The Pentagon Has Requested More Than $200 Billion For War With Iran

• 19.03.2026, 10:09

This amount is significantly higher than the amount of money already spent on the military operation.

The Pentagon has asked the White House to approve a request to Congress for more than $200 billion to fund a war with Iran, senior U.S. officials told The Washington Post (WaPo). They said the amount is significantly higher than the amount of money already spent on the military operation. The money is expected to be used to urgently ramp up production of key weapons that were used up in the strikes on Iran.

It remains unclear how much money the White House may ultimately request, but the Pentagon has already made several different funding proposals in the past two weeks, WaPo sources added. That said, some White House officials believe the Pentagon's request has no realistic chance of approval because Democrats in Congress oppose the military campaign and have criticized President Donald Trump's administration for it. Republicans generally support additional funding, but have yet to decide on a legislative strategy and have not found a way to pass the 60-vote threshold in the Senate.

On March 8, the Pentagon officially notified Congress that U.S. spending in the first week of the military campaign against Iran totaled $6 billion. $4 billion of that was spent on munitions and interceptors to destroy Iranian missiles, The New York Times (NYT) wrote. But on March 11, the newspaper's sources reported that, according to a new estimate, the first seven days of the war cost $11.3 billion. According to the Financial Times, since the beginning of the war, the U.S. has used up stocks of critical munitions that had been accumulated over several years. In particular, stockpiles of long-range Tomahawk missiles have been spent.

Iran has turned out to be better prepared for war than the US presidential administration expected, NYT interlocutors noted. At the same time, according to Axios sources, Trump was counting on a quick and obvious victory. According to White House projections, the war was not expected to last longer than four to six weeks, but now the administration is preparing for a more protracted conflict. As Politico wrote, the U.S. Central Command of the Armed Forces (CENTCOM), which directs operations in the Middle East, assumes that the military operation will drag on for at least 100 days.