An Expensive Folly: Costs of the Iran War

Shownotes Just a week into America’s war of choice on Iran, the costs already are spiraling out of control. The lives lost and broken are the most important cost. But there’s a colossal price tag for waging war, and America’s opening salvo has a number: $5 billion for the first week and a reported $50 billion that the Trump Administration is planning to seek from Congress. The American defense budget this year is the world’s largest, at $1 trillion. As a point of comparison, it would have cost less than $30 billion to extend health care subsidies to Americans through 2026.  Analysts have spent decades tallying the costs of America’s forever wars: direct costs in equipment and personal and indirect costs in long term health care. Perhaps the most powerful long-term cost is in opportunities: when the United States pours its resources into warmaking, it starves resources to the spheres that create opportunity and well-being: health care, education, research and development. William D. Hartung, long-time researcher of the American defense-industrial complex and author of The Trillion-Dollar War Machine joins Order from Ashes this week to survey the staggering costs of the Iran war. Related reading Analysis, “The Costs of the War With Iran Will Mount For Decades,” William Hartung, Forbes Report, “The Trump Administration’s Reckless War in Iran Has Already Cost More Than $5 Billion,” Allison McManus, Center for American Progress Fact Sheet, “How Much Is the War in Iran Costing American Taxpayers?” Institute for Policy Studies Roundtable, “War on Iran Was Easy to Start. It Won’t Be Easy to End,” Century International Open-source tool: The Iran War Cost Ticker Project: Brown University Costs of War Participants William D. Hartung is a senior research fellow at The Quincy Institute. Bill is the co-author, with Ben Freeman, of the recently released The Trillion Dollar War Machine: How Runaway Military Spending Drives America into Foreign Wars and Bankrupts Us at Home. Thanassis Cambanis is director of Century International.  Date: Monday, March 8, 2026 Episode: Order from Ashes 105