TEHRAN-  Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has slammed Western arms companies who are putting their lucrative profits on top of civilian lives by working relentlessly to prolong the war in Ukraine.

The proof is in the pudding as they say. And the data is not comfortable to digest. 

On April 18, 2003, the biggest U.S. arms manufacturer published the following on its official website "Lockheed Martin Corporation today reported first quarter 2023 net sales of $15.1 billion."

The top American arms producer also posted this "net earnings in the first quarter of 2023 were $1.7 billion, or $6.61 per share."

The second quarter of the profits of this year will be published prior to the market opening on July 18.

A quick look at Lockheed Martin's four quarterly profits, shortly before the Ukraine war began, suggests the figures for this quarter will be identical. 

Around $15 billion in profits every three months and just above or below $7 dollars per share on the market. 

Raytheon Technologies, another top U.S. arms manufacturer, reported first quarterly profits in 2023 of $17.2 billion, up ten percent over the prior year. 

On April 26, 2023?, the Boeing Company recorded a first-quarter revenue of $17.9 billion. 

On April 27, 2023, Northrop Grumman Corporation reported that in the first quarter, 2023 sales increased six percent to $9.3 billion, as compared with $8.8 billion in the first quarter of 2022. The arms manufacturer added that the first quarter sales "reflect continued strong demand". 

On April 26, 2023, General Dynamics released its reports of its First-Quarter 2023 Financial Results with revenue of $9.9 billion, up 5.2% year over year.

Also, on April 27, 2023, L3Harris Technologies generated $5.8 billion of orders for investors, a quarterly record. 

These are just six of at least eight U.S. weapons manufacturers that the Pentagon held a meeting with in April 2022 to inform the U.S. military industrial complex to supply weapons for Ukraine with the aim of prolonging the war in Ukraine.

The Pentagon made it clear to the arms companies that they would be working with a view to a war that would last for years. 

The Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Administration would go on to hold weekly meetings of its European Crisis Management Team to review specific requests related to Ukraine.

As the conflict passes 500 days of fighting, there has been only one clear winner from the deadly crisis: the U.S. arms industry and those who bought American arms companies' stocks in the market.

Before the conflict even erupted, U.S. lawmakers had invested their money in stocks belonging to American arms manufacturers. 

This has raised a lot of suspicion over how much intelligence U.S. lawmakers had that Washington would reject the Kremlin's security guarantees over NATO's eastward military expansion on Russian borders that would, eventually provoke Moscow to the extent of sparking a conflict, that could have been easily avoided. 

There are no ways Ukrainian forces would have been able to continue fighting against the Russian military without the strong stream of American weapons.

The U.S. has been, by far, the largest military donor to Ukraine, with assistance amounting to at least $76.8 billion, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. 

The majority of that money has gone toward providing weapons systems, training, and intelligence for the Ukrainian military. 

The staggering amount in the space of less than one year and five months appears to be rising with the administration of President Joe Biden regularly announcing new packages of "assistance" to Kyiv. 

On Wednesday (July 12), Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said, "The people of Ukraine are being killed because the interests of the companies that produce and sell arms in the West lie in the continuation of the war in Ukraine."

As the conflict rages on, there have been many accusations that the U.S. is profiting from the war through the sale of weapons. 

The U.S. military industrial complex is expanding its weapons production beyond what is needed in response to Ukraine. 

The latest item on the itinerary is cluster munitions. Ukraine has received the weapons of mass destruction, a military spokesperson said on Thursday, less than a week after the U.S. announced it would transfer the widely banned munitions to Ukrainian forces.

The Kremlin has said it would be forced to respond if Ukraine used cluster bombs against its troops, after Washington pledged the weapons to Kyiv. 

"The potential use of this type of munitions changes the situation, and of course it would force Russia to take countermeasures," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

The U.S. arms industry is purely profiteering from deaths on the other side of the Atlantic. Nobody is being made safer by the gigantic amount of weapons being shipped into the warzone. 

Ultimately, with the purposeful absence of any U.S. peace initiatives, the American arms producers are on the course for a historic bonanza.  

With powerful arms lobbies in Congress and their pundits waging a propaganda and disinformation war, the American public are none the wiser. 

The Western military industrial complex certainly has the potential to exert a lot of influence over government policy, especially when there are lawmakers who are benefiting from their investments in arms companies. 
Last year, the U.S. Senate passed a funding bill that included a record $858 billion in annual military spending, up from $740 billion the previous year.

Ironically, or perhaps not, it was $45 billion more than what was proposed by President Biden.

The bill included funding for Ukraine, allowing the Pentagon to buy massive amounts of munitions using multi-year contracts, both for Ukrainian forces and to refill the U.S. stockpiles.

In the U.S., there is a strong interest and desire to prevent the Ukraine war from ending, especially for the American economy that is highly dependent on the vast number of military-related contractors that keep employment levels up.

Estimates suggest that nearly one million jobs are tied to this deadly sector in the United States.

But the U.S. isn't alone. The United Kingdom and other Western military companies are cashing in as much as they can. 

Arms contracts are being rolled out thick and fast to speed up weapons production and fill up the supply gaps.

The Ukrainian civilians are the ones paying the price for the cruel practice of pouring weapons by an uncontrollable Western sector, making lucrative profits at the expense of people's livelihoods. 

And none of the Western arms suppliers, their leaders as well as none of their supporters are being held accountable.