Hegseth says Iran war has cost $37.5 billion, lawmakers question it

Pete Hegseth told senators the Iran war had cost the administration an estimated $37.5 billion since it began in late February. The figure landed as he and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, faced questions before the Senate Appropriations Committee about war costs, strategy and what Congress had actually approved.

The hearing exposed a widening gap between the Pentagon’s public accounting and the numbers lawmakers were hearing behind closed doors. A Pentagon official had previously told Congress the war had cost about $25 billion, but internal assessments later put the total closer to $50 billion, in part because the lower figure did not fully capture damaged military equipment and other expenses. Hegseth’s new estimate sat between those numbers, but it did little to quiet questions about how the administration was calculating the price of a conflict that is still escalating.

Senators also pressed for an answer on the war’s endgame. Some Republicans have raised concerns about how long the conflict has dragged on and whether it has clear congressional authorization, while Democrats have repeatedly challenged the administration’s justification for the campaign. The dispute has become part of a broader Capitol Hill fight over war powers and over Donald Trump’s proposed $1.5 trillion defense budget for fiscal 2027.

Money was only part of the problem. The administration was also seeking supplemental funding for the war, with reports citing a request that could reach $67 billion as the fighting intensifies. That push has sharpened the stakes on the Senate floor, where lawmakers are being asked to approve more spending before the Pentagon has fully explained the military and political objective of the campaign.

The conflict has also rippled into the economy. Oil prices reached a four-year high as the war expanded, adding urgency to lawmakers’ questions about how much more the conflict will cost in taxes, gas prices and military wear and tear. With the war now measured in tens of billions of dollars, the central questions in Washington remain unresolved: how it ends, who authorized it, and how much more Americans will be asked to pay.