Midweek Update #22: The American Age in the Persian Gulf Is Over

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Midweek Update #22: The American Age in the Persian Gulf Is Over<br>The US is Running Out Of Weapons, Pulling Out Forces, And Losing The Faith Of The Region's States. That Will Not Be Easily Undone

Phillips P. OBrien<br>Aug 06, 2026<br>∙ Paid

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Hi All,<br>Well as Trump’s War with Iran has now gone on for almost six months, certain realities are obvious. These realities mean the USA has lost the war, that Iran will emerge, in the short term at least, in a stronger position and that, most likely, the wider Persian Gulf region will be altered strategically, perhaps forever. I say these “realities” because even though the negotiations (of some sort) are still going on, the war has already caused some dramatic changes that cannot be undone quickly—if at all. And those changes are heralds of what is to come, not roadblocks on the way back to what was.<br>Phillips’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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This is momentous. Since the end of World War II, or at least since the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, the USA has become the dominant outside security player in the region. It overthrew governments, it made massive military sales (more on that below), it established military bases and it also fought shorter wars (First Gulf War) and decades-long wars (War on Terror/Afghanistan) to impose its influence.<br>The USA even had one of its most important, if less well-known, foreign policy doctrines aimed precisely at the region: the Carter Doctrine. Announced in the State of the Union address in 1980, the Carter Doctrine made it American policy to resist any other power interfering with trade into and out of the Persian Gulf and stated that the USA would use military force to keep the Gulf open.<br>It is ironic, then, that the USA, in using military force, caused another power to close the Gulf and led to the demise of its own doctrine.<br>For the states of the region, this is also a transformational development that will (or at least should) lead to massive changes in their security architecture. For many decades, as I laid out in this Atlantic article from a few days ago (gift link here), they based their security on making vast and expensive purchases of military equipment from the USA, housing US military forces, and acting as US allies. That entire paradigm is gone.

What we are seeing is that relying on the USA (or really any other power) for your security is a mug’s game. You cannot buy security in the modern world, you have to have some ability to make it for yourself. Here is a short excerpt from the piece.

I will write more about how states might go forward from here, but this update will be on already what has happened: how the American Age is already drawing to an end in the Persian Gulf. It will do that through a few points, which added together show a reality that I do not see changing, regardless of how the US and Iran eventually end Trump’s War.

The US Is Running Out Of Advanced Munitions: It Will Take Years To Recover

The most terrifying logistics percentage of Trump’s War came out this week. It was claimed that the USA had already used up nearly “80%” of its advanced missile interceptor stockpiles. This is shocking. It not only makes a mockery of all of Trump’s threats to escalate—it means that the US cannot defend its friends and allies in the region (if it has any left).<br>This was part of a cascading series of stories about the sorry state of US military supplies—which are not hitting systems no one was talking about previously. One of these was that the US was almost out of the well known ATACMS long-range rocket artillery system (which was of vital importance to Ukraine in 2022 and 2023). Reuters broke that story on August 4, and here was how one outlet summarized it.<br>The U.S. Army has used up much of its stockpile of highly accurate long-range missiles during its five-month war with Iran, according to three people familiar ⁠with the data, raising concerns about the military’s readiness for future conflicts.<br>The missiles are principally the Army’s surface-to-surface weapons, known as Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) and Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM). The U.S. has used “virtually all” of these weapons, according to two of the sources.<br>The fact that the US is blowing through its ATACMs stocks is doubly indicative of the crisis America is facing. ATACMs was going to be phased out in favor of newer weapons. However, the US was so desperate for long-range precision strike against Iran that they had to turn to them. Now they are gone (which further hurts Ukraine too it should be noted.<br>Btw, if it helps, here is a list of all the systems that the US is running very short on. Its extraordinary how the country has destroyed its strategic position in fewer than six months.<br>Air and missile...