U.S. war in Iran has cost $25B so far, says Pentagon official

And spread death and disaster across the world, making chainsaw man musk the 21st century's bloodiest killer. https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/usaid-shutdown-has-led-to-hund...

But yes our politicians seem entirely unwilling to do anything about colossal expenditures on this "expedition", while all-too-willingly destroying American institutions. It's an insurrection of the elites; Federalist Society finally getting the destruction of the nation their treasonous tattered souls have lusted for. What a horror show they have us strapped in to.

The New York Times has a good piece on the decision process leading to Trump starting the war here: https://archive.ph/20260408044252/https://www.nytimes.com/20... Israel pitched a joint US-Israel operation with the goals of killing Khamenei, damaging Iran's military, starting a popular uprising, and regime change. Trump's advisors told him that the first two goals were achievable but the last two were farcical. Trump was willing to go to war anyway just to establish these two goals. His advisors brought up the difficulty of securing the Strait of Hormuz, but Trump thought Iran would surrender before that would become an issue.

Iran's biggest mistake was its insufficient response to the US strikes on the Fordow nuclear site last June. They responded to getting their nuclear program set back significantly by shooting a few missiles at a US base in Qatar with hours of advance warning, most or all of which were shut down. They then accepted Trump's ceasefire proposal the next day. I think this put the idea in Trump's head that Iran was a paper tiger that could be attacked at will with little to no consequence. Even before Venezuela, the US and Israel were planning a follow-up war. Netanyahu visited Trump 3 times in 2025 prior to making his final pitch described in the New York Times article in February. If Iran had responded more forcefully and caused the US some actual pain, I don't think Trump would have chosen to go to war.

Operating a carrier group in a theatre is not that much more expensive than just maintaining an operational carrier group.

Of course this cost would be distributed over time, and the economic benefits of putting substantial spending money in the pockets of younger adults would have the potential to significantly offset or exceed these costs.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/22-506_nmip.pdf

I think the best course is to allow students to default on their loans. With backed loans Unis know they’ll get their money one way or the other and keep ballooning their admin costs.

Trump-led tax cut policies reduced revenues by ~$1.5 trillion in his first term, and ~$5 trillion in his second term. $800B of PPP loans were forgiven. The oft-cited ICE and CBP budget increases were about $140 billion.

I can't find many other policies championed by Trump that accounted for increases >$200B in increased spending. As a result, there's not really any good 1:1 "Trump is willing to spend $400B on $X but not student loans". Most of his national debt impact has been via tax cuts rather than spending. Where spending did increase in large amounts, it was mostly for the Pentagon, and some % of those increases likely would have occurred under any other administration - so it's hard for me to carve out what Pentagon budget increases were due to his policies vs. the base-case for how much they would have increased otherwise.

For any sufficiently large and complex system, you need to keep that assembly line alive to keep the system alive. Part of this is for just replacement parts and general maintenance. Take something like the F35. The engine will only last a certain number of flight hours. Then you need a new engine. That engine will need replacement blades and other parts. The frame and the stealth coating will need maintenance. And then there are all the weapons you fit to the plane and use.

A good example of how this matters is with rockets. Up until SLS, Saturn V was the most powerful rocket ever built and SLS only beats it by "cheating" with 2 solid rocket boosters. People would often ask "if we could build Saturn V 50-60 eyars ago, why can't we just do that again?" It's a fair question and the answer is we no longer have the expertise. All of the people who worked on that are long gone. Some of it was documented. Some wasn't. F5 engines were essentially bespoke. Materials science has changed. It's essentially impossible or just prohibitively impossible to reproduce now.

So back to the $200 billion. The US military has been hit by this kind of problem before where they've bought a weapons system and been unable to maintain it later. Now it essentially has to be documented and the US buys up and stores all the documentation as well as machining tools, etc if they ever have to revive it.

So for a lot of the munitions used in the war, the US has contracted them to a certain replacement rate. In the last year they've been used way in excess of that production rate. Ramping up production is expensive. New factories have to be built. New people need to be trained. And the only way a supplier would do that is if the military essentially pays for it AND guarantees purchasing. So you might end up paying 3x to double production because it doesn't necessarily scale. It's also more expensive to scale something up quickly.

Put another way, this is another $200 billion for Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman to replenish overpriced weapon systems.

That request was over a month ago and perhaps based on estimates using an operation tempo that was high. After the initial outburst, things may have slowed down.

That said, a lot of missiles were used, which, under current production rates, will take years to replenish: some 'extra' money may be needed to pay for production ramp up to get replacements sooner.

Have any of the not objectives for the not war been accomplished yet?

Up is always down with these people.

Now I feel I was wrong and Trump is just averagely warmongering, as US presidents go.

My question is - how did we even reach this point? I understand people didn't like Hillary Clinton and the way they dealt with Biden's age was abysmal when he was in office.

But I have literally never seen anyone express that they wish Clinton had won over Trump back in 2016. I find that really strange.

Meanwhile Trump also wants to increase the daily allocation of military spending by $1.3B per day, to go to useless and unproductive contractors such as his son, rather than truly effective defense spending.

At least $160 from every taxpayer in the US

>$9b per month increase in US oil export revenue

Goes directly to oil companies, taxed minimally if at all.