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Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth called Estonia’s defense minister on Monday with some bad news: Because of its own needs in the war with Iran, the Pentagon would have to delay delivery of six units of a high-tech weapons system that Estonia had contracted to buy from the United States government.

The weapon is the Army’s High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, each of which can fire six rockets or one missile at ranges of up to 185 miles. The United States had signed the contract to sell these weapons back in 2022, after they’d proved their worth in Ukraine. The first launchers were delivered last year, with the U.S. Embassy in Tallinn calling the purchase “one of the most significant capability upgrades in Estonian military history.”

But now, according to a story in Stars and Stripes, Hegseth informed his Estonian counterpart that delivery of the munitions—the rockets and missiles that fit into the launchers—will be delayed at least until the war with Iran is over, perhaps for longer still.

The implications of the delay are staggering on several levels.

First, the Pentagon’s civilian leader is telling a NATO ally—a tiny front-line nation whose military budget totals 5.4 percent of its GDP—that its defense needs to take a back seat to a war instigated by President Donald Trump, whose purpose has never been explained (in part because it has no real purpose).

Second, other allies, many of whom have been buying American-made weapons for decades, can infer from this slap in the face that they should start looking........

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