The war in Iran cost the United States roughly $38 billion through Aug. 1 and significantly depleted U.S. munitions, the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan scorekeeper, said on Tuesday.
In a 19-page analysis, which the office said had been limited because the Defense Department did not respond to its requests for information, the C.B.O. also projected that the war would continue to cost approximately $2 billion to $3 billion per month, and that rebuilding depleted U.S. stockpiles could take “at least five years.”
The cost assessment “reflects the costs of replacing expended munitions and equipment lost in battle, increased flying hours, other operations and increased fuel costs,” the office said in a letter detailing its analysis. It is roughly in line with congressional testimony delivered in late July by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who estimated then that the war had cost $37.5 billion.
The analysis came at the request of a number of top Democrats, including Representative Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania, the top Democrat on the Budget Committee.
“Donald Trump’s disastrous war in Iran has already taken the lives of brave American service members and left others wounded,” Mr. Boyle said in a statement. “Beyond that human toll, this nonpartisan C.B.O. report makes clear that the war has also cost American taxpayers tens of billions of dollars and counting, while continuing to drive up costs.”
Because the Pentagon declined to provide any information, the budget office said it relied on government databases and public reports to make its assessment. It did not include costs that “could emerge in the future if ships, aircraft and other equipment need repairs or additional maintenance as a result of their use in the conflict,” or the costs of repairing damaged military bases.
President Trump has appeared particularly sensitive to reporting detailing how the war with Iran has drained munition stockpiles. U.S. government investigators have subjected roughly 50 members of the military’s Joint Staff to polygraph tests over leaks to journalists over the issue, as well as other details about the war.
The office said that “the main opportunity cost” of the war for the Defense Department so far has been “the large expenditure of missile defense interceptors, which will leave the United States with a reduced inventory of interceptors for several years.”
“The shortfall would become especially problematic if a conflict arose with an opponent whose arsenal included large numbers of ballistic and cruise missiles,” the office said, offering China as an example.
It said that a comparison of “the reported expenditures of missile defense interceptors with the total numbers that D.O.D. has purchased to date” indicated that the United States “has probably used between one-half and two-thirds of its inventory of those munitions since June 2025.”
The White House has asked Congress to provide as much as $70 billion in emergency military spending to cover the costs of the Iran war and pay for new weapons and personnel, but the request has languished on Capitol Hill.
Democrats have refused to vote for new funding for the war through the bipartisan appropriations process, and Senate Republicans have been cool to a House-led effort to use the partisan reconciliation process to furnish the money.
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