The first week of the war against Iran has cost the United States more than $11.3 billion, according to a briefing by Pentagon members to Congress.
President Donald Trump is considering asking Arab countries to contribute to financing the war he initiated with Israel against Iran, his spokeswoman said on Monday, March 30, without providing details.
“It’s something the president would be interested in doing. I won’t get ahead of him, but I know it’s an idea he has and a subject he will certainly talk more about,” Karoline Leavitt said during a press conference.
She was responding to a journalist who had just asked her “who was paying for the cost of this war” and whether Arab countries would contribute.
The first week of the war against Iran cost the United States more than $11.3 billion, as reported by the New York Times in mid-March. According to the paper, which cited anonymous sources present at the briefing, this figure does not include many costs related to strike preparation, suggesting the final amount could be much higher.
Pentagon officials had previously told Congress that around 5.6 billion dollars of ammunition were spent in the first two days of the conflict, a much higher figure than previous estimates, according to the American press. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), an independent think tank based in Washington, estimated the first 100 hours of the operation at $3.7 billion, over $891 million per day. Some of these costs are already budgeted, but the majority ($3.5 billion) is not, as noted by CSIS in its study published on March 5.
In mid-March, Iran expressed readiness for a long war to force Washington to retreat by targeting Western interests. Ali Fadavi, a representative of this ideological army, warned of a “war of attrition” aiming to “destroy the entire American economy as well as the global economy.”
