The cost of the war with Iran has risen to about $29 billion, a top Pentagon official told Congress Tuesday at House and Senate hearings on the Defense budget. The estimate, provided by acting Pentagon Comptroller Jules Hurst III, represents a $4 billion increase from the $25 billion price tag Hurst cited late last month. That initial estimate was greeted with much skepticism by Democrats and others who suggested that the real cost was closer to $50 billion.
“A lot of that increase comes from having a refined estimate on repair and replacement costs for equipment,” Hurst told senators.
He added that the estimate does not yet include the cost of repairing damage from Iranian attacks on U.S. bases in the Persian Gulf region. “We don’t know what our future posture is going to be,” he said. “We don’t know how those bases would be reconstructed and we don’t know what percentage our allies and partners will pay for that reconstruction.”
Hurst joined Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Dan Caine in two hearings of the House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees on Defense. His cost update comes as the Trump administration says that a ceasefire announced on April 7 remains in place and combat operations have mostly been halted, though negotiations toward a long-term peace agreement have failed to yield much progress.
Democrats criticized the war and the billions of dollars being spent on it, arguing the money could be put to better use, such as for an extension of the enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits that were allowed to expire at the end of last year. Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democratic appropriator in the Senate, said the new estimate still seemed “suspiciously low” and questioned the administration’s request for a $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget for fiscal year 2027.
“You’re spending families’ hard-earned tax dollars on a war that many strongly oppose, and you’re forcing people to pay more at the pump, and yet you’re not even providing a real breakdown of the cost of this war so far,” she said. “We have no real details. You have indicated that. And yet now you want Congress to send you $1.5 trillion more. To me, that is unacceptable.”
Murray also called the $1.5 trillion request “absurd” and argued that the proposed increase of roughly $500 billion compared to 2026 defense spending levels would come with severe tradeoffs that would hurt American families to the benefit of defense contractors. She noted that the proposed increase doesn’t include an expected supplemental funding request for the Iran war. Hegseth repeatedly sidestepped questions about how much the Pentagon would seek in emergency war funding or when that request would be made.
“You want to increase the war budget for the next year by half a trillion dollars. That is taxpayer money that could be used to feed families or build new affordable homes or wipe out some diseases completely or increase child investments 20 times over, but you are asking us to blow it all on war,” Murray said. “That is what this budget proposal is asking. It’s going to leave Americans cold and hungry to fund Trump’s war and make defense contractors a fortune, so that is why I hope this committee throws that in the trash and comes together with a budget that works for all American families.”
Hegseth argued in response that Trump was protecting the nation against threats like those posed by Iran. “What is the cost of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon?” Hegseth asked. “The fact that this president has been willing to make a historic and courageous choice to confront that, it comes with costs and we recognize that.”