Wouldn't some of these costs be present either way? Without a war US would still have aircraft carriers, they would just be floating somewhere else.
On the other side, it seems like this is not tracking interceptor costs (presumably due to it being classified), which have certainly been used extensively and are extremely expensive. For that matter i doubt we have a very clear picture of how much ordinance has been used in general.
[To be clear, im not doubting war is very expensive]
bubblewand 2 hours ago [-]
A carrier operating at sea on the other side of the world is a ton more expensive than a carrier in port at home. The Ford in particular would probably be in port now if not for these back-to-back expensive adventures, they’ve been deployed for a remarkably long time now.
(As for whether this reflects only those added costs, I don’t know)
lefstathiou 2 hours ago [-]
Carriers aren't meant to hang out at port at home. The US has protected global sea lanes for 80 years.
adriand 1 hours ago [-]
> The US has protected global sea lanes for 80 years.
But rather than protect global sea lanes, the US is bombing Iran. That’s not the same thing.
The idea that the war isn’t costing money for personnel because those people would be doing something anyway makes no sense. They could be doing something else. In fact, they could be doing something that increases the wealth and wellbeing of the world, rather than destroying things. So from that perspective, the cost is far higher than what is shown here.
Then there’s the loss of innocent lives. It would be unconscionable to put a price tag on the lives of dozens of Iranian girls killed when their school was flattened and to show it on this website, and yet, this is not “free” either.
bawolff 1 hours ago [-]
> But rather than protect global sea lanes, the US is bombing Iran. That’s not the same thing.
Arguably the primary threat to modern sea lanes is Iran.
Right now Iran is harrasing traffic. Previously the Houthis, generally considered an Iranian proxy, were harrasing traffic. Its all kind of the same war, this is just the end game.
mikepurvis 9 minutes ago [-]
The first gulf war was 1990. The US has been at war with various factions of the Middle East more or less continuously for thirty five years. The current president specifically campaigned on no new foreign wars and repeatedly tried to bully the Nobel committee into awarding him a peace prize before accepting a second hand one from another world leader and a sham one from FIFA of all things.
What makes anyone think that this latest attack is the "end game" vs just the latest expensive chapter?
Terr_ 52 minutes ago [-]
If it were that straightforward, right now the US would (A) have a consistent set of demands/goals that include shipping security and (B) a large international coalition of support.
Neither are true.
bagels 30 minutes ago [-]
JD vance whined that we shouldn't protect middle east shipping lanes because he believes it helps Europe more than the US.
IncreasePosts 25 minutes ago [-]
Don't make me defend JD vance.
He said Europe should pay their fair share for protection since 40% of their trade passes through those lanes but only 3% of America's.
tw-20260303-001 34 seconds ago [-]
Who started the war. Why did you start the war. Dude, go home.
RobRivera 55 minutes ago [-]
People should begin quantifying the commercial freight global costs incurred from the Houthi harassment. There is a basic ROI one can do that impacts not just US interests, but global interests.
RobotToaster 50 minutes ago [-]
> Right now Iran is harrasing traffic
gee, I wonder why they're doing that.
edm0nd 17 minutes ago [-]
Because they love supporting and exporting terrorism via the Houthis, Hamas, and Hezbollah.
seattle_spring 14 minutes ago [-]
"The terrorists hate our freedoms."
This seems like a perfect opportunity for a revival of David Cross's standup career.
mothballed 47 minutes ago [-]
Houthi harassments was also a byproduct of the Israel-US "self defense" against the Iranian backed hamas attacks. Maybe it is pointless to pontificate whether the the tic-for-tat would have been initiated had the Israel-US coalition had stopped at punishing the Oct. 7 terrorists rather than leveling half of gaza, although I'm not convinced it was an inevitable byproduct.
rwyinuse 23 minutes ago [-]
What about tens of thousands of peaceful civilians who have been killed by the Iranian regime during past decades? The alternative to this war is allowing the Iranian government to keep doing that, business as usual.
In my opinion bombing people responsible for these atrocities increases the well-being of the world. Most Iranians seem to agree.
postflopclarity 12 minutes ago [-]
sometimes there are more than two options between
"do nothing"
and the clusterfuck the current administration has embarked on.
lejalv 16 minutes ago [-]
Now turn your argument towards Saudi Arabia, or any of the human-rights violating countries that the US supports or has supported recently.
