Iran war’s $37bn price tag: Why does the Pentagon want $67bn more?
The US must rapidly replenish its stockpiles of weapons as the war on Iran rages on. United States Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said that
The US must rapidly replenish its stockpiles of weapons as the war on Iran rages on. United States Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said that the months-long US-led war on Iran is estimated to have cost about $37.5bn so far, asking for twice that amount to continue fighting. Hegseth provided the estimate during an intense session in Congress on Tuesday while speaking to lawmakers of the Senate Appropriations Committee (SAC), where he attempted to justify additional funding requests for a conflict that Washington claimed to have won months ago. The new estimates are significantly higher than previous figures Trump administration officials provided between April and June. Democrat and Republican senators grilled Hegseth and General Dan Caine, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, over the cost of the war and the US’s failure to show results. “Secretary Hegseth, despite your failure to win this war, you are back now before Congress asking for almost $70bn in additional funding,” Senator Gary Peters, a Democrat, said. “You are asking the American people for a blank cheque.” “We need straight answers,” Republican Senator John Kennedy added during the tense questioning. The testimony came as a June agreement between Tehran and Washington has broken down, and as the US has launched 11 consecutive nights of attacks on Iran. The US has already racked up thousands of dollars in weapons bills since the war began on February 28, and is increasingly using up its stockpiles. At least 18 US service members are dead, and about 500 are injured. Globally — including in the US — petrol prices and living costs are soaring.
Here’s what we know about Hegseth’s war maths How much has the US spent on the war so far? Hegseth told the SAC on Tuesday that $37.5bn had been spent on the US’s war on Iran so far. The amount is much higher than the $25bn estimate the Defense Department had given the Senate in April, during the US’s first phase of the war tagged Operation Epic Fury. At the time, Assistant Secretary of the Army Jules Hurst III told the House Armed Services Committee that most of the costs had gone to munitions, operations, as well as equipment maintenance and replacements. Other independent estimates put the war’s costs at about $1bn a day, reaching more than $100bn by mid-July. Trump administration officials have not provided broken-down figures. Why is Trump asking for $67bn more? Hegseth also told senators that the US would need an additional $67bn – nearly double the current bill – to keep up the war effort. “He’s not making this up,” Paul Musgrave, a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar, told Al Jazeera, adding that this was an unpopular war Americans did not ask for. “The United States will need to replenish its arsenals [as] the munitions and the airframes that have been used in this conflict need to be replaced,” he said. US President Donald Trump first requested supplemental funding from Congress earlier in June, spurring Hegseth’s testimony in the Senate. The White House asked for $87.6bn in additional funding for the 2026 budget year. More than three-quarters of that, or $67.1bn, has been earmarked for the Department of Defense.
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