The Pentagon’s top budget official told Congress on Tuesday that the Iran war has so far cost taxpayers an estimated $29 billion, a sharp uptick that shows that even with a ceasefire technically in place, the price tag is climbing.
The rising cost of the war is creating political pressure on the administration, especially as higher gas prices and inflation squeeze American consumers. While Republicans are largely supportive of the Trump administration when it comes to Iran, some are also growing impatient for clearer answers about the conflict’s long-term cost and the endgame.
Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, in an exchange with Gen. Dan Caine, the chair of the Joint Chiefs, questioned whether Pentagon planners anticipated Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz and the impact on energy prices worldwide.
“It seems to me that there’s been a different plan almost daily in dealing with this problem,” said Collins, a Republican from Maine.
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The figure is up from a $25 billion estimate last month, an increase acting Pentagon Comptroller Jay Hurst attributed to “updated repair and replacement of equipment costs and also just general operational costs” associated with keeping forces deployed in the region.
Hurst’s comments to the House Appropriations defense subcommittee came as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other top officials made back-to-back Capitol Hill appearances to defend President Donald Trump’s $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget request for 2027. Hegseth framed the overall budget as the path to modernize the force and supercharge the defense industrial base, and he defended the cost of the conflict as necessary to prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon.
The new $29 billion estimate includes munitions expenditures, aircraft and equipment repair costs, operations and maintenance costs, and other expenses tied to Operation Epic Fury, the administration’s military campaign against Iran and its proxies. Hurst separately told lawmakers that replacement and repair costs alone account for roughly $24 billion of the estimate.
Hurst said the estimate excludes the cost of repairing installations damaged by Iran because officials don’t know whether they will repair those facilities or how much allies will contribute. Pentagon officials have said a supplemental spending request may be made once the department completes a full assessment of the cost of conflict.
But lawmakers from both parties pressed the administration on Tuesday for more detailed breakdowns and warned that Congress must see a request soon. Dovetailing with Democrats’ messaging on affordability heading into midterms, Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the Senate Appropriations vice chair, cast the war and larger $1.5 trillion budget as an unneeded burden on taxpayers.
“The war in Iran has not only cost 13 American servicemembers’ lives, it is also costing American taxpayers dearly, tens of billions of dollars and counting, and that’s money that helps people, perhaps get health care, but instead, we’re paying for bombs dropped in a war that the American people overwhelmingly oppose,” Murray said.
During the House Defense Appropriations hearing, Minnesota Rep. Betty McCollum, the panel’s top Democrat, told Pentagon officials that Congress needs detailed cost estimates for military personnel, munitions, facilities damage, fuel and ship maintenance. “We need that by June 11,” she said.
The hearings also showcased some queasiness among appropriators in both parties over the administration’s broader strategy of financing a massive Pentagon buildup through party-line reconciliation legislation that faces uncertain prospects in Congress, rather than a traditional annual appropriations bill.
Republicans, including House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole of Oklahoma and Senate Appropriations Chair Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said they backed rebuilding the defense industrial base and expanding weapons production but warned that reconciliation was a risky bet.
“I have concerns about the use of reconciliation,” Cole told Hegseth. “I don’t have any concerns about the amount.”
Lawmakers also voiced concerns that the Iran war, in which the U.S. has expended thousands of munitions, was exposing stockpile shortages and lagging industrial capacity. Hegseth pushed back at a characterization of those supplies as “depleted.”
“The munitions issue is foolishly and unhelpfully overstated,” he told House lawmakers. “We have plenty of what we need.”
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