Your opinion is respectable, but not compatible with any idea of “justice”.
mierz00 3 minutes ago [-]
I’m sure the welfare of the Iranian people is a top priority for Trump.
we_have_options 15 minutes ago [-]
wonder what your view is of ICE actions against peaceful protesters in MN?
state_less 32 minutes ago [-]
The strait of hormuz is the opposite of protected right now. Insurance companies aren't willing to cover ships if they enter the straight to pick up a load of oil, so little commercial traffic is occurring.
The real cost should include the spike in oil prices, the world consumes about 100 million barrels a day, so every $10 increase costs the world a $1 billion a day. We're already up ~$10, and it might continue to rise depending on how things go. You probably should include LNG in there too. If this oil halt is protracted, your stocks and bonds will be dragged down as well.
Retric 1 hours ago [-]
We have surplus carriers specifically to allow them to average a large percentage of their time at home unlike container ships who spend the vast majority of their time in service. Many systems that are both bespoke and complex means lots and lots of maintenance issues.
Sure the Navy can Airlift in parts etc, but that’s obviously very expensive and less obviously more dangerous.
idontwantthis 1 hours ago [-]
They aren't all deployed at all times and the Ford is more than overdue to be in Port. The sailors are notably suffering on this deployment and there is a ton of deferred maintenance.
bawolff 2 hours ago [-]
True.
Honestly i think my main opinion is that we have no idea what the number is, but its probably a large one.
RobRivera 56 minutes ago [-]
Carriers routinely engage in war gaming and cruises. They dont port if they are not actively engaged in war.
runako 44 minutes ago [-]
> Wouldn't some of these costs be present either way?
This is a fair way to account for the cost, because the assets were procured and personnel hired years ago for just this purpose.
Put another way: we would not need this fleet at all if we did not expect to use it in a manner like this. (For example, Spain did not choose to have this capability and so has not borne a cost of maintaining this option for the preceding decades.) Through that lens, the true cost of this war would involve counting back to before this round of hostilities began.
It's only fair to count _at least_ the "time on task" for all the assets.
stevenwoo 43 minutes ago [-]
There's someone quoted here who estimated UAE by itself cost in fighting off the Shahed drones at $23-28 per $1 spent on Shahed drone at $55000 (they know how many got through and the claimed success rate and the methods they are using to defend UAE)
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/shahed-drones-iran-us...
eschulz 1 hours ago [-]
Right, consider the personnel costs that are displayed here. They were already getting paid this past weekend either way (admittedly the military may have had to hire some last minute contractors to help with the operation).
1970-01-01 1 hours ago [-]
Yes, the actual accounting is quite poor and makes bad assumptions. Don't use this info for anything important or serious.
blktiger 2 hours ago [-]
I think that's true, but I like that this site includes a "ESTIMATED MUNITIONS & EQUIPMENT COSTS" section that shows the value of actual, expended munitions which are all one-time costs directly resulting from the war.
bawolff 1 hours ago [-]
Seems like a massive understatement given how much of this war has been shooting down iranian missiles. According to wikipedia, a single patriot missile cost 4 million, and you often have to use multiple to get a succesful shoot down.
dexihand 43 minutes ago [-]
This. 220 mil/day is 55 PAC3-MSEs. Iran has fired ~100 ballistic missiles alone per day. Probably spending that on interceptors alone.
lakrici88284 18 minutes ago [-]
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sva_ 49 minutes ago [-]
Also, the taking the production/purchasing cost of some F15s that were 25 - 35 years old doesn't make a whole lot of sense, or does it?
butILoveLife 2 hours ago [-]
Maybe, its opaque how its calculated.
But you are keeping people on high alert, refueling further away, etc...
__alexs 1 hours ago [-]
Sure but having a bunch of resources for "defence" is very different from having a bunch of resources for "attack" in most people's mind I imagine.
JohnTHaller 1 hours ago [-]
Iran probably wouldn't have blown up the $300m radar installation if we hadn't randomly attacked them.
google234123 57 minutes ago [-]
Is there good evidence for this?
1234letshaveatw 1 hours ago [-]
history says otherwise
tw04 1 hours ago [-]
History really doesn’t say otherwise. Tensions were mostly cooling after the Obama nuclear deal.
