Washington — The true price tag of the Iran war is closer to $50 billion, U.S. officials familiar with internal assessments told CBS News, roughly double the public estimate the Pentagon cited in congressional testimony this week.
In testimony Wednesday on Capitol Hill, a Pentagon official placed the cost of the Defense Department’s Operation Epic Fury at about $25 billion, a figure that did not fully account for damaged or destroyed equipment or U.S. military installations damaged.
As Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appeared before lawmakers this week to defend the Pentagon’s sprawling $1.5 trillion budget request, U.S. officials familiar with internal assessments suggested the war’s price tag is closer to $50 billion so far.
Much of the gap is accounted for by munitions that have been used and need to be replaced. For instance, the Pentagon has lost 24 MQ-9 Reaper drones — sophisticated unmanned aircraft that can cost $30 million or more apiece — underscoring how quickly the financial toll has mounted. Taken together, the higher estimate reflects not only the tempo of operations but also the often unseen costs of attrition, as material lost in the field reshapes the ledger.
The Pentagon’s acting comptroller, Jules Hurst, testified before the Senate on Thursday that the cost of military construction is hard to estimate.
“We don’t know what our future posture is going to be or the future construction of those bases,” Hurst said when Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut questioned what was included in the $25 billion.
CNN first reported that the real estimate is closer to $40-50 billion.
On Wednesday, Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware expressed doubt that the war so far has cost only $25 billion: “I am frankly certain that that is low,” he said, suggesting that figure did not include the cost of deploying and holding forces in theater for two months and other expenses.
Mark Cancian, a senior adviser for the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Defense and Security Department who worked in the Office of Management and Budget, said that while munitions is the biggest price tag in a war like this, there are lots of other unseen costs, too.
In the war now, higher fuel costs come into consideration, he said. The Defense Department uses a lot of fuel for planes, ships and trucks.
The Defense Department is the main department incurring costs from the war, but it isn’t the only one, he said. The Department of Homeland Security, for instance, he said, is likely incurring higher costs.
It will take time and money to replace the munitions the U.S. is using in Iran, he said. Cancian said it will take “several years” to get munitions levels back to where they were at the beginning of the conflict, which war planners believed were too before the war began.
The war is hitting Americans’ pocketbooks more immediately, too.
In a congressional hearing this week, Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California asked Hegseth how much the war will cost Americans through higher prices.
“Do you know how much it will cost Americans in terms of their increased cost in gas and food over the next year because of Iran?” Khanna asked.
Hegseth didn’t respond directly. “I would simply ask you what the cost is of an Iranian nuclear bomb,” the defense secretary said, accusing Khanna of “playing gotcha questions about domestic things.”
The right-of-center American Enterprise Institute estimates higher fuel and fertilizer costs alone translate to an extra $150 per month for each U.S. household.
Cancian said the war is hurting both the U.S. and Iran economically.
“Things that can’t go on forever, don’t,” Cancian said.
