'$25 billion' — Is military lowballing cost of Iran war?

A Pentagon official told the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday that the war in Iran cost the United States $25 billion in the first two months.

Facing questions from ranking member Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), Acting Defense Department comptroller Jules Hurst testified that most of the cost was “in munitions” plus “[operations and maintenance] and equipment replacement.”

Smith thanked the Pentagon official for offering the most specific cost estimate since its first week, when Hurst said the price tag was roughly $11 billion. “I’m glad you answered that question because we’ve been asking for a hell of a long time and no one has given us the number.”

Hurst told the committee that the Pentagon and the White House would provide Congress with a supplemental request when they had “a full assessment of the cost of conflict.” Reporting has indicated that the administration is planning to ask for a $98 billion supplemental to pay for the war.

The comptroller’s official estimate falls short of those made by outside groups. More than one month ago, the Center for American Progress, based on a combination of official cost tallies and work from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, estimated the war had already cost $25 billion. An April 8 study from the American Enterprise Institute similarly assessed that the war had already cost somewhere between $25 and $35 billion.

Rep. Ro Khanna pushed back on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s assertion that the supplemental would only include $25 million for the mission in Iran specifically. “You’re saying $25 billion. If you come back and want to revise those numbers, because all the experts are disagreeing with you when it comes to today’s dollars in damage,” Khanna said.

While the agenda for the hearing was supposed to focus on the administration’s $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget request, it has largely consisted of pointed if not heated exchanges between Democratic members and Hegseth over the strategy and costs of the war in Iran.

“What is it worth to ensure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon?” Hegseth asked members when challenged over the war’s price to American taxpayers.

Hegseth called the “reckless, feckless, and defeatist words of congressional Democrats” the United States’ greatest adversary. He blasted members for warning that the war could drag on and become, in Rep. John Garamendi’s words, a “quagmire,” arguing that describing the two-month conflict that way amounted to “handing propaganda to our enemies.”

Hegseth said that Trump, unlike his predecessors, was not fighting a nebulous, open-ended war, though he did not offer any specifics over how or when the war would conclude.