Now the message we’ve told the world is: If you don’t want to eventually be at risk of the US attacking you, you better be nuclear armed.
1234letshaveatw 1 hours ago [-]
because enriching uranium worked out so well for Iran?
D-Coder 23 minutes ago [-]
Because NOT enriching uranium worked so badly for Gaddafi.
ripvanwinkle 1 hours ago [-]
because it worked out for North Korea
adventured 3 minutes ago [-]
Nobody was desperate to invade North Korea prior to their acquisition of nukes. It's a horrific war field and combat prospect. Iraq and Afghanistan were each a cakewalk next to going into North Korea (again). North Korea was safe as they were.
The primary threat to Gaddafi over time was internal, nukes would not have protected him. What was he going to do, nuke his own territory? The same was true for Assad.
The primary threat to Iran's regime is internal. Nobody is invading Iran. It's a gigantic country with 93 million people. It can't be done and it's universally understood. Trump won't even speculate about it, even he knows it can't be done. What would nukes do to protect Iran's regime? Are they going to nuke their own people? Are they going to nuke Israel and US bases if the US bombs them?
So let me get this straight: the US bombs Iran, Iran nukes Israel and some US bases, maybe even a regional foe - then Iran gets obliterated.
That's not what would happen in reality at all. Don't take my word for it, ask Pakistan: the US threatened to bomb them [0] - despite their possession of nukes - after 9/11 if they didn't cooperate. Why would the US do that? Because the US knows that MAD doesn't work like the online armchair crowd thinks it does.
Take any American, and treat them the way Americans treat others, and they would be forming terrorist cells (gorilla war), building nukes, basically every single thing they could to fight back. To never surrender.
Remember Red Dawn? That would be an American Response, to what America is doing.
That is it basically. If shoe was on other foot, Americans would never surrender.
So, why are we expecting others to give up quietly?
*290 people. Mistook an Airbus A300 for an F-14. Maybe it's an easy mistake to make on radar back in the day?
throwaw12 49 minutes ago [-]
History doesn't say anything, because there is no precedence Iran attacking the US assets first.
__alexs 58 minutes ago [-]
Iran has never carried out an attack against US military infrastructure that wasn't clearly retaliatory.
Look it up. Every case of Iran attacking US infrastructure has been in direct retaliation to the US blowing up some Iranian stuff.
Sure Iran has funded tons of proxy attacks by anonymous militias but these are generally not at the same kind of scale.
kingkawn 1 hours ago [-]
Yes but right now it’s doing this war. It can’t be anywhere else, so the costs are for this deployment specifically.
bawolff 1 hours ago [-]
I think when people are asking about the cost of a war, they are asking about excess costs. How much extra money would be saved if the war didn't happen.
SauntSolaire 43 minutes ago [-]
Yes, it's quite humorous to try and factor in opportunity costs for aircraft carriers, "but we could be bombing someone else!"
paulryanrogers 25 minutes ago [-]
Doing actual bombing is more costing than just patrolling relatively peaceful seas, no?
throwaw12 51 minutes ago [-]
This doesn't include generational damage in sentiment:
* Europe is in trouble because they can't get gas from Russia, Qatar stopped supplying gas
* Japan is in trouble because Middle East supplies its 75% of oil, which is blocked now
* Ukraine is in dilemma, because US giving every support to Israel, but not to Ukraine
* Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain is asking questions, if US can't defend us and is moving all defensive missiles to protect Israel, why should we even be ally with them in the future, they're scared even more (except UAE) that people might overthrow those kings if things continue this way
* Africa understood its better to work with China, than with US
jklinger410 20 minutes ago [-]
I think citizens in those countries recognize that allowing a repressive regime to exist simply for cheap oil costs is not necessarily a good solution, either.
throwaw12 3 minutes ago [-]
until your energy bills impact your pocket directly, while you were laid off from your manufacturing plant, because their cost structure is not competitive without cheap Russian oil/gas
Almost nobody thinks like that, what are we 5 year olds? Especially when most left leaning folks in western world has hard sympathies with hamas which are just left and right hand of the same regime (maybe not US left which is far from left elsewhere).
