@jolyon🇺🇦🇮🇷 The bill for the Iran war just came due, and Ukraine is the one paying it. On August 5, Russia fired 24 ballistic missiles and four Zircon cruise missiles at Kyiv. Ukraine intercepted zero. Mark Cancian, senior adviser at CSIS, on why: "We're down to about 800 or 900 Patriot interceptors. The war planners don't want to go below that, so it would be very difficult to provide any of those... to Ukraine." The numbers: U.S. Patriot PAC-3 MSE stocks have fallen from over 2,300 before the Iran conflict to roughly 800. THAAD inventories are nearly halved. Washington's target of 2,000 interceptors a year won't be hit until 2030 at the earliest, and Ukraine will be competing with Gulf states for whatever comes off the line first. Cancian's closing line should worry people more than the missile count did: "Iran is certainly looking at this and thinking that the United States might be unwilling to recommence hostilities because of these growing shortages." Two wars, fighting over the same shrinking stockpile. Ukraine just found out which one loses that fight first. Source: ZeroHedge / Writer: Oliver
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