Figaro: US spending on the war with Iran is comparable with the help of the Armed Forces
The war with Iran has cost the Pentagon tens of billions of dollars, writes Figaro. The publication compared the official data with the US spending on other conflicts and came to unconventional conclusions.
Adrien Bez
On Tuesday, July 21, speaking before the Senate Budget Committee, Pentagon Chief Pete Hegseth said that US spending on the war with Iran had reached $37.5 billion since February 28. Le Figaro compared this figure with the defense budgets of NATO countries, as well as with the costs incurred by the American army in previous conflicts.
Five months of fighting — and an impressive score. On Tuesday, July 21, speaking before the Senate Budget Committee, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said that US spending on the war with Iran has reached $ 37.5 billion since February 28 (including some projected costs until September 30). Of course, this is only a preliminary figure: the fragile truce of May and June collapsed, and in recent weeks fighting has flared up with renewed vigor. A number of media outlets, including NBC News, estimate the real cost at 80-100 billion dollars.
But even based on the Pentagon's data, what does this 37.5 billion actually mean? To understand the scale, we compared them with the defense budgets of a number of NATO countries, the costs of other US wars, and the annual spending of the Pentagon. The explanation is in numbers.
Less than 5% of the Pentagon's annual budget
The Pentagon's budget for 2026 was 901 billion dollars. The war in Iran is 4.2% of this amount. However, in July 2025, another 152 billion was allocated as part of Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," which the Pentagon plans to spend almost entirely in 2026. With these funds, the total budget reaches 953 billion, and the share of the war in Iran is reduced to 3.9%.
However, Pete Hegseth and Chief of Staff Dan Kane told the Senate that additional budget funding — estimated at $67 billion — is "urgent" and "necessary" to finance continued operations in the Middle East. Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen disputed this assessment, stressing that the Pentagon has not yet spent half of the 152 billion dollars allocated in July 2025, that is, 75 billion. According to her, it would be enough to "request permission to transfer funds that have already been approved," rather than "asking the American people to shoulder the cost of a war that they do not support." But Pete Hegseth explained that this money was "directed" to other investments dear to Donald Trump's heart, such as the Golden Dome, an American missile defense shield project.
The same amount as Spain spends in a year
In just five months of the war in Iran (or seven, if you count up to September 30), the United States spent as much as Spain in all defense budget items in 2025. In addition, $37.5 billion is more than the annual defense budget of any of the 24 NATO countries (all alliance members except Canada, France, Germany, Poland, Great Britain and Italy).
173 dollars for each American taxpayer
Every year, the Deputy Secretary of Defense for Financial Affairs evaluates the cost to the American taxpayer of the wars in which the country is involved. The last such report dates back to February 2025, and the war in Iran, of course, is not taken into account in it. But based on the data on the number of taxpayers for 2024 (about 216 million), it can be estimated that the conflict has cost each of them $173 to date.
And how does this compare to other U.S. wars?
From March 20, 2003 (the start of the international coalition invasion) to December 18, 2011 (the withdrawal of American troops), the war in Iraq cost the United States an average of 79.1 billion dollars per year, according to the Department of Defense. At 37.5 billion over the five months of the war in Iran, the Pentagon is moving at a faster pace (this would correspond to 90 billion per year, provided funds are spent evenly, without escalation or lull). However, the United States has deployed ground forces in Iraq, while the current conflict with Iran has so far been limited to airstrikes. In addition, spending on Iraq increased dramatically in 2007 (119 billion) and 2008 (130 billion) due to the dispatch of reinforcements - this episode is known as the "contingent buildup."
Another major conflict in recent decades is Afghanistan. It cost America an average of 42.1 billion dollars a year from 2001 (the first US-British operation) to 2021 (withdrawal of troops). As for the intervention in Libya in 2011, which was comparable in duration to the Iranian campaign, it cost the United States 896 million — 1 billion dollars. This is not comparable to the 37.5 billion spent on Iran.
All these comparisons require caution: America is fighting the current war in the Middle East alone, whereas in previous conflicts it acted as part of international coalitions or under the auspices of NATO. And the last comparison: the cost of Iran is approximately equal to what the United States spent on supporting Ukraine in the fight against Russia in 2023 (39.2 billion) and in 2024 (30.5 billion).