Did US population en masse lost sleep during past decades till now and some future due to sweatshops full of kids making their jeans or iphones or Christmas toys for their kids in highly undemocratic regimes?
flyinglizard 45 minutes ago [-]
The disruption in gas supply will be very short. Weeks, at most. The gulf states will be very happy to see the Islamic Republic gone, they are living in its shadow for a long time now. Now, Ukraine and Israel need very different kinds of support, and things like US withholding intelligence from Ukraine have nothing to do with Israel.
hedora 34 minutes ago [-]
Iran has been bombing production facilities across a bunch of US allies. It's unclear how quickly those will be rebuilt. Also, the US is probably bombing Iranian production, which means countries like China will be looking for additional sources.
throwaw12 32 minutes ago [-]
I wonder why Israel should get any support, do you support killing children and bombing schools?
Ukraine, I understand, because it was attacked, but Israel, who was oppressing people for so many years with prisons full with Palestinian kids and teenagers long before Oct 7th, I really don't understand.
Except, for Epstein reasons (blackmail), other than that, there is no reason US should support Israel, in any way
flyinglizard 10 minutes ago [-]
Israel should get support because supporting Israel right to exist, for me, is the right thing, and because its strategic goals and values align with those of the US.
throwaw12 6 minutes ago [-]
> supporting Israel right to exist, for me, is the right thing
1. Does US fight to support only right things?
2. Is Palestinian right to exist is the right thing as well?
dttze 14 minutes ago [-]
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joecool1029 2 hours ago [-]
This seems really low considering one of the early warning radars taken out cost around $1bil on its own.... and it's possible a second one was at least damaged. (one in Qatar the other in Bahrain)
nosmokewhereiam 14 minutes ago [-]
NSA (Naval support) Bahrain lost a ground station (maybe two), not a radar.
google234123 54 minutes ago [-]
The only footage I've seen is damage to maybe a satellite receiver. Have you seen proof of the radar damage
We do have actual video of that one radome in Bahrain getting directly struck (from multiple angles). It's possible it was a satellite communication antenna and not a radar.
But the still images shown with before/after are AI generated. (the surrounding buildings are completely different in the before/after image).
Next time someone asks how we're going to pay for, eg, free school lunches, keep this site in mind.
BJones12 1 hours ago [-]
Given 50 million schoolkids in the US and a cost per meal per child of $4, the current number represents 10 meals. At 1 meal a day that would be 2 school weeks, at 2 meals a day that would be 1 school week.
roughly 1 hours ago [-]
We've been at this for 2.5 days, and the president is suggesting this could last a month or more.
I suspect the long term ROI on free school lunches is going to far exceed that of this war, as well.
cvoss 52 minutes ago [-]
The government's job is not to maximize its ROI. For example, (and I make no argument about whether the current situation does this), protecting its citizens is of extreme moral importance, even if it's very very expensive and unlikely to somehow feed back into the economy in a way that recoups the cost long term.
roughly 43 minutes ago [-]
Then surely universal health care, strict anti-pollution measures, and worker safety efforts are next on the list, alongside access to healthy food and efforts to reduce the number of miles the average person needs to drive daily.
mhb 32 minutes ago [-]
Surely? It's far from clear that the benefits of these initiatives would be net positive.
roughly 27 minutes ago [-]
The poster above asserted maximizing ROI wasn't a goal - that, and I quote:
> protecting its citizens is of extreme moral importance
Given the number of our citizens that die from, eg, preventable diseases, that seems like a far, far higher moral call than a war against Iran.
throwaw12 26 minutes ago [-]
> protecting its citizens is of extreme moral importance
If you are relating protecting citizens with current situation, NO country dares to attack US citizens in the US soil.
US, at this time, doesn't need to protect its citizens, especially in the US, from attacks by other nations, 0, none. No threat.
sheikhnbake 39 minutes ago [-]
It's less about maximizing ROI and more about proper stewardship of resources taken by or provided to the government.
ikrenji 41 minutes ago [-]
excuse me? the government's job is absolutely to maximize its ROI. I'm not paying taxes just for the money to be wasted
hedora 39 minutes ago [-]
Everyone except the president is suggesting this will turn into a regional forever war.
baxtr 27 minutes ago [-]
The same "everyone" that said Ukraine will be taken in 2 weeks max?
