US President Donald Trump confronted US defence secretary Pete Hegseth during a meeting at Camp David over severe shortages of key military munitions that have constrained Washington's options in the ongoing conflict with Iran, according to a report by The Washington Post. The report said Trump questioned why he had not been fully informed about depleted missile stockpiles, with the exchange highlighting growing tensions between the president and his defence chief.
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Citing two people familiar with the matter, the newspaper reported that Trump challenged Hegseth during a Cabinet meeting on Friday, saying he believed the munitions problem "had been fixed." The shortages, particularly of long-range precision-guided missiles and air defence interceptors, have become a key factor behind Trump's decision to hold back additional large-scale military strikes against Iran, according to one of the sources.
The reported confrontation came days after Trump said he had ordered and later called off "the biggest attack since World War II" while citing fresh negotiations over the Strait of Hormuz.
The report said the US military has rapidly depleted critical missile inventories during more than five months of fighting with Iran. In the first month of the conflict alone, US forces reportedly fired more than 850 Tomahawk cruise missiles, over 1,000 Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors, and more than 1,300 Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS). One source told the newspaper the ATACMS stockpile has been exhausted to the point that "there's basically none left."
Meanwhile, white house spokesperson Karoline Leavitt in a post on X denied any such claims and said, "I was at Camp David with President Trump and Secretary Hegseth. This literally never happened, and we told the Washington Post that repeatedly. This B.S. story was shopped to many outlets by someone clearly out to disparage the Secretary, for whatever reason. Unfortunately for them, the President loves the Secretary and thinks he’s doing a tremendous job."
