In closed-door meetings, J. D. Vance has repeatedly questioned the Defense Department’s depiction of the war in Iran and whether the Pentagon has understated what appears to be the drastic depletion of U.S. missile stockpiles.
Two senior administration officials told us that the vice president has queried the accuracy of the information the Pentagon has provided about the war. He has also expressed his concerns about the availability of certain missile systems in discussions with President Trump, several people familiar with the situation told us. The consequences of a dramatic drawdown in munitions reserves are potentially dire: U.S. forces would need to draw from these same stockpiles to defend Taiwan against China, South Korea against North Korea, and Europe against Russia.
Both Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, and General Dan Caine, who chairs the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have publicly said that U.S. weapons stockpiles are robust, and portrayed the damage to Iranian forces after eight weeks of fighting as drastic. Vance’s advisers, who spoke with us on the condition of anonymity, told us that the vice president has presented his concerns as his own rather than accusing Hegseth or Caine of misleading the president.
Vance is trying, the advisers suggested, to avoid making this personal, or to create divisions in Trump’s war Cabinet. Some of Vance’s confidantes, however, believe that Hegseth’s portrayal has been so positive as to be misleading. In a statement, Vance said that the Pentagon chief “is doing a great job,” and cited Hegseth’s work with Trump to ensure a “warrior ethos” in the military’s top ranks. A White House official told us that Vance “asks a lot of probing questions about our strategic planning, as do all of the members of the president’s national-security team.”
Trump has echoed many of Hegseth and Caine’s positive statements about the war, declaring weeks ago that the damage wrought by U.S. forces already constituted victory and that U.S. stockpiles of key weapons are “virtually unlimited.” Some advisers suggested that Hegseth’s sanguine portrayals and at times combative approach with the press appear designed to give the president what he wants to hear; the Pentagon’s 8 a.m. press briefings take place when Trump is known to watch Fox News. “Pete’s TV experience has made him really skilled at knowing how to talk to Trump, how Trump thinks,” one former Trump official told us.
Pentagon leaders’ positive portrayals present an incomplete picture at best, people familiar with intelligence assessments told us. According to those internal estimates, Iran retains two-thirds of its air force, the bulk of its missile-launching capability, and most of its small, fast boats, which can lay mines and harass traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. At least in terms of resuming stalled maritime commerce, “those are the real threat,” one person told us.
In March, Hegseth boasted about the military’s “complete control” of Iranian skies. But in April, Iranian forces downed an American fighter jet, setting off an intensive rescue operation—one that Hegseth compared to the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. And Tehran brings more missile launchers back online every day; roughly half are accessible again after an initial two-week cease-fire that was scheduled to expire last Tuesday, according to people familiar with the assessments. Trump extended that cease-fire indefinitely but then called off planned trips last week to Pakistan for peace talks by Vance and, later, special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner as Iran demurred from entering negotiations.
Officials and outside advisers told us that the use of key weapons—including interceptors that defend against Iranian missiles, and offensive weapons such as Tomahawk and Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff missiles—has produced a serious shortage that erodes America’s ability to fight future wars, despite an effort to quickly manufacture replacements. Vance has raised concern about munitions shortages in meetings with the president and other national-security officials. Already, the United States may have gone through more than half of its prewar supply of four key munitions, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, D.C., think tank, said this week. Even before the Iran war, stockpiles had been drained by lethargic manufacturing and munitions donations to Ukraine and Israel. Pentagon officials have warned that the deficits jeopardized the military’s ability to prevail in a hypothetical conflict against Russia or China.
Sean Parnell, a Pentagon spokesperson, told us in a statement that Hegseth and other Pentagon leaders “consistently provide the president with the complete, unvarnished picture.” A senior official told us that Caine, meanwhile, was “precise, exact, and comprehensive” in assessing the effectiveness of military operations.
The vice president was skeptical about the merits of attacking Iran before the war started; Trump has acknowledged that Vance was “maybe less enthusiastic” about a conflict that has proved deeply unpopular among American voters. But the vice president has multiple factors to balance: his desire to work smoothly with other senior officials, his track record of opposing “forever wars,” and his prospects should he mount a presidential run in 2028.
Vance and Hegseth both have a major stake in the war’s outcome. Several people close to Trump believe Vance now sees his political future as tied to what happens in Iran, one of the senior officials told us. Other officials and individuals familiar with those involved told us Hegseth harbors his own ambitions for elected office, even possibly for president. The defense secretary recently addressed the National Religious Broadcasters Network, where he advocated for Christianity to permeate government, and the National Rifle Association, where he argued for Americans’ “God-given right” to bear arms. Previous defense secretaries have mainly steered clear of partisan politics and divisive social issues.
