(April 29): The US has spent an estimated US$25 billion ($32 billion) on the Iran war, the Pentagon’s budget chief told lawmakers on Wednesday, in the administration’s most complete public estimate of the conflict’s cost so far.
Acting Pentagon Comptroller Jules Hurst offered the figure during testimony alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth before the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday.
The hearing — meant to discuss the administration’s record US$1.5 trillion defence budget request — offered lawmakers the first public opportunity to question the department’s senior officials regarding the US war against Iran, which began on Feb 28.
Hegseth argued that the 40% increase in the defence budget would reverse years of underinvestment but struck a defiant tone with the lawmakers whose support he’ll need to approve the request.
“The biggest challenge, the biggest adversary we face at this point are the reckless, feckless and defeatist words of congressional Democrats and some Republicans,” he said of the Iran war.
The conflict has shut a vital Persian Gulf waterway for oil and gas tankers, raised global energy prices and frayed US alliances in Europe, with President Donald Trump now trying to pressure Iran to negotiate an end to the war with a US naval blockade.
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Hegseth also warned allies there would be “consequences” for failing to help with the US war against Iran, singling out Nato for what he called an “unconscionable” failure to help US forces. “We will remember,” he said.
“Model allies that step up, like Israel, South Korea, Poland, Finland, the Baltics, and others, will receive our special favour,” Hegseth said in a written statement ahead of the hearing. “Allies that do not — allies that still fail to do their part for collective defence — will face consequences.”
The House Armed Services Committee’s senior Democrat, Washington’s Adam Smith, called the administration’s budget request “hopelessly unrealistic” and accused Hegseth of “gratuitously” insulting US allies and “going it alone” in Iran.
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“What is the plan to achieve our objectives? We’ve seen the costs,” Smith said.
Ahead of midterm elections where cost of living issues loom large, Republican lawmakers are reluctant to attempt selling constituents on a US$440 billion increase in defence spending that would likely come at the expense of popular social programmes.
The US bombardment of Iran has also used up much of the US stockpiles of high-tech missiles and bombs. The Pentagon estimated the opening two days of the war cost US$5.6 billion in munitions alone, The Washington Post reported in March.
Hegseth has denied the war has depleted key munitions. Yet one of the reasons cited for such a big boost in defence spending involves replenishing the munitions that have been in heavy demand during the war — and used in the defence of Israel last year, when Iran retaliated for the bombing of its nuclear facilities.
“Our global munitions stockpiles are low and we lack the capacity to rapidly restock magazine depth,” Rep Mike Rogers, the committee’s Republican chairman, said in an opening statement that portrayed the record defence budget as a reversal of decades of underinvestment.
On Wednesday, Hegseth also reiterated the Trump administration’s new stance toward China, saying the US wants “an approach aimed not at domination but rather at a balanced relationship”.
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