That amount doesn’t go as far as it did two decades ago, of course, but it nonetheless says a lot about what the Trump administration is planning in Iran. The Pentagon thinks it needs roughly as much money as it cost to fight a year of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars—indeed, adjusted for inflation, $200 billion is more or less what President Obama proposed for those wars in 2009.
Trump and his “secretary of war,” Pete Hegseth have said plenty about the war, but their statements have been vague, geopolitically illiterate, unhinged, sociopathic and increasingly desperate—sometimes all at once. But one can glean a handful of potential objectives: The demise of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard; the elevation of a political leader deemed “acceptable” by the U.S., Israel, and the Gulf States; the permanent end of an Iranian nuclear program the administration claimed to have obliterated last June; and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, the vital shipping canal that transports roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil supply, which has been functionally closed this month.
The spike in energy prices has already led the U.S. to lift sanctions on Russian oil. Indeed, one could argue that Vladimir Putin is the big winner thus far of the war, which has further damaged the credibility of the U.S. and the transatlantic alliance, as well as distracted from diplomatic efforts to end Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. And now, the United States is mulling lifting sanctions on Iranian oil—not exactly the kind of move you’d expect from country allegedly on the brink of a military victory.
Trump insists that the war will end whenever he says it does—when he “feels it in his bones”—but that it will probably be quite soon. His administration talks of the fight in terms of weeks, not months—and certainly not years. But you can’t fund a war with late-night social media screeds or unhinged press conferences. Wars cost money, and the $200 billion figure tells us that the war is not going well. It also tells us is that the administration is lying.
This war was started without any meaningful attempt to persuade the public of its necessity. It was also started, unconstitutionally, without congressional approval—but that only seems to bother the Democrats. GOP Senator Rand Paul led an effort in the Senate on Thursday to require such approval to continue the war; it failed by a 47-53 vote, with Paul the only Republican voting in favor. But this isn’t the last they’ll be asked to weigh in on the war, if indeed the administration goes to Congress with its $200 billion request. GOP Senator Susan Collins said the figure was “considerably higher than I would have guessed,” while her Republican colleague Lisa Murkowski said, “You just can’t come up here with an invoice and say, you know, ‘pay this’ and expect to have great cooperation going forward.”
It’s possible that in this critical election year, many Republicans do not want to “approve” the war because doing so would mean taking responsibility for it. For now, this is Trump’s war, not theirs. But approving $200 billion, or even a smaller figure, would be congressional authorization by another name, at least in the eyes of the public. An appropriations fight will be a test of the seriousness of Democratic opposition and Republican support; it will also be a test of congressional seriousness itself. This war is unpopular, aimless, and illegal—and the Trump administration is preparing to ask for enough money to fund it for many months to come. If Congress can’t hold the line here, with a new forever war in the offing, then when will they ever?
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