New Delhi, Aug. 10 -- John Mearsheimer, the University of Chicago political scientist whose realist framework for understanding great-power competition has shaped international relations theory for four decades, said on Monday that the United States has inflicted serious and lasting damage on its own sophisticated weapons inventory through the Iran war, and that Washington cannot escalate the conflict further without running the risk of exhausting what remains.

and the consequence of a protracted war for a country reliant on precision-guided munitions is inventory depletion that cannot be reversed quickly. "We've really seriously damaged our sophisticated weapons inventory," he said, "and it's very hard to replace those weapons."

That c...