WASHINGTON, United States: US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Thursday that it “takes money to kill bad guys” when asked if the Pentagon had requested $200 billion in funding for the Iran war.
Exactly how much the war has cost so far has yet to be publicly disclosed, and the final bill will depend on how long the US-Israeli campaign against Iran launched on February 28 lasts.
But it could be substantial: The Pentagon’s comptroller reportedly told lawmakers that the first six days of the war had cost $11.3 billion.
That number sounds credible “based on the scope and scale of what the administration did during that period,” said Daniel Schneiderman, director of global policy programs at Penn Washington.
“The amount of precision munitions and interceptors used, the number of air sorties, fuel expended, and cost of operation of two carrier strike groups all factored in, would lead to a very large bill,” he said.
