Secretary of War Pete Hegseth told lawmakers on Tuesday that the financial cost of the Iran war has so far totaled an estimated $37.5 billion. What a bargain!
It's a pittance to eviscerate the Islamist thugs who, since 1979, have built and presided over a ruthless machinery of internal repression while waging a jihad against the United States, Israel, and all freedom-loving people across the region. The barbarism of the Iranian regime was on display most recently in January when Khamenei personally ordered the IRGC, the Basij forces, and the national police to gun down protesters in the streets with impunity amid an information blackout. But Iran has deployed the same kind of terror against American citizens wherever it could find them, from the humiliating hostage crisis of 1979 to the Marine barracks attack of 1983 to the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre that left 46 Americans dead. The IRGC was responsible for the murder and maiming of thousands of Americans in Iraq during the war there—one in every six American deaths, according to an official Pentagon estimate.
All of this went largely unanswered until President Trump gave the green light to take out Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani in January 2020 and the ayatollah and his top advisers in February of this year. So far as government spending goes—this is bang for our buck.
Consider some of the initiatives for which the Biden administration shelled out billions. A 2021 infrastructure law signed by the president provided $7.5 billion for electric vehicle charging ports across the country. The Biden team had gotten just seven up and running by June 2024, and the Government Accountability Office found that by July 2025, fewer than 400 were operating in part because the feds had not provided "measurable targets and time frames."
The EV charger debacle mirrors that of the $42.5 billion national broadband buildout intended to connect rural communities to the internet. It was beset by bureaucratic bickering, delays, and inefficiencies. Three years after its approval in 2021, 16 states were still waiting for approval. It took the Trump administration's intervention in 2025—including the removal of a "digital equity" requirement—to move things forward.
Those numbers pale in comparison to the hundreds of billions flushed down the toilet by crooks who had little trouble exploiting numerous slapdash COVID relief programs, according to the Government Accountability Office—which recommended that, moving forward, the federal government "consider that self-certification alone is not sufficient as a fraud control to mitigate misrepresentation" and "ensure payment integrity checks and fraud controls are part of program design." Oh.
Democrats are happy to spend billions on handouts that at best fall somewhere between wasteful and fraudulent but never fail to raise hackles at the cost of keeping Americans safe. The real cost of this war has been the human toll—the American families that worry about their sons and daughters, mothers and fathers in harm's way. And, tragically, the 18 families who will not see their loved ones back home. To honor them appropriately, Congress must provide sufficient resources for the military to finish the job. Pass the damn supplemental.
