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U.S. war in Iran has cost $25B so far, says Pentagon official
- palmotea 6mo agoWow, that's pretty cheap compared to all the AI datacenters.
- nerdsniper 6mo agoNote that it doesn't count the cost of second- or third- order effects (like the cost from the price of oil going up by 50%). Since February 28, crude oil prices increases cost $42 billion in the United States alone.
- incrudible 6mo agoWhat are the second- and third order effects of the Marg Bar Amrika Society getting a nuclear device (and the missiles to deliver it)?
- jjk166 6mo agoProbably comparable to North Korea getting a nuclear device and the missiles to deliver it.
- mrits 6mo agoDoes North Korea send missiles and drones to it's neighbors?
- jjk166 6mo agoYes. North Korea has a long history of exporting arms and missile technology to both its neighbors and further afield, including to Iran.
- energy123 6mo agoThis superficial analogy comes up a lot but these two states don't share anything in common aside from internal repression. They're diametrically opposed in their external behavior. Look at a small sampling of Iran's external actions in the region through the Quds force. The hundreds of thousands of Syrians killed by Hezbollah or the almost 300k dead in Yemen due to the Houthis. Iran's actions in 2019-2022 against CENTCOM bases in Iraq and elsewhere. The puppet Iraqi president propped up by PMF. North Korea doesn't do anything like this until very recently when they started sending troops to invade Ukraine. They don't organize their state around an expansionist death cult ideology. NK doesn't behave different due to owning a nuclear weapon. Before the 1990s they were like this too.
- jjk166 6mo agoNorth Korea routinely attacks South Korean and US assets in its area like the sinking of Cheonan. North Korea is strongly allied with its other neighbors China and Russia. Iran is not organized around an expansionist death cult. They have not expanded or attempted to expand at all. They are involved in lots of neighboring conflicts because they are in a region with lots of conflicts. We are also involved in lots of conflicts there. There is no possible closer comparison for a nuclear Iran than nuclear North Korea.
- mc32 6mo agoCompare the costs associated with keeping US troops in NKorea to contain that threat.
- whatisthiseven 6mo agoPeace in that region of the world, since you can't just bomb Iran consequence free anymore? MAD has had its virtues extolled, yet assume it won't work with another country because somehow they are even more irrational (if true). Even though that is exactly for whom the MAD strategy is designed and operates under. It is only the build up of Iran getting a nuclear weapon that is used to go to war. The game theory here seems rather simple, honestly. And if Iran is seen as hostile, we need to look at the countries for whom the USA allies with and what wars they launched in the region. And they are plausible nuclear capable where their neighbors are not. I think Israel is currently a larger aggressor, literally flattening more towns through demolition.
- stickfigure 6mo ago> Peace in that region of the world ...wat? You mean like the peace that Iran exports to the region, and the peace that all those protesters experienced a few months ago?
- convolvatron 6mo agothe right question to ask is how much worse is the situation now that tensions have been radically escalated without any meaningful path towards Iranian disarmament.
- qsera 6mo agoIt is interesting. Is the job of a leader (or the administration) to foresee threats before anyone else can see it coming? Is their job to make sure that it does not manifest? It is interesting that when they does it, the majority is against it, precisely because no one else could see it and can agree with the action of the administration? So it seems that if someone is a very good leader, they will be ridiculed by the very people they are trying to protect. I think this happens if the unit in question is a family, or a country. I am not picking sides in the on going crisis. But just making an observation.
- howmayiannoyyou 6mo agoExactly. - Many cannot accept its dangerous world. - Many don't understand that stewardship of nuclear weapons alone is a major undertaking that Iran cannot be trusted to manage. US & USSR alone has several near-miss detonations/launches. - Many will refuse to accept solely because 'orange man bad'. - Some are paid to criticize on influential online forums and HN makes no effort to moderate or police such activity.
- Arodex 6mo agoI guess you will be first in line for the invasion of North Korea, then?
