The Iran War Has Cost the Pentagon $38.1 Billion Through August 1, the CBO Says, and the Bill Is Still Growing by $2 Billion to $3 Billion a Month. Missile Interceptors Alone Cost $13.1 Billion to Replace.

The military conflict with Iran has cost the Department of Defense about $38.1 billion through August 1, according to a Congressional Budget Office report released Tuesday, and will keep costing between $2 billion and $3 billion a month for as long as it continues. The estimate is the first comprehensive tally from the nonpartisan budget office since the war began more than six months ago, and it lands as the House votes for a third time to force President Trump to end the conflict or seek explicit authorization from Congress.

The CBO broke the $38.1 billion into four buckets. Replacing munitions fired at Iranian targets and intercepting Iranian missiles and drones accounts for $21.7 billion, of which $13.1 billion is for missile defense interceptors, $7.3 billion for land-attack cruise missiles and $1.2 billion for other munitions. Increased flying hours for aircraft added $10.4 billion, and higher fuel prices driven by the conflict itself added another $2.7 billion. Equipment lost in combat, including a THAAD missile-defense radar destroyed by Iran that costs roughly $500 million to replace, accounts for an estimated $1.9 billion. The office warned that depleted interceptor stocks could take at least five years to rebuild at current production rates.

The figure is a floor, not a ceiling. The CBO said it excludes the baseline operating costs of forces that would have been funded anyway, repairs to U.S. bases damaged by Iranian strikes, higher fuel bills for civilian agencies such as the Postal Service, the broader economic hit to Americans, and interest on the debt used to finance the spending. The report also noted that the Pentagon declined to provide the detailed information the budget office requested, forcing analysts to build their estimate from public data and past cost patterns. Moody's has separately estimated the conflict is costing American households about $750 each, or roughly $100 billion in total, through higher military spending and elevated oil prices.

Going forward, the CBO projects monthly costs of about $2 billion if hostilities stay at the relatively low level seen since midsummer, rising to $3 billion or more if fighting returns to the intensity of June and July. The White House requested $87.6 billion in supplemental appropriations in June, with $67.1 billion earmarked for the Defense Department. The CBO said the conflict-related portion of that request, $42.3 billion, was about 10 percent higher than its own estimate of costs to date.

The estimates have climbed steadily. Early congressional briefings put the cost at roughly $1 billion a day, later revised to $1.6 billion daily for the opening phase, and the Pentagon's chief financial officer told lawmakers in April that spending had reached about $25 billion. Trump has dismissed the scale of the operation. "A lot of people don't call it a war, I call it a military conflict because it's small potatoes for us, it's not a thing," he told reporters. Retired Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, Trump's former national security adviser, told CBS News the money was "worth it."

Democrats seized on the report. Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said the war "has already taken the lives of brave American servicemembers" while costing "tens of billions" and "continuing to drive up costs" for families, and he contrasted the spending with Republican claims that domestic programs are unaffordable. The report arrived the same week the U.S. military said it destroyed two small Iranian boats attempting to seize an American sea drone off Iran's coast, and as Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met his Iranian counterpart in Beijing to push for a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.