Live updates: Follow the latest news on US-Iran war
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Sunday said the US military has “plenty of money” to pay for the war against Iran, but needs more to make sure it is well supplied in the future.
The Pentagon has not provided a running tally of the war's costs but a look at initial disclosures show that things are adding up quickly.
Pentagon officials this month told US politicians that the estimated cost of the war exceeded $11.3 billion for the first six days, an amount close to $2 billion a day.
A lot of those expenses came from bombs and interceptors, some of which cost more than $1 million each, as the US struck thousands of sites across Iran and shot drones and missiles out of the sky.
The Pentagon already has an annual budget of about $1 trillion, which means America spends more on its military than the next nine countries combined, accounting for about 40 per cent of global defence spending. Mr Trump wants to increase the amount to $1.5 trillion annually.
In order to replenish missile stocks and continue funding the Iran war, the Pentagon is asking Congress for $200 billion in additional money.
“We have plenty of money to fund this war,” Mr Bessent said on NBC News.
“This is supplemental. President Trump has built up the military, as he did in his first term, as he is now doing in his second term, and he wants to make sure that the military is well supplied going forward.”
Any extra funding for the Iran war is likely to face significant hurdles in Congress, which Mr Trump did not consult before launching the Iran attacks.
Even some Republicans, such as Representative Lauren Boebert, have said they will not approve additional funding because they are fed up with money going overseas. Mr Trump campaigned on a promise to bring peace and not start new wars.
The world's next biggest defence spender is China, at about $300 billion annually. Even before the Iran war, the Trump administration had ordered massive new military spending commitments, including a modernisation of US nuclear forces and an overhaul in acquisitions to speed up the buying of weapons.
An assumed cost of $2 billion a day is probably only a partial accounting for the financial costs of the war. As was seen in America's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the dollar amount for fighting wars was compounded by continuing costs to pay for veterans who were wounded and interest on the money borrowed to fund the wars in the first place.
Some estimates put the combined costs of Afghanistan and Iraq at about $8 trillion.
The US economy runs at a massive deficit so any new Iran war costs will probably end up getting heaped on to the national debt, which is fast closing in on $40 trillion.
In addition, consumers the world over are already paying more for oil and gas, and commodities are expected to rise quickly as the Strait of Hormuz shutdown continues.
For Mr Bessent, any short-term pain is worth it. “I'm not going to put a time on it, but let's just pick 50 days of temporary elevated prices,” he said.
“Prices will come off on the other side for 50 years of not having an Iranian regime with a nuclear weapon. The American people, they are beginning to understand, thanks to President Trump, that there is no prosperity without security.”