- bigyabai 6mo ago> Many cannot accept its dangerous world. The ballistic missiles are the danger, and Iran already has those. There is no missile or reentry vehicle in Iran's possession that can credibly threaten the United States with a nuclear weapon. > US & USSR alone has several near-miss detonations/launches. According to Seymour Hersh, Israel was close to using their nuclear weapon as well. Why not focus on their disarmament first to deter Iranian retaliation? > Some are paid to criticize on influential online forums and HN makes no effort to moderate or police such activity. Please reread HN's guidelines if you don't want to be permabanned: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like.
- dashundchen 6mo agoWho shredded the 2015 agreement with Iran that had stopped them from enriching more uranium? https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/04/29/science/iran-enriched-uranium-stockpile-nuclear-energy-bomb.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/04/29/science/iran-... Oh wait, that the Trump and his war criminal friends. They make the problem, blame it on someone else, and then claim they fixed it while making life worse for everyone else. Meanwhile Trump and his corrupt oligarch cronies are profiting massively.
- howmayiannoyyou 6mo ago[dead]
- _DeadFred_ 6mo agoFlagged dead push back: howmayiannoyyou 1 hour ago [dead] | root | parent | next [–] Regurgitation of talking points doesn't change the irrefutable fact that the JCPOA only kicked the can down the road & Iran was cheating the entire time - as they now admitted during negotiations.
- mrguyorama 6mo agoRemember when North Korea and Pakistan had to be prevented from developing nuclear weapons at all costs because they would obviously use them ASAP to kill as many people as they could because they were crazy? Remember when multiple US administrations have internally pushed for nuking Korea and Vietnam, and yet we are apparently still allowed to have nukes? Remember when Iran used to have a fully operational biological weapons program that they have dismantled as confirmed internationally. Iran has enough Uranium to make bombs. The physics package that actually detonates things is not as hard as enriching Uranium in bulk. Why hasn't Iran used a weapon of mass destruction yet in this almost existential war? I thought they were nuts? I thought they wanted to nuke all the infidels?
- Teever 6mo agoI think the bigger question that you should be asking is what is America going to do for the next 5 years without the stockpile of munitions that the just burned through.[0] China has every incentive to goad Israel or Iran into starting another round in this conflict so that America will deplete even more missiles. Iran destroying one of these[1] and an AWACS should startle everyone and with the right supplies from China Iran has the capacity to take out even more of them. So if in two months this conflict heats up again and we're looking at half of these radar systems destroyed and minimal amount of missiles available, would you consider it well worth it? Because that's a very plausible scenario and I'm very concerned about what the world will look like by the end of the summer if that comes to pass. [0] https://www.csis.org/analysis/last-rounds-status-key-munitions-iran-war-ceasefire https://www.csis.org/analysis/last-rounds-status-key-munitio... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/TPY-2_transportable_radar# https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/TPY-2_transportable_radar#
- cma 6mo agoNot to mention datacenters were bombed and, for specifically AI ones, the in-construction Stargate was threatened.
- NooneAtAll3 6mo agoto be fair US is net exporter now
- voxic11 6mo agonet exporter of petroleum products, US is still a net importer of crude.
- oseityphelysiol 6mo agoDoesn’t matter much in this case as US consumerd are still affected by the price rise same way consumers in a non-exporter country would be. I guess what matters is that the increase in revenue largely stays within the country, but that doesn’t help consumers directly.
- epistasis 6mo agoBeing a net exporter is completely irrelevant when prices are set globally. Such a statement is like shining a laser pointer to distract a cat, fun, but meaningless.
- newsclues 6mo agoYou do realize some net exporters subsidize their domestic supply to keep the people happy?
- alphawhisky 6mo agoThat means they're passing the cost onto the whole world. The US is making this war everyone else's problem and it's ruining foreign affairs and good standing with the world.
