Pentagon's $25B Iran War Cost Trails Outside Experts
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- Pentagon Acting Comptroller Jules Hurst told the House Armed Services Committee that the war in Iran cost $25 billion in the first two months, with most spending going to munitions, operations and maintenance, and equipment replacement.
- Rep. Adam Smith said the $25 billion figure was the first specific cost estimate since the war's first week, when the Pentagon had pegged costs at roughly $11 billion.
- The Center for American Progress and American Enterprise Institute had estimated war costs at $25–35 billion more than a month before Wednesday's testimony, meaning the Pentagon's new number matches the floor of older outside assessments rather than exceeding them.
- The administration is reportedly planning to send Congress a $98 billion supplemental request to pay for the war, according to reporting cited at the hearing.
- Rep. Ro Khanna pushed back on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's claim that only $25 million of the supplemental would be earmarked specifically for the Iran mission, telling Hurst to come back with revised numbers.
- Hegseth dismissed Democratic criticism of the war's strategy and price tag as the nation's 'greatest adversary,' saying that describing the two-month conflict as a 'quagmire' amounted to 'handing propaganda to our enemies.'
Why it matters: The Pentagon's $25 billion figure is not new information — outside think tanks had already landed at $25–35 billion weeks ago — and the reported $98 billion supplemental request implies the true ask could dwarf what the Defense Department has disclosed to Congress, leaving lawmakers with little basis to assess the war's true fiscal trajectory.
