By the end of Saturday, Feb. 28, the United States was no longer on the brink of conflict with Iran; it was at war. For a nation still carrying the scars of decades of failed interventions, trillions of dollars wasted, and promises to put America first, it seems Washington still hasn’t learned its lesson.
In the weeks leading up to Feb. 28, tensions between the US, Iran, and Israel had been building as nuclear negotiations collapsed and officials started accusing Iran of progressing on their uranium enrichment program. The Trump administration framed military action as necessary acts of self-defense, claiming he was trying to eliminate growing security threats. But was it really to protect, or just a show put on to make him look good?
After selling this war to the public as a show of strength, it has quickly turned into something else: billions of taxpayer dollars disappearing overseas, gas prices rising at home, and millions of Americans asking why we even did this in the first place. In trying to hurt Iran, the US might have done something even more impressive: hurt itself. Continued U.S. involvement in the war with Iran has ultimately harmed America more than Iran or Israel, draining billions of dollars, deepening political divisions, and destroying public trust in foreign affairs.
U.S. military spending in just the first week of the war likely totaled around $11.3 billion, and the true total might be even more than that. This absurd amount of money could have been saved if we hadn’t needlessly started this war. The Department of Defense called the mission “Operation Epic Fury,” but I think it should’ve been called “Operation Epic Waste of Money.” It was reported by Al-Jazeera that the U.S. spent about $2 billion per day in ammunition and war materials. According to the Guardian, initial strikes used expensive weapons like the AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapon, a bomb that can cost around $578,000 and $836,000 per unit.
According to the Center for American Progress, as the war progressed, the average spending per day dropped to around $1 billion, still a huge amount of money. Along with the munition costs, Iran started charging a $2 million “transit fee” for any ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz. The Center for American Progress also reported that after just 39 days of war, it is likely that the US spent more than $33 billion. President Donald Trump ended up entering into a war that was not only costly but also unnecessary, and due to this, the administration will likely leverage this year’s spending on the war with next year’s $1.5 trillion defense budget.
At a time when many Americans are already facing rising housing costs, student debt, and inflation, billions of dollars are being redirected towards a war that many people don’t even support. In just six days, $11.3 billion taxpayer dollars were used for a useless operation, while the Department of Education spends only $70 billion dollars per year, showing the vast amount of funding given to the Department of Defense. While the war continues on, numbers shown by an Al-Jazeera reporter, Yashraj Sharma, show that the United States and the Trump administration have presented a proposal for a $1.5 Trillion dollar budget for Fiscal Year 2027, a 42% increase from the year before, and is the largest expansion in military spending since World War II. But is it really $25 billion dollars, or will it be more? Linda Blimes, a Harvard economist, has factored in the inflation most Americans are facing due to the war, and estimates that the war has cost the US over $1 trillion dollars so far. Along with that, the US bases that were destroyed in the Middle East cost a lot of money to repair. Sharma reported that to fix just the US Navy Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain could cost around $200 million dollars.
However, the financial damage hasn’t stopped at military spending. As the war continued, it also began to impact the economy around the world. US. Global energy markets responded almost immediately, sending oil prices skyrocketing with uncertainty in the U.S. stock market. When Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz, damages were made to the Gulf Arab oil and gas infrastructures and removed up to 10% of the world’s oil supply from the market, leading to a considerable increase in price. According to the International Energy Agency, this caused a global crisis more serious than the ones in 1973, 1979, and 2002 together. Millions of Americans saw drastic surges in prices, by nearly 39%, while gas prices went from an average of $2.98 to $4.14 per gallon. Currently, the average gas price in Connecticut is higher than the national average at an abnormal $4.615.
But the damage wasn’t only seen in gas prices, but also in major shipping companies, which affected grocery stores, airlines, and manufacturers. Many families already dealing with inflation found themselves with additional headaches as they began worrying not just about food, but also about travel and basic necessities.
In the end, these decisions made by the administration have led to an erosion of public trust. As the US continued to take military action in Iran, public polling done by the NY Times showed that 59% of American citizens opposed the situation. And honestly, who could blame them? After watching millions of their taxpayer dollars disappear overseas while prices at home have only been rising, many Americans see an administration that cares more about their conflicts overseas than their citizens at home. A poll done by Gallup International shows that 80% of people blame the US and Israel equally for starting the war, while only 15% blame Iran, showing that many people dislike the decisions made by the administration, leading to the destruction of public trust in the administration.
So we have to ask ourselves: do we actually have any control over any of this, or are we expected to sit back while the administration burns through billions of taxpayer dollars that people work hard to earn? Because if this war was supposed to make America look stronger, it has done exactly the opposite. It has drained our economy, divided our people, and made millions lose any faith left in the already failing administration. This time, the country that is hurting the most isn’t Iran; it is the United States.