- epistasis 6mo agoDo I realize that? I know we pay a fuck ton of tax subsidies to oil extractors, but the only people keeping happy are the small "mom and pop" oil producers that eat up all that subsidy. Prices are still set on the international market, that subsidy does not affect prices. Or, do you have some other subsidy that brings down the prices that consumers in the US pay? If so, name it! If President Trump–who is so deep in oil & gas special interests that he has decided that US Taxpayers need to pay nearly $1B to cancel a wind power project–is going to start doing export controls to keep oil prices down, well then he runs into the problem that we export and import a ton to get the right type of crude in our refineries. If he is going to start subsidizing oil consumption, well, my god we are in for a wild ride on the economy and deserve all the misery that it will bring.
- mrits 6mo agoIt's so odd to me that people think the cost of oil going up is universally bad. It's good both morally for me and financially for many people.
- hgoel 6mo agoThe consequences to everyone that isn't as well fed as yourself are also good for you morally?
- mrits 6mo agoNothing keeps the people well feed like the inability to grow crops.
- Detrytus 6mo agoFunny that you say that, because LNG exports from Persian gulf being blocked will result in fertilizer shortages and potentially a famine.
- mrits 6mo agoMore short term thinking
- Detrytus 6mo agoWell, it seems to me that the liberal left agenda was kind of hijacked by big corporations. It used to be that Democrats cared about things like equal pay, labor conditions, education costs. Now it is all about abstract things that don’t matter in the real world: animal rights and carbon emissions. The “long term thinking” you allude to is just a mind trick to keep you at bay.
- AlexCoventry 6mo agoI think people are more concerned about the massive deindustrialization and famines which could result from the Strait of Hormuz being chaotically strangled, not the hit to their pocket books at the gas pump
- howmayiannoyyou 6mo agoWe increased export revenue by about $9b per month and may have changed the global energy supply chain to our benefit for decades.
- drnick1 6mo agoOil money flows back into the U.S. economy as a net exporter.
- wak90 6mo agoGood thing the US economy is Chevron stock value and nothing else.
- coralreef 6mo agoWhat was gained from it?
- DonHopkins 6mo agoIt successfully diverted attention away from the Trump-Epstein Files. "Mission Accomplished"
- mrits 6mo agoIf that is the case why do I see this comment every 5 minutes?
- dylan604 6mo agoThat could be asked of the data centers and the war
- coralreef 6mo agoThe data center money was private capital put up by individuals and corporations willingly. They are seeking to provide a product (compute) to paying consumers. You can have an opinion on whether or not AI/data centers are worthwhile, but ultimately it wasn't made by your money.
- 6mo ago
- epistasis 6mo agoIs it? I don't think so.
- palmotea 6mo ago> Is it? I don't think so. I mean, they're projecting $750 billion in 2026, and apparently they spent $450 billion on them last year: https://about.bnef.com/insights/commodities/ai-data-center-build-advances-at-full-speed-five-things-to-know/ https://about.bnef.com/insights/commodities/ai-data-center-b.... $25 billion is like six datacenters worth of money: https://www.reuters.com/commentary/breakingviews/how-big-techs-630-bln-ai-splurge-will-fall-short-2026-03-26/ https://www.reuters.com/commentary/breakingviews/how-big-tec.... It's a drop in the bucket.
- epistasis 6mo agoUS Defense spending is bigger than that $1000 B per year, and on its way up to $1500B per year. I wouldn't consider a $25B operation a drop in the bucket of that larger number, it's a significant outlay that has been a huge cost to military readiness, massively depleting our precision munitions. We don't pay the manufacturers nearly enough to keep production lines up, and we are a decade away from being back to readiness again. It's going to take years to pay massive amounts to bring those up to scale. $25B in a few months is also more than the average annual amount of military aid sent to Ukraine from the US, and the Trump administration considers this to not be a "drop in a bucket" either, and in fact a huge imposition that should not happen at all.
- eirikbakke 6mo agoThe data centers are being paid for by customers, who are receiving greater value from the products than they pay for them.
- swed420 6mo agoLMAO would love to see that math (which of course would need to account for the cost to the end user of constant rug-pulling, enshitification, github struggling to maintain one 9 of availability, privacy invasion, rampant mental health issues and political division from profit-based social media, etc)
- eirikbakke 6mo agoI pay $100/month for Claude Max and it's like having a (nearly) free, very competent employee. Value _way_ exceeds $100/months. But there's a datacenter that has to run that.
