$25 billion. That is what two months of war with Iran has cost the United States, according to the first official Pentagon estimate, disclosed to Congress on Wednesday after weeks of lawmakers demanding answers.

Jules Hurst III, the Pentagon’s chief financial officer, told the House Armed Services Committee that most of the spending went towards ammunition. Operations and equipment upgrades accounted for the rest. Hurst did not address whether the figure covers the cost of rebuilding and repairing US base infrastructure damaged during the conflict, according to Channel News Asia.

Representative Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the committee, made clear the number was overdue. “I’m glad you answered that question,” Smith told Hurst. “Because we’ve been asking for a hell of a long time, and no one’s given us the number.”

A Costly Two Months

The war began on Feb 28, when the United States and Israel launched strikes against Iran. The Pentagon has since poured tens of thousands of additional troops into the Middle East, keeping three aircraft carriers in the region. A fragile ceasefire is currently holding. Thirteen US troops have been killed and hundreds wounded.

At roughly $12.5 billion per month, the conflict is burning through funds at a rate that, if sustained over a full year, would surpass $150 billion — a sum that would place it among the most expensive US military campaigns of the past two decades, exceeded only by the peak years of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Hegseth Turns on His Critics

The cost disclosure came during a hearing on the Pentagon’s proposed budget for the coming fiscal year — a record-breaking sum. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, seated alongside Hurst and General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, opened his remarks not with a budget justification but with a rebuke of the legislature that controls his department’s funding.

“The biggest challenge, the biggest adversary we face at this point are the reckless, feckless and defeatist words of congressional Democrats and some Republicans,” Hegseth said, according to the South China Morning Post.

The framing was deliberate. At a hearing convened to scrutinise military spending, the defence secretary cast lawmakers asking questions about that spending as adversaries — drawing a line between the Pentagon and the chamber constitutionally responsible for overseeing it.

The Political Math

For Democrats, the hearing was an opening. With midterm elections six months away and Trump’s approval ratings under pressure from rising gasoline prices, the party has seized on the Iran war as a liability for the Republican majority. US fuel costs have surged since the conflict disrupted oil and natural gas shipments, and the knock-on effects have pushed up prices for agricultural inputs such as fertilizers.

Public opinion is moving against the war. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found just 34 per cent of Americans support the conflict — down from 36 per cent in mid-April and 38 per cent in mid-March. Democrats are betting that tying the war’s cost to everyday economic pain will resonate with voters already strained by high consumer prices.

What Congress Still Doesn’t Know

The Pentagon’s cost breakdown was sparse. Ammunition consumed the largest share. Beyond that, Hurst offered little detail on which weapons systems, which operations, or which equipment upgrades drove the tally.

Congress is now weighing a record-breaking defence budget while processing the first cost estimate for an active war — one that raises more questions than it resolves. Does the $25 billion include the cost of replacing expended munitions? Does it cover the deployment and sustainment of three carrier strike groups? Does it factor in long-term medical care for the hundreds of wounded troops? Hurst did not say.

A Floor, Not a Ceiling

Two months is a narrow window for a conflict with no defined end. The ceasefire could hold. It could also collapse, and with it any assumption that current spending levels represent anything close to the final bill. Major military escalations have historically driven costs far beyond early projections.

Lawmakers now have a number. What they lack is a detailed accounting, a projected total, and a timeline. The $25 billion is a down payment on a war whose ultimate cost remains unwritten — and whose political reckoning arrives in November.

Sources