Iran War May Leave Ukraine Without Critical Air Defenses

The war with Iran is sucking up expensive U.S. air defense munitions that Ukraine desperately needs, putting future deliveries at risk and threatening Kyiv’s ability to counter Russian ballistic missile attacks.

The U.S. and Gulf allies have burned through hundreds of Patriot missiles shooting down Iranian ballistic missiles and attack drones, eating up stockpiles that might have gone to Ukraine. The dynamic has put the Trump administration’s expanding war against the Iranian regime in direct conflict with Kyiv’s reliance on contracts for U.S.-made air defenses, according to interviews with 10 top European officials and two U.S. lawmakers.

Those allies fear that Russia will seize the initiative by attempting to lay waste to more of Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure and try to move the front lines while the U.S. and Europe are distracted with a separate war — and stockpile concerns — of their own.

"If [Vladimir] Putin was feeling any pressure to negotiate before, and it's not clear he was, it's gone for now,” said a EU official. “The U.S. is distracted and burning through some of the weapons Europe wants to purchase for Ukraine. … It’s a very gloomy scenario.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday warned of impending shortages.

The overall deficit of missiles for Patriot systems “is not because of this war in the Middle East,” Zelenskyy told WELT, part of the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, which includes POLITICO. But “this war will have [an] influence on decreasing the number of missiles, decreasing the opportunity to get more missiles” for Ukraine.

The scale of attacks against American and allied forces in the Gulf is beyond anything seen in decades.

The United Arab Emirates’ defense ministry said Tuesday that Iran had launched 1,475 drones, 262 ballistic missiles and eight cruise missiles at the country since the war began, many of which were met with U.S.-made Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missiles. More than 1,600 of those drones and missiles were brought down — underscoring the intensity of the air defense fire.

A Bloomberg Intelligence report estimated that the U.S. and its partners in the region have fired as many as 1,000 PAC-3 Patriot interceptors at Iranian missiles and drones since the start of the war, a number that dwarfs the replacement rate for the expensive — and hard to produce — weapon.

The missiles take months to manufacture, and the war in Ukraine has led to allies across the globe rushing to put in new orders. Lockheed Martin agreed in January to triple its production of Patriot missiles — in part due to demands from the Trump administration — going from about 600 annually in 2025 to 2,000 to meet exploding worldwide demand.

But it will take several years for the company’s factories to expand capacity sufficiently to meet any new requirements.

“There's a lot of confusion on that question, of what the priorities are going to be for Ukraine versus the Middle East, and specifically, how long and how high the demands are for these munitions,” said U.S. Sen Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat and Ukraine ally. “Europeans are frustrated that we're not more forthcoming in terms of our production capacity, and that the difficulty of ramping up production is used as an excuse for failing to provide more.”

In the years before conflicts erupted in Europe and the Middle East, the U.S. only produced about 270 Patriot missiles a year, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Industry has a long way to go before it can meet expected demand.

“It goes without saying that Ukraine will be affected as the U.S. will prioritize national needs” in the coming months, an official from a NATO country said. The official, like others in this story, was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive national defense issues.

One German official said that “sluggish” deliveries of weapons to Ukraine in November and December have significantly contributed to the destruction of Ukraine's energy infrastructure. And that could just be the start.

“The worry is that [Donald] Trump will break agreements, withhold supplies, and that Putin will ruthlessly exploit this,” the official said.

Allies also are increasingly concerned about skyrocketing prices for sought-after American weapons.

“Some prices of weapon systems are clearly doubled,” said a second official from a NATO country. “That’s the ballpark and degree of price issues we are having.”

Beyond the near-term scramble for air defenses, Europeans are worried that the broader Ukrainian arms pipeline could be in jeopardy as U.S. forces — and their allies — expand their arsenals amid escalating conflict in the Middle East.

The U.S. and NATO set up the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List, or PURL, last year as a way to keep weapons flowing into Ukraine, including helping Kyiv procure much-needed Patriot air defense interceptors.

The Trump administration stopped American military aid for Ukraine last year, and PURL has served as a way to keep the spigot open. It allows European countries to buy American equipment and then donate it to Kyiv.

Finnish defense secretary Antti Häkkänen said his government has “emphasized there has to be some kind of a European industry pillar, and Ukrainian pillar,” that would allow some manufacturing to move from the U.S. to the continent so Ukraine can quickly get what it needs.

Stefanie Bolzen at WELT, Joe Gould and Eli Stokols contributed to this report.