No one knows how this will end. Anyone claiming to is either lying or stupid or both.
hedora 5 minutes ago [-]
I'd be curious to know what group thought that Ukraine would be taken in 2 weeks, but also thinks that the Iranian war will be a quagmire.
Either they have a lot of information I'm missing, are complete idiots, or are being dishonest.
mothballed 35 minutes ago [-]
It already was a regional forever war. The US just decided to partake in the festivities.
sheikhnbake 1 hours ago [-]
2 school weeks of lunches for less than a week of war costs is a pretty good argument for school lunches. Especially as costs of this start to balloon the longer it goes on.
throwaw12 59 minutes ago [-]
2 weeks of meal for every school kid in the US!
Can you imagine the scale of this number?
3 days of war vs 2 week of meal for every school kid
Now do the math for Afghan war, probably US could have easily cancelled 70% of loan for every college grad, or could've been built large rail network
hedora 36 minutes ago [-]
The Sentinel ICBM project (already at 2x initial budget, and set to balloon further) will be the most expensive project since the interstate freeway system was built.
So, an all-city high-speed rail network would certainly be achievable for a small fraction of the total US military budget.
ikrenji 33 minutes ago [-]
well yeah. the pentagon wastes 1 trilly per year. a lot of stuff can be paid for with that kind of money.
amelius 51 minutes ago [-]
How many subsidized meals would it represent if you only account for the kids that need one?
roughly 37 minutes ago [-]
Honestly, a lot of these programs become substantially more expensive when you add the bureaucracy and hoops required by means testing. The economics are easier if you just give kids food and skip sorting out whether they deserve it or not.
TFYS 1 hours ago [-]
Those meals would most likely help a lot of kids become healthy productive members of society. That money would be saved by the families of those kids and used in other parts of the economy. A lot of the cost would therefore be returned. The money spent of this war is producing only destruction.
beepbooptheory 1 hours ago [-]
When would it ever be 2 meals a day?
BJones12 52 minutes ago [-]
With a school breakfast program and a school lunch program.
marginalia_nu 50 minutes ago [-]
The question is fundamentally poorly formed, and as a consequence, so is the rebuttal. A state can pay for anything, since it doesn't have to be in a budget surplus.
Household budget analogies emerge any time someone wants to limit spending, or criticize spending, but one of the biggest points of Wealth of Nations (which is the foundation for modern macroeconomics) is that the budget of a state is fundamentally different to that of a household.
If a household fails to maintain its budget, it's game over. People know this, which is why it's a punchy analogy. But it's also a bad analogy.
If a state fails to maintain its budget, it can either print more money or raise taxes. Neither is a great long term fiscal policy, but it's not the end of the world either, and budgetary deficit something most states utilize fairly regularly.
What's missing with the school lunches and present with the Iran War is political will. (I get that is what your point was all along.)
ikrenji 43 minutes ago [-]
he was saying the state should be paying the school free lunches, what are you on about
marginalia_nu 37 minutes ago [-]
I wasn't making a rebuttal.
jakeinspace 7 minutes ago [-]
Is this missing interceptors? My understanding is those probably dominate total costs at the moment, especially if you include the costs of allied Gulf State and Israeli interceptors. Thousands have been expended already on ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones. Those range from hundred of thousands to multiple millions per shot.
hereme888 24 minutes ago [-]
For the prospects of the freedom and subsequent prosperity of the oppressed Iranian people, peace in the Middle East, and safety of the commercial shipping routes, I fully approve my tax dollars to the matter.
nprz 2 minutes ago [-]
Do you really believe killing 175 children[0] will bring peace and prosperity to the Iranian people?
OK, I don't. I wonder if we could set up some sort of legislative system that could debate this on our behalf and make a reasonable plan that accounts for our differing viewpoints.
mekdoonggi 8 minutes ago [-]
Would you still approve if the cost is 20x, the Iranian people are worse off, and the shipping routes and Middle East are dramatically less safe due to drones?
Because that is a realistic possibility.
hereme888 3 minutes ago [-]
No, I would not. But so far I don't see that outcome.
leosanchez 10 minutes ago [-]
For Pakistanis as well ?
hereme888 2 minutes ago [-]
I'm honestly not informed about what's happening with Pakistan. I know there's a ton of tweets about this, but it's not in my scope at the moment.
LAC-Tech 10 minutes ago [-]
That is an unrealistic goal.
