US has spent $37.5B on Iran war so far: Defense secretary

“The estimate we have as of today is $37.5 billion,” Hegseth said when asked about the cost of the war.

The hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee focused on the Defense Department’s request for $67 billion in supplemental funding tied to the war against Iran.

Hegseth claimed during his remarks that Iran is “at the weakest point militarily it has ever been in the past decade” and possibly in 47 years, adding that thousands of Iranian ballistic missiles had been destroyed.

Pressed on how Iran was still able to shrink shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, Hegseth said the US moved between 200-500 million barrels of oil “under the nose of Iran.”

“We did so covertly, because it was more effective to do so quietly than publicly…We’ve been in control of moving traffic through there for quite some time,” he added.

“We had a ceasefire, and then they shot at commercial shipping,” he said.

On whether Russia and China are assisting Iran, Hegseth said there is “definitely adversary alignment, attempts to do so” between Iran and the two countries and that Washington has “many ways” of deterring it, some of which “ought to remain classified.”

He said both Russia and China are, at different levels, enabling some of the things Iran is doing.

Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked whether air power alone could defeat Iran.

“If you look across the totality of history, air power’s got limits, and we always have to be mindful of those,” he said.