SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
The war between the U.S. and Iran could be expanding. A new fresh round of attacks this week drew in other countries in new ways, including Saudi Arabia and Egypt. I discussed the widening conflict in the Middle East today on NPR’s Sources & Methods podcast. My guests were NPR’s Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman and NPR’s Arezou Rezvani, who’s been covering the war and speaking to people in Iran.
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PFEIFFER: Tom, I want to ask you about another really disturbing pressure point in all of this, which is the concern that the United States may be running low on munitions, on missiles. Our colleague Scott Simon spoke with a retired U.S. Marine colonel and senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. His name is Mark Cancian. And Cancian told Scott that the U.S. military is running out of some key weapons.
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MARK CANCIAN: Well, the U.S. arsenal is depleted. Some elements are quite depleted. There are alternatives, but the alternatives involve greater risk. So it will take several years – one to five – to replace these, and then another several years after that to get to where the war planners want to be.
PFEIFFER: And that comment comes after the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, went to Capitol Hill last week asking for more money for his budget. So, Tom, tell us about missile depletion, you know, a diminishing arsenal.
TOM BOWMAN: No, Cancian’s right. And the key missile here is the Patriot, one of the premier air defense missiles in the world. Cancian’s report basically said, before the war started, there were, like, almost 2,400 Patriot missiles in the stockpile. That has dropped to, like, between 700 and 800 at this point. I talked with a U.S. official who said, listen, the numbers are classified, but Cancian’s report is pretty accurate. Very troubling.
PFEIFFER: And what are the implications of that?
BOWMAN: There’s no great worry about it at this point, I’m told. But the longer this goes on, the more concern there will be about Patriot missiles’ depletion.
PFEIFFER: Arezou, this news about missile depletion at the United States has been quite public. Iran certainly knows it. I would think it has to be magic to the Iranian military’s ears. Are you hearing anything about Iran’s perspective on hearing about our missile depletion?
AREZOU REZVANI: I haven’t seen much coverage of this in state-run media, but it is worth taking a step back just to recognize that, you know, we’re now in this space where until now, you know, the U.S. had a clear and obvious upper hand when it came to military power and strength and where Iran discovered it has now an edge in the Strait of Hormuz. And now there appears to be something of a missile shortage. And it’s just remarkable the way this war has just kind of exposed U.S. vulnerabilities on this front.
PFEIFFER: You have spent a lot of time covering the war with Iran and speaking with people in Iran. Now that the war has entered its sixth month, what are people telling you there about how they feel at this point?
REZVANI: Yeah, I would say it’s a real tangle of emotions. I mean, there are people I’ve spoken with who very much share the feelings and opinions of their leaders who belong to the hard-liner camp and they are very much backing their government. I have spoken to people who, before this war, were very critical of the government and have all of a sudden decided that they want to back their government in this moment. I spoke with…
PFEIFFER: Not just out of fear of getting in trouble if they speak against the government, but an actual change of heart?
REZVANI: Not just out of fear. I mean, I spoke to one man. His name’s Hossein (ph). He asked that we just use his first name for fear of government retribution. So he is someone who for many years, he said, he was against this government, very critical of it, participated in the protest movements, was out on the streets. And then – and he felt that there was a very legitimate democratic movement – organic, internal – inside Iran, and he feels that the United States disrupted that.
HOSSEIN: I mean, they are invading the country that I love, and they interrupted what I think was a collective struggle for democracy. And for sure, when a war happens, a lot of people get scared. But I think I’m more angry than scared.
REZVANI: And then when I think about some of the more memorable voices I have been in touch with from the last several months, you know, there’s this 22-year-old student in Tehran. She is someone I have been in touch with for several years. We first started communicating in 2022 around the Woman, Life, Freedom protests, and we’ve kept in touch over the years. And I remember reaching out to her the day that the U.S. and Israel dropped their first bombs. I knew that the internet was going to be shut down. And so I got in touch with her immediately, and I just wanted to get her first impressions. And she was ecstatic. I mean, she was crying tears of joy. You could hear kind of…
PFEIFFER: Ecstatic that her own country was being bombed by other countries?
REZVANI: That’s right. And she noted that too. She said, I know it’s absurd that I’m cheering for this war as these bombs are dropping on us, but we have lived under this impression for so long that this just seems like the only way out. But as the days went on, as the weeks went on, you could just sense and you could hear in her voice that loss of hope. And so, a few weeks ago, I got another voice memo from her. That’s how we’ve been communicating because of the intermittent internet connectivity. I got a voice note from her, and here’s what she told me.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Hello, Arezou. How are you? I’m not OK. I’m not happy. And I lost every feelings that I have. I don’t have any dream anymore. I don’t have any hopes. I have nothing. Take care of yourself and enjoy your life. Please don’t text me again because (non-English language spoken).
REZVANI: So she says there that, you know, if security forces find out that I’m talking to you, a journalist, they won’t let me breathe another breath. And it’s such a kick to the gut to hear that. Even now, I’ve listened to it a, you know, dozen times, and it’s heartbreaking to know that, you know, this is a country of a lot of young people, and so many of them feel this way. I will say that it’s unclear to what extent, you know, what segment of the population shares her views versus are very much behind the government. It’s not an easy place to take polls or for people to talk freely. But I will say these various opinions that I just, you know, described, none of them are hard to find.
PFEIFFER: That was NPR’s Arezou Rezvani. We also heard from NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman. They were speaking with me on our national security podcast Sources & Methods. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
(SOUNDBITE OF EMANUEL KALLINS AND STEPHEN TELLER’S “PLUNGED INTO CRISIS”) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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