- swed420 6mo agoYou are a fringe minority compared to all of the other "customers" suffering the side effects outlined above that nobody signed up for.
- eirikbakke 6mo agoThe retort is to the statement that the U.S. war in Iran is "pretty cheap compared to all the AI datacenters". People are conflating destructive and productive activities. These are fundamentally different.
- swed420 6mo agoAgain, people like you are a tiny subset of all data center "users"
- palmotea 6mo ago> The data centers are being paid for by customers, who are receiving greater value from the products than they pay for them. You seem to be assuming an always-rational market, run by the mythical homo economicus. But as they say "the market can remain irrational longer than you can stay solvent." You can't infer that a set of decisions is rational just because market participants made them.
- Larrikin 6mo agoDoes anyone have the number that would have been required to pay off all student loans that SCOTUS blocked?
- pb7 6mo ago$400B
- SegfaultSeagull 6mo ago$400 billion
- nerdsniper 6mo agoTotal student loans are about $1.8 trillion. SCOTUS blocked forgiveness on $400 billion of that. Trump-led tax cut policies reduced revenues by ~$1.5 trillion in his first term, and ~$5 trillion in his second term. $800B of PPP loans were forgiven. The oft-cited ICE and CBP budget increases were about $140 billion. I can't find many other policies championed by Trump that accounted for increases >$200B in increased spending. As a result, there's not really any good 1:1 "Trump is willing to spend $400B on $X but not student loans". Most of his national debt impact has been via tax cuts rather than spending. Where spending did increase in large amounts, it was mostly for the Pentagon, and some % of those increases likely would have occurred under any other administration - so it's hard for me to carve out what Pentagon budget increases were due to his policies vs. the base-case for how much they would have increased otherwise.
- xd1936 6mo ago> ...cancel about $430 billion in debt principal and affect nearly all borrowers... https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/22-506_nmip.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/22-506_nmip.pdf
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- mc32 6mo agoI’d be okay with them forgiving student loans so long as they also pay me back for what I paid back. I think the best course is to allow students to default on their loans. With backed loans Unis know they’ll get their money one way or the other and keep ballooning their admin costs.
- sylware 6mo ago[flagged]
- migueldeicaza 6mo agoDestroying the world is cheap compared to the cost to humanity. Now they need to share the cost that we have burdened the world and ourselves with.
- throwaway132448 6mo agoPrivatize the gains, socialize the losses. I miss actual capitalism with actual competition and anti-trust enforcement, not the oligopolies, regulatory capture and government-picked survivors we have now.
- newsclues 6mo agoToo bad the reaction isn’t to correct capitalism rather than to eagerly embrace communist progressivism.
- mrguyorama 6mo agoThis is "actual capitalism" which is why every economic thinker not part of Reagan's cabinet and network insists you need to enforce competition with regulation to get the benefits of capitalism. A market without regulation is not a free market after the first few transactions. You don't get to point to all the ways you can manipulate a market and cry foul, that's reality. If you want to play with fake markets that can't be manipulated or controlled and don't "need" regulation because competition is perfect, stick to econ 101 and go no further. Real world markets are not efficient. What you want is well regulated markets, that purposely make it harder to be a big company. "Efficiency of scale" is vastly overrated, and not meaningful to all our IP based economy.
- rchaud 6mo agoActual capitalism is the free and unfettered ability to handpick cabinet members, bribe government to deregulate an industry in your favour, hand out no-bid contracts, offer tax credits and subsidies, and shelter you from foreign competition. What you've described is a heavily regulated market economy.
- DANmode 6mo ago
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- SegfaultSeagull 6mo agoThe cost to operate the Federal government for one day is about $18 billion.
- bwestergard 6mo agoThe only way you could arrive at such a high figure is if you included transfer payments like Social Security and Medicare in "the cost to run the government", which is not how most people understand "the cost to run the government".
