U.S. operations in Iran risk draining limited U.S. stocks.

Christina Lu

The barrage of munitions that U.S. forces have fired into Iran have laid bare just how reliant the U.S. war machine is on a powerful metal that you’ve likely never heard of: tungsten.

The silvery metal is known for its exceptional density and for having the highest melting point of all pure metals. Those qualities have made it essential for the U.S. defense industry, powering everything from armor-piercing munitions to rocket nozzles.

Tungsten is a “metal of war,” said Chris Berry, the president of House Mountain Partners, an independent metals analysis consultancy.

The problem is that the United States does not mine any tungsten at a commercial scale. And as the widening Middle East conflict enters its second month with no signs of abating, industry analysts and executives warn that U.S. operations are rapidly depleting munitions that are reliant on materials such as tungsten that cannot be immediately replenished or easily replaced.

Tungsten prices have skyrocketed by more than 500 percent in the wake of the conflict.

“We’re getting a very clear picture that there’s just simply not enough tungsten in the supply chain now, and nobody really knows how this shortfall will be made up in the near future,” said Pini Althaus, a managing partner at Cove Capital, a U.S. mining investment firm that plans to build a tungsten mining and processing plant in Kazakhstan in a deal backed by the U.S. government.

As it does with so many of the world’s mineral supply chains, China overwhelmingly commands global tungsten markets, dominating production, imports, and consumption; the United States has lagged behind, relying more on recycling and imports.

The last time that the United States mined any tungsten commercially was more than a decade ago, and U.S. companies are still scrambling to get domestic operations off the ground. And although Washington does stockpile strategic metals, the exact contents of that stockpile are classified.

The tungsten challenge is emblematic of just how reliant the U.S. defense industry is on a raft of metals and minerals, such as rare-earth elements, whose supply chains are largely commanded by China. Shortly before U.S. and Israeli forces struck Iran at the end of February, the U.S. Defense Department reportedly asked mining companies to help reinforce domestic stocks of key minerals, including tungsten, Reuters reported.

That exposure has been thrown into sharp relief in recent months as China has successfully leveraged its rare-earth dominance in trade negotiations with the United States, and analysts warn that the continued depletion of U.S. munitions that rely on these materials could leave Washington in an even more uncertain position ahead of upcoming talks with Beijing.

“If anything, the continued U.S. actions in the Iran war play further into Beijing’s leverage over the U.S. on rare earths,” said Kyle Chan, an expert on China’s industrial policy at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington.

It “makes this problem that the U.S. had wanted to escape out of almost even more dire,” Chan added, “because now, where are we going to source the yttrium or neodymium or dysprosium that we need for missile systems?”

Even before the Iran war erupted, tungsten prices were already high. After the Trump administration imposed tariffs on multiple tungsten products from China, Beijing responded by unleashing its own export controls on tungsten and other minerals in late 2025—triggering a “desperate situation” in the United States, Althaus said.

With that supply shock, tungsten prices climbed throughout 2025, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. And now, the war in the Middle East—which has only driven up demand for tungsten for weapons systems—has thrown yet another wrench into the mix. Tungsten prices have now “gone parabolic,” Berry said.

“There is a lot of pressure on these materials, and China has cut us off of that access,” said Gracelin Baskaran, the director of the Critical Mineral Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. “You certainly have a situation where the demand being driven by kinetic conflict is leaving us quite precarious.”

For the Trump administration, which has been proactive in securing new critical mineral supply chains, the war in Iran is only set to accelerate ongoing efforts to boost tungsten security. Starting Jan. 1, 2027, Defense Department restrictions on where manufacturers can source tungsten for defense supply chains will officially kick in—part of its bid to cut U.S. reliance on foreign rivals such as China.

At home, the U.S. leader has also unveiled a $12 billion critical mineral stockpile, pumped massive sums of money into domestic mining projects, and taken equity stakes in many private companies. Abroad, the Trump administration has sought mineral partnerships around the world and pitched dozens of countries on a global minerals trading bloc.

With tungsten in particular, the Trump administration has backed and championed an agreement between Cove Capital and the government of Kazakhstan that would see the U.S. firm build a tungsten mining and processing plant in the Central Asian country—relatively unfamiliar territory for American businesses.

When production begins, Washington is set to benefit. “Because we did receive the advocacy from the U.S. government, which helped us secure [the project], we do have a commitment to do the offtakes with the United States and with the U.S. government,” said Althaus of Cove Capital.

The U.S. Defense Department has also awarded $6.2 million to Golden Metal Resources to develop a tungsten project in the U.S. state of Nevada. Golden Metal Resources is a subsidiary of Guardian Metal Resources, which listed on the New York Stock Exchange late last month.

“This is an exciting milestone for Guardian Metal and our team as we begin trading on NYSE American,” said Oliver Friesen, the CEO of Guardian Metal, in a press release. “We believe our Nevada projects are well positioned to contribute to the domestic U.S. tungsten supply amid growing focus on securing critical mineral supply chains.”

For all of this momentum, there are no quick fixes to the immediate tungsten challenge. Engineering new supply chains isn’t just a question of locating new mines; it requires establishing a whole gamut of processing and manufacturing capabilities, all of which require sustained capital—and time.

Berry told Foreign Policy that it will likely take years before the United States will see “a tungsten supply chain or a critical mass of tungsten material that in some way does not touch China.”

Which means that once existing U.S. tungsten stocks are drained, they may stay that way for a while, Althaus said. “It’s extremely difficult to replenish because there simply are not enough mines in production that the U.S. would have access to,” he added. “There are more that are going to come online, but we’re talking about over the next three to 10 years.”

But so long as demand from the Iran war continues to put pressure on the tungsten market, firms are gearing up for even more interest.

“I think there’s a lot of investment dollars that will be going into tungsten in the near future,” Althaus said.