The US war against Iran has cost the Department of Defense more than $38 billion through Aug. 1, and will continue costing up to $3 billion a month or more depending on the intensity of the conflict, according to an assessment released Tuesday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
The Defense Department declined to respond to CBO’s request for information for its report, which was a break from norms.
The budget office said it relied on government databases and public reports, and as a result, its estimates “are subject to considerable uncertainty.”
The estimates come largely from replacing munitions and equipment lost in battle, the CBO said, and do not include costs related to US military personnel killed or injured in the conflict or longer term veterans’ healthcare and disability compensation. That’s driven largely by the reduction of oil and natural gas shipments through the Strait of Hormuz and disruptions to shipping through the Red Sea. The estimate, prepared in response to a request for information from the top Democrat on the House Budget committee, Rep.
CBO said the war is expected to contribute to inflation into the first quarter of 2027, making inflation roughly 0.5 percentage points higher than they had previously estimated. Brendan Boyle, largely aligns with a previous estimate from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who pinned the costs at $37.5 billion, according to his Senate testimony. The White House made a request for $87.6 billion in supplemental funding in June, largely for the war effort, but Congress has not approved it. CBO said the portion of that request that appears to be directly related to the conflict, $42.3 billion, is about 10% larger than CBO’s estimate of DoD’s costs.
Boyle said that beyond with the war’s human toll, “this nonpartisan CBO report makes clear that the war has also cost American taxpayers tens of billions of dollars and counting, while continuing to drive up costs.