- SegfaultSeagull 6mo agoSocial security and Medicare account for 36% of the Federal budget and are absolutely understood as a cost to run the government. Calling them transfer payments doesn't obviate the fact that they are costs to American taxpayers. Social security and Medicare are also the two Federal outlays that economists fear will bankrupt the United States.
- epistasis 6mo agoThe entire NSF budget, our basic science infrastructure which is currently being destroyed by withholding grant funds against Congress' wishes, is only half of that. And Trump's budget cut it in half, Congress had to push back to avoid throwing away half of a carefully grown research industry. Meanwhile Trump also wants to increase the daily allocation of military spending by $1.3B per day, to go to useless and unproductive contractors such as his son, rather than truly effective defense spending.
- Pfhortune 6mo ago[citation needed]
- SegfaultSeagull 6mo agohttps://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/ https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...
- 7952 6mo agoI wonder if they have to assign costs to a project code.
- jsty 6mo agoFamously, they struggle with this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42160768 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42160768
- NoLinkToMe 6mo agoFor context Doge saved 2-3 billion by independent estimates. And cut some of the most important international aid around the world.
- electrondood 6mo agoNot only aid, it was a powerful tool for the extension of American soft power around the globe. But I guess we're no longer able to reason in the abstract beyond "helping people is woke."
- VoodooJuJu 6mo ago[dead]
- jauntywundrkind 6mo agoOther independent estimates say DOGE has cost America $135b. https://fortune.com/article/doge-mass-federal-workforce-cuts-taxpayers-billions/ https://fortune.com/article/doge-mass-federal-workforce-cuts... And spread death and disaster across the world, making chainsaw man musk the 21st century's bloodiest killer. https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/usaid-shutdown-has-led-to-hundreds-of-thousands-of-deaths/ https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/usaid-shutdown-has-led-to-hund... But yes our politicians seem entirely unwilling to do anything about colossal expenditures on this "expedition", while all-too-willingly destroying American institutions. It's an insurrection of the elites; Federalist Society finally getting the destruction of the nation their treasonous tattered souls have lusted for. What a horror show they have us strapped in to.
- erentz 6mo ago> our politicians seem entirely unwilling to do anything about colossal expenditures on this "expedition" Not all politicians. Most democrats have tried to do something about it with the help of just one republican. They aren't the same.
- Ritewut 6mo agoI remember before the election I read a few people on HN say Trump is the most anti-war president they have ever seen and that all the talk about him letting Israel flatten Palestine was fearmongering. Wonder how they feel now.
- dmurray 6mo agoI felt more or less like this, though I don't know if I posted it on HN. Lots of things I didn't like about Trump, but I did favour the less interventionist foreign policy he promised and initially delivered. Now I feel I was wrong and Trump is just averagely warmongering, as US presidents go.
- Ritewut 6mo agoTrump kidnaps a sitting president of a foreign nation after months of conducting strikes in the Caribbean. This is not a war but calling him "averagely warmongering" is just wrong.
- dmurray 6mo agoWhich American president did not cause the removal of a sitting leader of a foreign nation from power? Doing it bloodlessly rather than through direct military force or by arming local terrorists absolutely does make you less warmongering than average.
- nozzlegear 6mo ago> Which American president did not cause the removal of a sitting leader of a foreign nation from power? Joe Biden. Unless you'd contend that withdrawing from Afghanistan was an elaborate, self-owning plot to overthrow the US-friendly government in favor of the Taliban, which I think goes against the spirit of your question.
- dmurray 6mo agoMore on the "funding local terrorists with plausible deniability" end of things than the Trump playbook, but here's the Biden cabinet taking credit for ousting Assad: https://fpif.org/u-s-officials-take-credit-for-regime-change-in-syria/ https://fpif.org/u-s-officials-take-credit-for-regime-change...
- jjk166 6mo agoSo what were they requesting $200 Billion for?
- swarnie 6mo agoMaybe they expect this not war to last 7x longer? Have any of the not objectives for the not war been accomplished yet?
- Ritewut 6mo agoFunneling lots of money to the AI-Military industrial complex has been accomplished
- marcosdumay 6mo agoGenociding half of Lebanon has been achieved.
