New Delhi, May 13: The United States’ cost of war in Iran has climbed to 29 billion US Dollars, an increase of 4 billion USD from an estimate provided late last month.
The Pentagon said the cost of the war with Iran had touched to nearly 29 billion USD.
The new figure was revealed by the Defense Department during a budget hearing on Capitol Hill.
President Donald Trump faced mounting scrutiny over the conflict and its impact on military readiness.
Defence Secretary Peter Hegseth and General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were testifying on a 1.5 trillion USD budget request for 2027 alongside Pentagon finance chief Jules Hurst III.
“However, the joint staff team and the comptroller team are constantly looking at that estimate, and so now we think it’s closer to 29 billion USD,” he said, citing updated “repair and replacement of equipment costs” and broader operational expenses.
Pressed on when Congress would receive a fuller accounting of the war’s costs, Hegseth said the administration would request “whatever we think we need” separately from the main Pentagon budget, but did not say when that supplemental request would arrive.
Several experts, however, questioned the Pentagon’s ledger, saying the real cost to US taxpayers is likely to bemuch higher than the publicly stated estimate.
Some lawmakers have argued the price tag also fails to take into account the knock-on effects to the US economy, including higher prices for consumers caused, in part, by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
In April, US representative Ro Khanna claimed the war would cost the US economy about 631 billion USD.
