As the United States’ war with Iran stretches into its sixth month, concerns over a depleted weapons arsenal, rising casualties and economic consequences have mounted.
President Trump has waved off those worries, even as he seeks a diplomatic solution to end the fighting and polls show Americans growing frustrated with the war. Instead, he has characterized the war in Ukraine as a greater drain on military resources, defended the death toll by comparing it with previous military engagements and celebrated single-day drops in oil prices.
Here’s a fact-check of some of his recent claims.
What Mr. Trump Said
“We have a lot of ammunition, different types. You know, Biden gave a lot to Ukraine and so we’re building that up, but we have a lot. We have a lot of the midlevel stuff, too; I mean, more than we could ever use, no matter what. But we have a lot. I’d like to have more, to be honest, but so much was given to Ukraine by Biden.”
— in remarks on Monday
This is misleading. The New York Times and other news outlets have reported that the Iran war has drained the United States’ arsenal of munitions. But Mr. Trump dismissed those concerns, blaming the Biden administration’s military aid to Ukraine instead. The president has a point that the Biden administration sent vast amounts of equipment and munitions to Ukraine, reducing stockpile levels. But those transfers played just a small role in the current issues with the Pentagon’s arsenal, because the military uses different weapons in the war with Iran.
Exact figures for stockpiles and weapons used are not publicly disclosed. But according to a Pentagon fact sheet from January 2025, the Biden administration transferred more than 100 types of equipment to Ukraine since Russia invaded the country in February 2022. The vast majority of that equipment was related to ground combat and not critical to Mr. Trump’s war in Iran, said Mark F. Cancian, a retired Marine Corps colonel and expert in war funding and procurement at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
For example, the Biden administration provided Ukraine with thousands of armored vehicles, trucks and tanks; anti-tank weapons like Javelin and TOW missiles; mortar systems, artillery and millions of rounds of ammunition.
In contrast, the war in Iran has been fought in the sky. The Trump administration and congressional officials as well as outside military experts have raised concerns of depleted inventories of other types of weapons. According to reporting by The Times and other news outlets and calculations from Colonel Cancian, the military has recently used:
-
1,200 Patriot cruise missiles out of an inventory of 2,330
-
More than 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles out of 3,000
-
More than 1,100 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, or JASSM, out of 4,400
-
40 to 70 Precision Strike Missiles out of 90
-
130 to 250 SM-3 missiles out of 410
-
90 to 370 SM-6 missiles out 1,160
-
190 to 290 Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, missiles out of 360
The United States only provided a few weapons and munitions on that list to Ukraine, such as 600 Patriot missiles. Other aerial equipment given include short-range air defense equipment, like more than 3,000 Stinger antiaircraft missiles.
On the other hand, The Wall Street Journal reported in August 2022 that some officials thought that after transfers to Ukraine, the level of 155-millimeter combat rounds in the United States’ arsenal was “uncomfortably low.” The Pentagon used a portion of funding provided by Congress in 2024 to replace some of the equipment given to Ukraine including Javelin and Stinger missiles, 155-millimeter ammunition and armored vehicles. These have not posed an issue in the Iran war.
A White House spokeswoman defended Mr. Trump’s characterization, citing billions of dollars in weapons transfers to Ukraine under the Biden administration and a recent executive order by Mr. Trump that makes it more difficult for weapons makers to use materials from adversarial nations like China and Russia.
What Mr. Trump Said
“Oil dropped very big today.”
— in the Monday remarks
This needs context. It is true that oil prices dipped on Monday, when Mr. Trump spoke, as fighting between the United States and Iran paused. It was the largest single-day decline since late May. But oil prices still remain high and volatile compared with levels before the war.
The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark, fell by nearly 9 percent on Monday, closing at $88 a barrel. The price of West Texas intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark, fell by more than 7 percent and closed at almost $83 a barrel.
But prices are subject to large fluctuations. The week before, prices rose to over $100 a barrel. And on Wednesday, prices rose again, briefly topping $91 a barrel. Before the war began in February, the price of Brent was $72 a barrel. So although Monday’s price was low compared with recent levels, it was still 20 percent higher than before the war began.
The White House spokeswoman said that Mr. Trump was right to cite the single-day drop and that prices would plummet to prewar levels as the United States reopens the Strait of Hormuz.
This needs context. The death tolls cited in the chart Mr. Trump shared in July are largely accurate, though some are imprecise. More important, he is comparing more limited military incursions in his presidency to major wars that spanned decades throughout multiple administrations. His chart also omits dozens of other casualties that have occurred under his presidency beyond the two conflicts listed.
Mr. Trump’s chart cited 2,000 deaths in the war in Afghanistan and 4,600 in the Iraq war, compared with the Pentagon’s tally of 2,350 deaths in the first phase of the war in Afghanistan and 4,418 in Iraq.
Mr. Trump noted that 18 American service members had been killed in the war in Iran and none in the single-day military intervention in Venezuela in January. Those figures have been reported by the Pentagon. (More than 600 have been wounded in Iran and seven in Venezuela.)
Additionally, two U.S. Army soldiers were killed during counterterrorism operations in Syria in December 2025. The Pentagon also recorded more than 60 deaths from 2017 to 2020 in Afghanistan and military campaigns in other countries during the first Trump administration.
It is also worth pointing out that a number of more limited campaigns that occurred under Mr. Trump’s predecessors also had low death tolls. For example, a U.S.-led maritime operation called Operation Prosperity Guardian that began in 2023 aimed to deter attacks in the Red Sea by Houthi rebels and also led to zero combat deaths (though at least one died in a noncombat-related incident). Similarly, there were no combat deaths of American soldiers in the 1999 bombing of Kosovo (though two died in a helicopter crash).