- throw0101c 6mo ago> So what were they requesting $200 Billion for? That request was over a month ago and perhaps based on estimates using an operation tempo that was high. After the initial outburst, things may have slowed down. That said, a lot of missiles were used, which, under current production rates, will take years to replenish: some 'extra' money may be needed to pay for production ramp up to get replacements sooner.
- jjk166 6mo ago> based on estimates using an operation tempo that was high So they were expecting those high tempos to continue for months? > That said, a lot of missiles were used, which, under current production rates, will take years to replenish: some 'extra' money may be needed to pay for production ramp up to get replacements sooner. 8X is a heck of an expedite fee.
- throw0101c 6mo ago> So they were expecting those high tempos to continue for months? Given the White House 'policy' towards Iran, I'm not sure "expecting" is something that can be practically be done. A Magic 8 Ball would probably be more predictable.
- throw0101c 6mo agoSomewhat related: "Here Is What Trump’s Gargantuan $1.5T Defense Budget Has In It": * https://www.twz.com/air/here-is-what-trumps-gargantuan-1-5t-defense-budget-has-in-it https://www.twz.com/air/here-is-what-trumps-gargantuan-1-5t-... That's $500B more than last year's budget, and: > > Trump’s budget proposal represents the largest yearly military spending plan in U.S. history, exceeding the previous record of $1.2 trillion during World War II, when adjusted for inflation. And records confirm the DNC’s characterization of the increase being the largest since WWII when inflation is factored in. * https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2026/apr/20/democratic-national-committee/trump-defense-budget-ww2/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2026/apr/20/democratic...
- electrondood 6mo agoBy the way, this is just the estimate from Pete Hegseth, who has demonstrated himself to be an unreliable narrator. This administration seems to have difficulty with numbers in general, accurate numbers in particular. The real cost is likely twice this, or higher. For example, roughly 50% of our missile stockpiles have been depleted during this "excursion."
- ortusdux 6mo agoDoes this number include the cost of stockpile replenishment?
- legitster 6mo agoStockpile/equipment costs are the bulk of what we've spent so far. Operating a carrier group in a theatre is not that much more expensive than just maintaining an operational carrier group.
- ortusdux 6mo agoFor many weapon systems, we burned through a decade of inventory in a month. Rapid replenishment will be expensive.
- _DeadFred_ 6mo agoThose stock piles are for war with China/Russia/Iran. If we end up in a situation where that has shifted to China/Russia, they will have been put to their intended/purchased for use.
- nullocator 6mo agoThis is massively and factually incorrect. When congress passed _defense_ budgets for the last 30+ years none of the munitions intended for the defense of the united states were earmarked for "war with China/Russia/Iran". Some were sold/"gifted" to Ukraine/Israel/etc but there is no language in any bill about stockpiling arms for war against one of those named countries. War which congress must declare.
- _DeadFred_ 6mo agoSo as an American I have been sold our need to build up is because Iran/China/Russia. This is factually correct that this is what I have been told. This is going to be wild, but public perception/justification != congressional earmarks language.
- crab_galaxy 6mo agoIt's so funny to me when the dollars stop being abstract for a moment, and I see that the US has regions that beg for quite literally .2% of this amount to fund things like public transit, lead remediation in elementary schools, or homelessness programs. Americans will never see a dime of benefit from this war.
- black_13 6mo ago[dead]
- vixen99 6mo agoThose with shares in certain companies have got very rich out of it.
- alphawhisky 6mo agoCall me crazy, but maybe allowing privatization of public transportation, security, healthcare, etc is where this all started. The incentives need to stop.
