Pentagon Now Claims Iran War Will Cost More than War in Ukraine Has Since 2022

After the Pentagon noted to Congress that the first six days of the Iran War cost a staggering $11.3 billion for American taxpayers, we knew that a big bill for the whole, ill-advised operation—which President Donald Trump has taken to calling an “excursion”—would soon be coming due. But it looks like even congressional GOP are shocked by just how cripplingly costly the conflict is now set to be, according to the Department of Defense’s own admission and estimation. According to military officials speaking to The New York Times, the Pentagon is asking Congress for $200 billion in funding exclusively for the Iran War, equal to nearly a quarter of the country’s entire annual defense budget, which is already record-settingly high. That request has reportedly been forwarded to the White House to weigh in on before it is formally sent to Congress.

The rationale, from Secretary of Defense and un-armed boat survivor murder enthusiast Pete Hegseth? That would be: “Obviously, it takes money to kill bad guys,” which is an actual thing this ostensibly adult man said during a Thursday news conference when asked about the $200 billion figure. He followed, “As far as the $200 billion, I think that number could move.”

Oh great, it’s going to move, eh? I’m sure it’s likely to move downward, right? These types of numbers famously move downward all the time, rather than just continuously ballooning upward. What, is $200 billion just the lowball offer?

Does this 200 billion dollars mean trump didn’t win the war last week?

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— Molly Jong-Fast (@mollyjongfast.bsky.social) Mar 18, 2026 at 10:02 PM

Let’s indulge in some context here. A cost of $200 billion earmarked just for the Iran War almost certainly implies a long, quagmire-y stay in the Middle East and Iran, for one thing—that, or we’re just going to burn piles of money at a rate no one has ever attempted to do before in human history, which is a possibility that also can’t be ruled out. By way of comparison, though, a recent report from the Council on Foreign Relations estimated that the United States had dedicated $188 billion in military aid to date in Ukraine’s ongoing war since Russia invaded the country in early 2022. That war is now more than four years old. Which is to say, Pete Hegseth and the Pentagon are now planning to spend billions more on the Iran War than the U.S. has spent supporting Ukraine’s war for more than four years. They’re planning on spending this in a conflict that officials initially claimed would last only “days.” Does that dollar figure sound like days, or like years?

Let’s compare it to a full-on U.S. military operation, though. The Congressional Research Service calculated that the U.S. ultimately spent $815 billion in direct costs for the war in Iraq over the course of 13 years. Hegseth is currently saying that the Pentagon wants to spend a quarter of that entire figure, which was previously spread out over 13 years. If we were merely spending at the same rate as the Iraq War, that would have us in Iran for about three full years on that $200 billion budget. And even if we were spending money twice as fast now as we were in that engagement, it would still have us in Iran until … late 2027? This is just basic math, with numbers supplied by the Pentagon, not us. Nor were the costs of those other conflicts ever approved as a giant, lump sum in advance, as Hegseth is asking for here, but instead provided through multiple cycles of appropriation. If Congress approves $200 billion for the Iran War and then the conflict ends a month later, is the Department of Defense going to return that money to federal coffers, or simply pocket the remainder?

Let’s consider a few other, non-military frames of reference for these kinds of dollar figures. As we wrote recently, USAID, which previously distributed American foreign aid and was an invaluable builder of U.S. soft power around the globe, spent $21.7 billion in its final year of operation in 2024 before it was gutted by Elon Musk’s DOGE. The loss of that aid, in the form of food for the starving and medicine for the critically ill, is already estimated to have cost hundreds of thousands or even millions of lives worldwide. The Pentagon is asking for Iran War funding that would have fully funded USAID at its most recent level for almost a DECADE, saving millions upon millions of lives. Instead, we’re currently spending $2.5 million per Tomahawk missile we use to blow up elementary schools.

The budget of USAID was $22 billion per year.

It was *saving the lives* of 4.1 million men, women, and children per year, all over the world.

www.thelancet.com/journals/lan…

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— Michael Clemens (@mclem.org) Mar 19, 2026 at 6:25 AM

It’s truly incredible to think of everything these fantastical levels of money could buy that would actually benefit Americans. The amount the Pentagon is seeking would be enough to run the entire National Institutes of Health for more than four years. It would pay for the extension of enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits for more than six years, saving Americans from punishing increases to their health insurance premiums. Trump and congressional Republicans could literally have just gifted Americans with six more years of ACA tax credits and ridden that popularity to the bank, and instead they thought it would be more valuable (and maybe even more popular, somehow?) to spend that money getting American servicemen killed in yet another war in the Middle East while oil and gasoline prices skyrocket.

It is truly incredible how money is no object in America, when the goal is reducing buildings (filled with children) on the other side of the globe to rubble, but the same money becomes a precious thing when you ask your government to spend it on services for Americans. Our government places more value on the destruction of pretend enemies than it does on your own survival. It’s probably a good thing we can’t see an estimation of what Pete Hegseth thinks each American life is worth.