Ain’t that a hoot, as they"d say themselves. Ideal time for Russia, China, Cuba or the renowned Duchy of Grand Fenwick to invade them.
Maybe Trump, the master of the arse of the deal, could do a Catch 22 number and pay the Iranians to bomb themselves. If Milo Minderbinder could do it, surely Trump could too.
I believe the US of A has given notice of delays to various export orders to a variety of countries including Taiwan, Japan, UK, Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Norway and Switzerland.
For example the Swiss may not get any Patriot missile deliveries for five years.
But Israel, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates are supposedly getting “emergency” supplies - though it is not clear where these will come from.
In a recent CSIS report the think tank estimated that the US launched more than 1,000 Tomahawk missiles, and warned it could take until the 2030-2031 timeframe to return to the pre-war inventory. The organization estimated the US expended 1,060 to 1,430 Patriot rounds, and may not be able to hit its pre-war inventory until mid-2029. Similar trends followed for an array of munitions including the SM-3, SM-6 and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors.
Source: The US is delaying weapon sales to allies. Will there be long-term impact? - Breaking Defense
Not that the world needs more weapons, but it’s good news for the European arms industry and reduces Trump’s political leverage.
I may have to resume research and development on my Mk 1 elastic-powered anti-squirrel catapult.
Why did we ever rely on the US for arms? 
Actually, I suppose I mean why did we trust them?
Mainly because we would have lost WW2 without them. 
It used not to be a problem, when they had (mostly) sensible Presidents. But with Trump all bets are off.
Presumably Trump’s sons will have set up a company to produce bombs etc and will have a nice contract from the Orange one.
What have squirrels done to upset you?
Very little so far, but they could be plotting an insurrection.
Poland is going to build Patriot missiles under licence for themselves and Ukraine, so maybe they could scale up production to help the USA.
Not having a huge stock of TLAMs isn’t an issue once Iran no longer has any SAM capabilities as Bone and Buff will just dumb bomb any target that doesn’t need precision weapons WW2 style.
JDAMs dropped by smaller airframes can do the precision stuff.
Does that mean that RAF Welford has cleared all its stores and the US no longer needs RAF Fairford?
If so, Iran won’t need to take action.
The R N could always lend them a few, not as if they’ve got any working attack subs to put them in .
I am an American and I am disappointed in reading your post yet I also understand the prevailing feelings toward my country. To answer your questions, you relied on the US for arms because it was in your interests to do so and you trusted the US because until Trump came along, my home country was trustworthy. America is in a terrible position right now, and yes, the blame is on those who voted for an incompetent the first time, and a convicted felon the second time. Let us all hope that the day will soon come when Americans can feel proud of their country once again. It was never perfect, it has its past as most countries do but most of us are not a bad lot.
Thank you for this, Harriet.
I’m not blaming all Americans but your decision makers have let a lot of us down, maybe you included. I’m not anti-American, it’s some of the politicians.
I do agree with what you say, and hope that America doesn’t spiral into an aggressive oligarchy/dictatorship as Trump and many of those around him would be very comfortable with. I fear it is very possible. I think that the trust that many parts of the world had, particularly in Europe has been streched to breaking point by Trumps antics and I think that in future they will not feel that they can trust America regardless of who is in power. I think that will be a good thing for the rest of the world, but very bad for America. Trump has all but destroyed the soft power that America could wield with it’s allies to pursue an aggressive stance with everybody, allies included. They won’t easily forget that. That’s very sad.
For me the issue is that I had naively assumed that there were sufficient checks and balances in place to stop an American president going out of control.
A system whereby the Executive Branch, Legislative Branch, Judicial Branch and the fourth estate all kept an eye on one another and quickly brought a rogue actor to heel.
I was wrong. So while I despise Trump and his cronies, they are not the core problem. The problem is a system that allowed them to grab power and to remain unaccountable in the first place. A system that is also corrupted by money. So even when Trump is gone, unless the system is fixed the risk remains.
What Trump doesn’t understand is that it was also in the interests of the US, both commercially and in terms of soft power.
If he’d stuck to saying that Europe needed to spend more money and rearm then it’s quite likely that a lot of that money would have gone to the US because the US has the largest armament industry in the world. It would have been the quickest way to build war stocks.
But, he couldn’t, so now most European governments don’t trust the US to be there when it counts and to stand behind their agreements so they’re working to build domestic capabilities that will replace US suppliers.
There’s a long way to go to achieve that since many European suppliers are almost cottage industries with very long lead times to meet orders though, looking at the lead times being quoted by US suppliers to replenish American stocks used in Iran, it’s not clear that the US is much different in that respect.
IIt is indeed sad. I was raised that my word was my bond. I am opposed to the country joining a treaty and then a new president is elected and he throws out the treaty on day one. It is just plain wrong.
Ultimately I think Trump has unwittingly done us a favour on that. Europe should be self reliant for defence and there could be good economic spin offs from significant investment in R&D.
My hubby is British and we have lived in France for 24 years. It was bad enough when George W Bush was president. Trump makes W look very intelligent but W had humanity, Trump has neither intelligence nor humanity. From his choices for Cabinet positions, it is obvious that he could have made far better choices but I think that he hates the country. He is the consummate narcissist. Anyways, hopefully, come November, the outlook will be better. Bon journée to all.
I think we’re all hoping with you for the midterms. We have friends in Minnesota and they’re pretty depressed about the situation. When they woke up to find that Trump had won, they felt the same way that OH and I did about the Brexit vote.
Whereabouts are you in France, Harriet?