- jmyeet 6mo agoFor comparison, Iran's annual military budget is somewhere between $7B and $11B [1], representing 2-2.5% of estimated GDP. The US military budget currently exceeds $1T+ and the ask for 2026 is expected to be $1.5T+, representing almost 5% of GDP. And the US simply cannot end this conflict militarily short of the use of nuclear weapons. I don't mean that as hyperbole. I mean it literally. There are long-term consequences to this war (and the 12 day war last year), namely the depletion of missile defence munitions (eg Patriot, THAAD) that will take years to replenish and this will have ripple effects on allies as well as certain theaters (eg moving THAAD interceptors and radars from South Korea to the Gulf). Over half of the military budget goes towards weapon systems, arguably incredibly overpriced weapon systems. Put another way, it's a scam to move money from government coffers to private weapons manufacturers. The inability to open the Strait of Hormuz militarily was not a surprise to US military leadership or intelligence agencies. It was only a surprise to the president (IMHO) who believed he could do a repeat of a Venezuelan decapitation strike. But Iran unlike Venezuela has suffered under reprehensible and unjustifiable sanctions and military adventurism by the US and its proxies such that the entire Iranian national project is built to resist US aggression, understandably. So that was never going to work. This will have to end diplomatically. It will be worse for the US than it was before this war. Iran has something better than a nuke: it has a nuke they can use (e closing the Strait) and the US forced them to use it and prove that it works. Now it's just a questio9n of how long this impassse goes on for before it ends and so far at least the US would rather let the world burn than split with Israel. Again without hyperbole I say, splitting with Israel effectively means the end of American empire. And the whole world is suffering for it. [1]: https://tradingeconomics.com/iran/military-expenditure https://tradingeconomics.com/iran/military-expenditure
- ndiddy 6mo ago> It was only a surprise to the president (IMHO) who believed he could do a repeat of a Venezuelan decapitation strike. But Iran unlike Venezuela has suffered under reprehensible and unjustifiable sanctions and military adventurism by the US and its proxies such that the entire Iranian national project is built to resist US aggression, understandably. So that was never going to work. The New York Times has a good piece on the decision process leading to Trump starting the war here: https://archive.ph/20260408044252/https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/us/politics/trump-iran-war.html https://archive.ph/20260408044252/https://www.nytimes.com/20... Israel pitched a joint US-Israel operation with the goals of killing Khamenei, damaging Iran's military, starting a popular uprising, and regime change. Trump's advisors told him that the first two goals were achievable but the last two were farcical. Trump was willing to go to war anyway just to establish these two goals. His advisors brought up the difficulty of securing the Strait of Hormuz, but Trump thought Iran would surrender before that would become an issue. Iran's biggest mistake was its insufficient response to the US strikes on the Fordow nuclear site last June. They responded to getting their nuclear program set back significantly by shooting a few missiles at a US base in Qatar with hours of advance warning, most or all of which were shut down. They then accepted Trump's ceasefire proposal the next day. I think this put the idea in Trump's head that Iran was a paper tiger that could be attacked at will with little to no consequence. Even before Venezuela, the US and Israel were planning a follow-up war. Netanyahu visited Trump 3 times in 2025 prior to making his final pitch described in the New York Times article in February. If Iran had responded more forcefully and caused the US some actual pain, I don't think Trump would have chosen to go to war.
- 5upplied_demand 6mo agoFor reference, a national 4-week paid parental leave program in the U.S. is estimated to cost under $2 billion annually, while a 12-week program would cost around $7 billion. https://www.nber.org/papers/w33279 https://www.nber.org/papers/w33279
- lysace 6mo agoAs a European center/moderate kind of person I agree with the US POTUS about this one thing: Iran can not be allowed to build nuclear weapons. I personally don’t buy the line of thought that Iran has no such ambitions; YMMV. Whether this war is effective at stopping that is another question.
- insane_dreamer 6mo agoThey had an agreement that was working which Trump tore up and then went to war on Israel’s behalf. So it was largely a solved problem until Trump created the problem.
- lysace 6mo agoThere are two perspectives here: Americans like you (I rudely assume) care more about US domestic policies than I do. Foreigners like me care more about global stability compared to US domestic policies.
- someotherperson 6mo ago"Foreigners like me care more about global stability" yes so continue to rain bombs on the middle east, accept their poorest as refugees, and continue to support Israeli expansion. All of this leads to global stability. It's definitely not the reason behind global instability. European takes are usually the funniest. It's literal racism (as in, one race is better than the other) but it's packaged in such a ridiculous way that you somehow suggest that it's doing others a favor.
