Latest threat coincides with record arms budget as stockpiles dwindle

(Originally published April 6 in “What in the World“) Trump’s alleged negotiations with Iran may not be going as well as he says they are.

Demonstrating the capacity for surprise he professed to have learned from Japan’s 1941 sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, Trump on Sunday posted:

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP”

With Trump providing intel like that, it’s little wonder the Iranians were able Friday to shoot down an F-15E Strike Eagle over southwestern Iran, and an A10 Warthog near the Strait of Hormuz. They then apparently managed to cripple two MC-130J military transport planes involved in the operation Saturday by Navy Seals to rescue one of the F15’s two crewmen.

Israel, meanwhile, on Saturday continued the assault on Iran’s civilian infrastructure that Trump keeps threatening, launching an airstrike Saturday that destroyed two power plants supplying power to Iran’s largest petrochemical industrial complex—as well as to food production, car factories and textile mills, not to mention electricity to half a million people.

An Iranian ballistic missile struck the Israeli city of Haifa, part of four missile salvos into Israel Sunday that also struck an industrial zone. Iranian strikes also hit infrastructure targets in Bahrain, Kuwait, and the UAE.

As Iran’s barrages continue, experts continue to warn that stockpiles of missile interceptors the U.S. and its Gulf allies are using to knock down Iran’s projectiles are falling dangerously low. The UAE alone has blocked 23 cruise missiles, 498 ballistic missiles and 2,141 drones fired at it by Iran since the conflict began. The Jewish Institute for National Security of America, a Washington research organization, estimated in a report last month that Bahrain and the UAE have expended more than 75% of their Patriot missile interceptors. Not only are Iranian drones a fraction of the cost of such interceptors, but protocol for using Patriots and Thaad missile batteries calls to fire two interceptors against incoming targets, in case the first one misses.

One stockpile that doesn’t appear to face any risk of depletion is the U.S. military budget. Trump’s $1.5 trillion budget proposal for next year would mark a historic increase in weapons outlays—at the expense of domestic services and the American social safety net. “We’re fighting wars,” Trump told guests at a White House Easter lunch Sunday. “We can’t take care of daycare. Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. We have to take care of one thing: military protection. We have to guard the country.”

Trump’s proposed defense budget would push annual defense spending above $1 trillion for the first time.