Hegseth seeks $70B more for Iran war as cost hits $37.5B

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth walked into a Senate hearing room on a Tuesday in late July carrying a number that had grown since the last time anyone asked: $37.5 billion. That was what the Pentagon now said the war with Iran had cost so far. He wanted $70 billion more. The request landed in the middle of a Republican push to move a $95 billion budget package through Congress before lawmakers scattered to campaign for the midterms—a package that bundled war money with farm aid and voting law changes, all of it designed to move fast and move alone, without Democratic votes.

The hearing itself was fractious. Protesters interrupted Hegseth's opening statement. Senators on both sides pressed him with questions he either wouldn't or couldn't answer cleanly. The backdrop was grim: three more American service members had died in the conflict in recent days, bringing the total to seventeen. More than a hundred had been wounded since early July. The war had no formal declaration, no clear endpoint, and no public support—polls showed most Americans disapproved of how Trump was handling it.

Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, framed the moment sharply. Trump had promised repeatedly that a deal was near, that the war would end soon. Now he was asking for another $70 billion and asking Congress to trust that it would work out. "This war is now spiraling out of control again," she said. Hegseth countered that the money was urgent and necessary, that without it the Pentagon faced critical shortfalls. He called it a generational investment in military readiness. Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sat beside him.

The questions kept coming, and the answers kept sliding. When Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana pressed about whether Iran might impose tolls on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz—a waterway that had historically been open and was vital to global oil flow—Caine said it was hypothetical and he didn't know. Kennedy shot back: "Guys, we need straight answers." When Sen. Mike Rounds asked if the $70 billion would be enough to finish the job, Caine demurred. "I can't answer the question on what it will cost, because the enemy has a vote," he said.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen raised a different kind of pressure. The Pentagon still hadn't spent about half of the $150 billion Congress had given it the year before. Why ask for more money when that money was still sitting there? And why ask the American people to absorb the cost of a war they didn't support? Hegseth said the rest of last year's budget would be spent by September. When Shaheen pressed him on whether the U.S. had actually obliterated Iran's nuclear capabilities—a core claim of the administration—Hegseth accused her of trying to make campaign commercials.

The Republican strategy was clear: move the money through reconciliation, a legislative process that allowed the majority to pass a budget without a single Democratic vote. It was the same tool they'd used for Trump's tax cuts and for Homeland Security funding earlier in the year. The House was expected to vote on the budget resolution that week, which would instruct committees to begin drafting the actual legislation. Speaker Mike Johnson had almost no room for defectors in his slim majority, though some conservatives wanted the spending offset with cuts elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the Senate was preparing to vote on yet another war powers resolution—nearly a dozen had been attempted already. The House had passed one limiting Trump's ability to wage war, with a handful of Republicans crossing over to join Democrats. But nothing had cleared both chambers and reached the president's desk. The White House had issued a statement before the hearing urging Congress to pass the budget "without modification—immediately." Gas prices had spiked as Iran worked to control oil shipments. American munitions were running low from the intensity of U.S. strikes. Trump had shifted away from his campaign promise not to draw the country into prolonged military conflicts. And yet there was no sign he was backing off. Republicans had largely refused to use Congress's power of the purse or its war powers authority to halt what was happening. The money, it seemed, would move.