpile continues to be depleted.
Put another way, the entirety of our Navy’s warships, not including quad packs of shorter-ranged air defense missiles, can carry about 10,000 missiles in their vertical launch systems that can be used for wide-area defense or long-range attacks. So, as things stand, once we expend the full complement of our VLS launched missiles, we are roughly 3,000 missiles short of being able to fully replenish our ships.
Yet another aspect of how much stress could potentially be placed on our missile inventories is that, while we do have a relatively large number of SM-2 missiles, we only have some 400 SM-3 class missiles, the defense system most capable of destroying powerful ballistic missiles before they can threaten population centers or military targets.
And in April of this year, two of our Arleigh Burke guided missile destroyers used four to seven of these scarce SM-3 missiles to attempt the interception of ballistic missiles fired by Iran. Each of the SM-3s, depending on the model, costs between $13 and $28 million. Hence, that one engagement cost U.S. taxpayers in the neighborhood of $52M to $196M.
Of course, U.S. supplementation of Israel’s defenses has not been limited to expending shipborne missiles. On October 21, Israel received one of the United States’ seven THAAD air defense systems. Each of these systems costs over a billion dollars, and each THAAD interceptor missile costs $13 million. Given that the full load for the THAAD system we sent to Israel is 48 missiles, it is safe to assume Israel has received a minimum of $600 million dollars’ worth of interceptors.
For reference, as of December of 2023, the U.S. had built some 800 of these interceptors. This means if Israel ends up receiving a few reloads, we could easily see 25 percent of our THAAD interceptors inventory consumed at a replacement cost of $2.5 billion.
What’s more, as of 2023, Iran is believed to have over 3,000 ballistic missiles and many thousands of drones. Consequently, Iran could launch even larger attacks in the near future, necessitating the deployment of additional U.S. systems to supplement Israel’s strained air defenses to an even greater extent.
However, all of the above would amount to chump change should the United States become embroiled in a war with China. If such a disaster were to occur, Washington could easily find itself blowing through its missile stocks in a matter of months or even weeks. Indeed, a Center for Strategic and International Studies report found that, in order to counter China, the United States could end up expending 5,000 long-range missiles in just 3 weeks.
Consequently, with our defense industrial base already strained, it seems obvious that we should be doing everything we can to prevent escalation of the ongoing conflicts and instead be working to achieve a genuine, sustainable peace in the Middle East, as well as working towards a peace in the Ukraine war.
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Top Photo: Green Party presidential nominee attends a rally in Dearborn, Michigan (REUTERS)
A majority of Muslim-Americans voted for Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein in this week’s election, while just 21 percent supported Republican Donald Trump and 20 percent voted for Vice President Kamala Harris, according to newly released data.
The survey, conducted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and released on Friday, polled 1,575 verified Muslim-American voters nationwide.
CAIR also released exit polling results from Michigan and Maryland voters. Out of the 502 Muslim-Americans surveyed in Michigan, 59% supported Dr. Stein, 22% voted for Trump, and 14% pulled the lever for Harris. Stein received 81% of the vote from Muslim-Americans in Maryland with Harris earning 12% and Trump around 4%.
The results stand in stark contrast to results from previous cycles. CAIR found that in 2020 President Biden had support from 69% of those surveyed, with Trump earning 17%, and other candidates 3%. Additionally, a study released in October of 2016 found that 72% of Muslim-American voters supported Hillary Clinton, while 4% voted for Trump, and 5% chose other candidates.
CAIR says the dramatic shift away from the Democratic Party candidate can be explained in large part by President Biden’s Middle East policy. ”Our final exit poll of American Muslim voters confirms that opposition to the Biden administration’s support for the war on Gaza played a crucial role,” CAIR National Government Affairs Director Robert S. McCaw said, “leading to a sharp drop in support for Vice President Harris compared to the support President Biden received from Muslim voters in 2020, and a sharp rise in support for third party candidate Jill Stein. President-Elect Trump also managed to make in-roads with Muslim voters.”
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