Hegseth’s career depends on retaining the president’s support at all costs. His confirmation process was ugly, and some of his actions during his first few months on the job exasperated the White House. Since then, he has overseen tactically successful strikes on Iran’s nuclear program, last June, and the capture of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro, in January. He also embarked on a campaign to MAGA-fy the military—rolling back diversity initiatives and dismissing or sidelining scores of senior female officers and minority officers. All the while, he has been a reliable administration mudslinger, denouncing Democrats, journalists, and U.S. allies. White House officials told us that he and the president remain tight. Hegseth has fewer fans among congressional Republicans than many other Cabinet secretaries, leaving him singularly reliant on Trump’s favor. Hegseth “strives to tell the president exactly what he wants to hear,” one former official told us. “I think that’s dangerous.”
Hegseth and Vance both served as low-ranking service members in Iraq at around the same time. (Hegseth was a National Guard lieutenant attached to the 101st Airborne Division; Vance was an enlisted Marine Corps journalist.) But they drew different conclusions from Iraq and other counterinsurgent conflicts. As a young veteran, Hegseth championed the 2007 Iraq surge embraced by hawkish Republicans such as John McCain. In more recent years, Hegseth has argued that the U.S. lost in Iraq and Afghanistan because restrictive rules of engagement limited the military’s ability to fight. At the Pentagon, he has embraced bellicosity, approving and celebrating U.S. strikes on small boats off the coast of South America that the U.S. alleges are used by drug smugglers. He boasted that the current Iran campaign unleashed twice the firepower in its first five days as the initial “shock and awe” bombing phase of the Iraq War in 2003, which lasted roughly a month.
People who know Vance say that he came to believe that the Afghan and Iraq Wars were flawed from the start. “We were lied to,” he proclaimed while serving in the Senate. Vance has argued that America’s interests are best served by prioritizing resources at home. Before becoming vice president, he warned that assisting Ukraine would diminish crucial U.S. weapons stockpiles. “This is not our war,” he declared.
One senior administration official told us that the president is satisfied with the information he has received from the Pentagon. This person casts the different views within the president’s national-security team—which includes Hegseth, Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles—as part of a healthy tension that serves the president. Wiles refrained from taking a position on the rationale of the Iran war before it launched, and has focused instead on trying to encourage a frank discussion with the president about the risks and rewards of each major decision. “The truth is that under President Trump’s leadership, the U.S. military decimated the Iranian regime’s capabilities in just 38 days,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
Hegseth and Vance’s differences extend to Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, a close friend of Vance’s who at times has outshone the Pentagon boss. Driscoll attended Yale Law School with Vance and is expected to assist Vance with a run for the presidency, people familiar with his plans have said. Hegseth’s rivalry with Driscoll is an open secret at the Pentagon. Last year, the White House entrusted Driscoll with a second role—directing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives—much like how Rubio carries the titles of secretary of state and national security adviser. And Trump dispatched Driscoll, not Hegseth, to Kyiv last fall to jump-start peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.
Driscoll and Hegseth have also been at odds over Army personnel appointments. Hegseth forced out the army chief of staff, General Randy George, a close ally of Driscoll’s, despite Driscoll’s objections. Hegseth also fired Vice Chief of Staff General James Mingus, whom Hegseth replaced with his military aide, General Christopher LaNeve. George was responsible for overseeing munitions replenishment, and his ouster caused an outcry on Capitol Hill. “I, too, love General George,” Driscoll told a House committee this month. A senior administration official told us that Trump doesn’t know Driscoll well and has not expressed views about the Army secretary’s future.
Far from Hegseth’s predictions of a quick, decisive win, the Iran war has now drifted into a costly, indeterminate muddle. Last Tuesday, as the minute hand ticked toward the end of the initial cease-fire, Vance’s plane idled on the runway, ready to fly him to peace talks in Pakistan. But when Iran appeared unprepared to dispatch its own negotiators, Trump backed down, extending the truce indefinitely. Meanwhile, the two countries’ standoff in the Strait of Hormuz escalated last week when the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps seized commercial vessels for the first time—a sign that its forces remain potent and that the war could again defy the upbeat assessments from the Pentagon’s leaders.
Jonathan Lemire and Ashley Parker contributed reporting for this story.