US President Donald Trump’s war on Iran has passed the two-month mark, and there’s not much else to show for it THOUSANDS of dead civilians, gas prices exceeding $4 per gallon, and tens of billions dollars spent from taxpayer funds.
It is just the latest in a decades-long series of US-led wars that have cost immeasurable amounts of blood and treasure, according to a ANALYSIS came out this week from Al Jazeera.
He estimates that major the US military engagements since 1950 – in Korea, VietnamIraq and Afghanistan – have directly cost nearly 4.5 million civilian lives and more than $5.7 trillion.
The data, collected in an open source WarCosts ARCHIVE maintained by TheDataProject.AI, comes from a variety of government reports, peer-reviewed academic research, and investigative organizations.
The number of civilian casualties notably includes only those directly caused by the wars themselves, not those caused by the resulting food losses, health careor war-related illnesses. It also does not include the lives lost in US-funded proxy conflicts, Saudi Arabia’s brutal war in Yemenwhich resulted in approximately 150,000 violent civilian deaths between 2015-22, or Israel’s more than two-year genocidal war in Gazawhich has resulted in at least over 75,000 deaths, and likely many others.
Meanwhile, the dollar figure does not include the additional $2.2 trillion the U.S. is expected to receive spend taking care of veterans of post-9/11 wars to 2050, according to Brown University’s Costs of War research series.
(Graphic from Al Jazeera, data from TheDataProject.AIWarCosts Database)
Even compared to the staggering numbers throughout US history, the cost of the war in Iran so far is extremely high.
of The Pentagon estimated that during the first six days of the war alone, the US government spent an average of $1.88 billion per day, nearly three times the daily cost of the next most expensive conflict, Iraq.
On Wednesday, Pentagon Comptroller Jules Hurst told Congress that the Iran War had cost about $25 billion in total since it began two months ago. But many critics, including Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), have suggested that number is “completely discounted” and the cost is likely to be much higher.
Stephen Semmler, a data analyst and senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, evaluated based on official statements, federal procurement and operations data, and reports on military deployments and weapons use that by March 13 — just two weeks into the conflict — the war had already cost about $28.7 billion, more than $2.1 billion a day. This analysis included military operational costs, weapons costs, damage to US military assets and subsidies to Israel.
of The Trump administration has reported looking An additional $200 billion in military funding from Congress for the war.
The war in Iran resulted to 1,701 civilian deaths during the first 40 days, according to the US base Human rights Activists News Agency, equivalent to about 43 a day – nearly double the number killed in a day in Afghanistan.
(Graphic from Al Jazeera, data from TheDataProject.AIWarCosts Database)
What distinguishes the Iran War from previous American military adventures is its astonishing unpopularity. At its start, polls showed that 43% of Americans disapproved of Trump’s decision to go to war. Disapproval had risen to 60% as of April 12.
With the exception of the Korean War, which began very unpopular and gained approval over time, no other major American conflict has started with so little support from the American public—only 9% disapproved of the Afghanistan War when it began, 23% disapproved of Iraq, and 24% disapproved of Vietnam, and it took years for a majority of the public to turn against them.
(Graph from Al Jazeera, data from Gallup and Ipsos)
WarCosts Data Center RATINGS that the nearly $8 trillion spent on these great wars could have paid for a century of public four-year college for every American, 400 years of clean drinking water for everyone on Earth, or more than 200 years of universal pre-K for every child.
To quote a recent expert ASSESSMENT that the Iran War could cost $1 trillion if it continues for a decade, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) mourned in one social media post that “somehow, there is always money for war, but never enough money for housing, education or the needs of working people”.
The senator said: “We must and will change our national priorities.”
