National opinion: Mideast conflict highlights need to rebuild domestic mining

The conflict in Iran is posing alarming questions about America’s munitions stockpile and its ability to replenish it. The challenge America faces is not just how quickly we can manufacture interceptor missiles, but whether we have reliable access to the minerals required to do so.

Our extraordinary reliance on foreign sources — including geopolitical rivals — for the essential minerals that underpin modern military systems has become an Achilles’ heel. While the Trump administration has taken important steps to address our glaring minerals vulnerability — including investments in new mining and processing projects, establishing a strategic minerals reserve, and working to create a minerals trade bloc outside of China’s control — Congress needs to solidify that progress with decisive, lasting action.

Our minerals weakness — and China’s dominance — has been decades in the making. While new manufacturing plants for munitions can be built relatively quickly, mines cannot. Rebuilding our mineral security will require the urgency of a sprint, with the patience of a marathon.

The U.S. Defense Stockpile — a physical stockpile of essential minerals and metals needed to sustain a war effort — is now a fraction of what it once was. As recently as 2022, the inflation-adjusted value of materials in the stockpile had fallen to just 2.5 percent of its value in 1952.

In a 2023 report, the Pentagon estimated that a conflict with China would result in shortages of 69 materials. It’s a vulnerability that potential adversaries understand and are ready to exploit. China has already used mineral export restrictions to exert painful leverage during tense trade negotiations.

Factor in the current conflict with Iran — in which the U.S. military has fired hundreds of precision weapons and thousands of munitions — and there’s an urgent need for Congress to act.

Reforming the permitting process for new U.S. mines to accelerate timelines and help de-risk projects is essential. So too is reinvesting in and rethinking the military’s National Defense Stockpile. There’s ample historic precedent for this.

The defense stockpile should be expanded to ensure it covers the mineral needs of at least a three-year conflict, which Congress required as recently as 1989. It should also be leveraged to create a baseline of domestic productive capacity, the irreplaceable foundation for mineral security.

Consider the decisive action Congress took at the outbreak of the Korean War. Congress appropriated $2.9 billion for emergency stockpile purchases —equivalent to nearly $40 billion today — and enacted the Defense Production Act of 1950, explicitly authorizing federal support for the “exploration, development, and mining of strategic and critical minerals and metals.”

Recognizing the vast potential of U.S. mineral resources, and wary of over-reliance on mineral imports, the government boosted support for domestic mineral production and processing using a suite of tools including loans, loan guarantees, purchase agreements, and targeted tax incentives.

Remarkably, by 1953, the government had signed more than 425 exploration contracts, and helped identify new domestic sources of uranium, tungsten, beryllium, copper, and manganese. Federal support also went to processing capacity, copper production, and even doubling domestic germanium production, critical to the electronics in advanced weapons systems.

As the U.S. turned to Cold War planning, government minerals strategy came to balance strategic international engagement with robust stockpiling efforts underpinned by dynamic domestic production. We can — and must — rediscover this approach today.

The past year has marked significant progress in rebuilding American minerals security. However, the conflict with Iran underscores the urgent challenges we face. Now is the time for Congress to reinvest in U.S. mineral security and recognize the irreplaceable importance of domestic production.