It’s day 38 of Donald Trump’s conflict with Iran, and the daily cost of waging the president’s war in the Middle East just topped $500 million.
Roughly a tenth of that expenditure constitutes the loss of U.S. military equipment destroyed by Iranian strikes, the Financial Times reported. The newspaper cites an analysis by the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank, which found that Trump’s campaign has likely cost as much as $31 billion in the five weeks since it began, on Feb. 28.
Elaine McCusker, a former Pentagon budget official who now works as a senior fellow at the non-profit, added that her calculations reflect at least $2.1 billion in costs for replacing equipment damaged or destroyed in the course of hostilities.
“Damaged equipment can sometimes be repaired in days, while some destroyed systems will take years to replace on a one-to-one basis,” she said. Further analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, another D.C. non-profit, found that at least $1.4 billion of losses came in the first six days of fighting alone.
At the same time, the number of U.S. service members wounded in the conflict continues to rise. NewsNation reported Monday that those stats had jumped from 348 to 373 since the end of March, in addition to the 13 military personnel killed in the course of the president’s war so far.
Trump has consistently dithered on the motives, goal, and timeline for his campaign against the Islamic regime, from claiming the war was already over several weeks ago to suggesting he is prepared to wage it “forever.”
The president has set a hard deadline of Tuesday, 8 p.m. Eastern Time, for Iran to enter into a ceasefire agreement with the United States. He has threatened massive escalation if a deal is not reached before then, suggesting the country could be “taken out in one night” with large-scale attacks on key infrastructure, even after setting roughly five other deadlines since the war began.
Despite his efforts to downplay the conflict’s deepening impact on the global economy while highlighting the limited gains of his campaign, Trump appears wary of the Iranian regime’s unwillingness to capitulate to his demands.
On Friday, his administration quietly announced it is now seeking to spend a total of $1.5 trillion on defense for the coming year, the largest amount set aside for the military by any president in modern history, funded in part by cuts of more than $73 billion to education, housing, social services and healthcare.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment on this story.