- lysace 6mo agoLots of odd assumptions there. As an example: I was out on the streets protesting the 2003 GWB Iraq invasion war. It was mostly obvious before the invasion that the cause was bogus. It was later proven to be bogus. And you seem to have this way of boiling literally everything down to some sort of unspecified racism.
- legitster 6mo ago[dead]
- 0cf8612b2e1e 6mo agoAll of the jokes about reported Soviet production numbers come to mind. This administration has zero credibility in speaking the truth, especially when the outcome is embarrassing. I do not know what to believe, and I hate it.
- howmayiannoyyou 6mo agoPerspective: - $9b per month increase in US oil export revenue as a result offsets probably 40% of the cost. - Several trillion (with a 'T") of realized and yet to be realized FDI commitments from gulf states more than offsets cost by about 3x. - A nuclear Iran carries economic costs I won't detail here to prevent a wall of text. In sum, forces other countries to go nuclear and take other actions to manage risk, and this happens in ways that could severely impact US dollar standing, US debt standing and US military spending. Its an interconnected world. I know its unpopular to be pro-USA and pro-government on HN, but someone has to be the voice of reason - even if its at the bottom of the page. -
- 7952 6mo agoA problem with your "voice of reason" is the assumption that it will prevent nukes in Iran or the region. The US people have just offered an object lesson in why deterrent weapons are useful. How capricious they are in diplomacy. And how willing Americans are to withdraw boots on the ground in allied countries. Of course most of that won't be surprising to Iranians.
- drnick1 6mo ago> The US people have just offered an object lesson in why deterrent weapons are useful. It's easy, we don't let them have nukes, period. Bombing their underground facilities was absolutely the right thing to do and can be repeated if/when they rebuild. I would go further, finish the job, and insist on complete disarmament of the country.
- tencentshill 6mo ago>$25B in taxpayer money spent At least $160 from every taxpayer in the US >$9b per month increase in US oil export revenue Goes directly to oil companies, taxed minimally if at all.
- crazyfingers 6mo agoI would merely point out, since the operation started, global terrorism has fallen quite dramatically. Freedom isn’t free; never has been.
- gus_massa 6mo agoThey don't want to waste their evil plan of assassination, just to be send to the 17th page of the newspapers.
- slater 6mo agocorrelation, therefor causation! simple as.
- alphawhisky 6mo agoDomestic terrorism is up though. The American public wants nothing to do with being world police.
- asplake 6mo agoYes, it's great that civilian homes and infrastructure are sacrosanct now. Saracasm aside, that's a matter of perspective, no?
- _DeadFred_ 6mo agoThe Iranian embassy in the UK just called for terrorism on UK soil yesterday, and there were terror knife attacks today. The Islamic Republic of Iran has to do Islamic Republic of Iran things no matter what situation they are in.
- ck2 6mo agoall their numbers are a lie they've spent more than $25 BILLION on just weapons which have to be replaced so it's already twice that number and for more examples we know now the true cost of militarization since 9/11 was $21 TRILLION it's at least half the national debt if not more https://ips-dc.org/report-state-of-insecurity-cost-militarization-since-9-11/ https://ips-dc.org/report-state-of-insecurity-cost-militariz... Remember, beyond the cost of war, every day the cost of gas is +$1 that's another BILLION dollars being siphoned out of the US economy, EVERY DAY the strait is not opening this year, maybe not even before 2029 at this rate that's TRILLIONS time for a windfall profits tax on the US oil industry
- dd8601fn 6mo agoSeems like it should be cost or replacement cost, but not both.
- drnick1 6mo ago[flagged]
- dwaltrip 6mo agoThis is almost certainly a massive underestimate. See the recent Search Engine podcast episode "The Cost of War" with guest Professor Linda Blimes: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1wwjLv4fTtLfHLkk2ejOoF?si=75f60524488a406f https://open.spotify.com/episode/1wwjLv4fTtLfHLkk2ejOoF?si=7... https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty/linda-bilmes https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty/linda-bilmes