OMB Says Iran War Cost $30B, Stays Mum on Supplemental

The cost of US military operations against Iran so far is $30 billion, the director of the Office of Management and Budget told Congress on June 30, but he offered scant details on plans for a supplemental funding request that includes more than twice that figure for defense.  

“We’ve spent about $30 billion,” OMB Director Russel Vought told the House Appropriations Committee. 

OMB’s cost estimate is $1 billion more than Pentagon acting comptroller Jules “Jay” Hurst III said in testimony May 12, and $5 billion more than the Pentagon estimated April 29. 

Vought offered no further details on the new figure and deferred to the Pentagon. 

“I’m just telling you what I’ve heard from the Department of War and the analysis that they’ve given us,” Vought said. 

Several factors could contribute to the rising cost, despite a ceasefire that’s been in place since Hurst’s first $25 billion estimate in April. The U.S. and Iran have continued to exchange strikes since, with six U.S. warplanes striking four targets along the Iranian coast just last week after Iran attacked a commercial ship in the Strait of Hormuz.

Up until June 18, U.S. Central Command was also enforcing a naval blockade of Iranian ships and ports. And the U.S. is still maintaining a larger-than-usual force posture in the region. 

Regardless, the $30 billion estimate is less than half the $67.1 billion detailed for defense in the $87.6 billion supplemental request OMB sent to Congress last week.  

The Pentagon portion breaks down into 10 categories:

$21 billion for munitions 
$17.3 billion for operational costs 
$12.1 billion for other classified programs 
$5.1 billion for cybersecurity and autonomy 
$4 billion for Airborne Moving Target Indication and Space Data Network Backbone 
$2.4 billion for drones 
$1.7 billion for readiness 
$1.5 billion for fuel costs 
$1.2 billion for administration priorities 
$0.8 billion for National Guard support 

Seamus Daniels, a defense budget analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said it is unclear which needs are directly related to replenishing expenditures for the Iran conflict and which are just new requests.

“For the other aspects of the supplemental, they provided detail about where funding was going down to the account level,” Daniels told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “Whereas for the DOD request, they keep it largely within this $67.1 billion bucket, and they break out categories which don’t align specifically to what you expect for funding by title, like operation and maintenance, procurement, military personnel. … I think it’s difficult to parse out right now, what is specifically for direct war costs associated with Iran.” 

At the hearing, Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.) pressed Vought to detail what would be included in $1.2 billion for “administration priorities.” Vought said he would have to look into it. 

“We’re going to make sure you have everything you need before any vote,” Vought promised. 

When the Pentagon rolled out its 2027 budget request this spring, it identified “presidential priorities,” but some of those priorities like munitions and drones are separated out in the supplemental request. Other priorities the $1.2 billion in the supplemental could address are building up the defense industrial base, more work on the Golden Dome missile defense shield, critical minerals, and infrastructure. 

Vought said little else about the defense side of the supplemental request, but he did explain how it expanded from paying for the cost of the Iran conflict to encompass everything from construction on Penn Station in New York City to Ebola response in Africa to temporary economic assistance for farmers. 

“We ran a process with the supplemental to try to assess the defense needs in particular that we had with Operation Epic Fury,” Vought said. “We also sent out a request [to other agencies] for needs, not unlike what we would do for [continuing resolution] anomalies with a request to determine what are the most dire needs.”