Likely the actual goal, as dictated by Israel and the Jewish Lobby in the US, is to destabilise Iran long term in a sort of Syria situation, so they cannot threaten Israeli hegemony in the region.
Remember even a non Islamic Iran is still a threat to Israeli power if it remains unified and intact.
hereme888 1 minutes ago [-]
I don't agree with your perspective, but I do support Iran no longer being a threat to anyone else in the region, no matter what.
danny_codes 17 minutes ago [-]
Yeah that’s the likely outcome given our track record /s
2001zhaozhao 2 minutes ago [-]
> $2.1B
so $7 per person?
Stromgren 51 minutes ago [-]
I saw the cost of the three downed planes somewhere else and thought the price was huge. Now I see that it’s comparable to “First Tomahawk salvo”.
mandeepj 27 minutes ago [-]
Orange clown has a strange way of looking at things. He's now saying - He's not starting a war, but rather ending one.
mekdoonggi 2 minutes ago [-]
It's not strange, it's perfectly intelligible doublespeak.
joshrw 2 minutes ago [-]
Doublespeak
wnevets 46 minutes ago [-]
But universal healthcare is too expensive.
IAmGraydon 41 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
gravisultra 38 minutes ago [-]
This is a valid criticism. Whenever there is a push to improve life for US citizens, we are told that we do not have the funds. Yet, here we see an essentially unlimited budget to fight Israel's war of aggression against Iran, with zero benefit to US citizens. In fact, the costs (financial, moral and human) that we will pay for this excursion will be astronomically high.
mhb 22 minutes ago [-]
If budgets are what interest you, maybe consider why Iran spent over $500B developing offensive nuclear weapons. Instead of peaceful pursuits or defenses against its supposed aggressor over 1,000 miles away.
gravisultra 10 minutes ago [-]
Budgets using my money interest me. Do you have a source for that $500B claim?
danny_codes 12 minutes ago [-]
Reductive tropes?OP is pointing out a serious flaw in US federal spending. Namely our lack of spending on healthcare and our intensive spending on killing people from a distance
wnevets 35 minutes ago [-]
> Low effort comments
Thank you for your very high effort, insightful and valuable comment on this matter.
kakacik 4 minutes ago [-]
Your reply is even worse, no facts, no reply just rant and diversion, a proper low effort too.
Freedom2 8 minutes ago [-]
Agreed. Considering this attack is also biblically sanctioned, commenters should keep that in mind else they incur the wrath of God.
not providing universal healthcare is a choice, as seen directly here. Its distressing to have US politicians make false claims that Europe's universal healthcare being something they "indirectly pay for", because even if Europe spent all their money on defence the US (albeit mostly the GOP) would still resist providing universal healthcare both tooth and nail.
danny_codes 13 minutes ago [-]
Universal healthcare is cheaper than our system of healthcare by a factor of 2 (comparing other OECD countries). If we raised taxes and implemented universal healthcare we’d save about $1T a year.
Cost isn’t the relevant factor, it’s politics. Or more accurately, naked bribery that we, for some insane reason, call “lobbying”.
stopbulying 1 hours ago [-]
Could add: Civilian casualty ratio by party
(Civilian casualty ratios in recent conflicts and declared wars)
RobRivera 54 minutes ago [-]
Oh boy - defense accounting I LOVE this game.
Quick quick, give me a quote on the coffee maker on the AWACS.
mcintyre1994 33 minutes ago [-]
Wouldn’t most of these costs have been going for a few weeks, given the build up?
Paul_S 5 minutes ago [-]
Can we subtract the number of dollars that it would cost not to start a war?
Also in what Iran's government spent developing nuclear weapons.
rebolek 2 hours ago [-]
Yeah but without the attack, Iran would have nuclear weapons in two years! Netanyahoo has been saying this for almost fifty years, si it must be true!
lyu07282 1 hours ago [-]
At this point the media apparatus that shaped all these people's brains in the comments here must've cost more than the wars they simp for.
gtsop 38 minutes ago [-]
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t1234s 1 hours ago [-]
Which contractor is selling the most munitions? LM, Raytheon, etc..
58 minutes ago [-]
goestoo 2 hours ago [-]
Why are the fonts so small? I have a hard time reading anything.
textech 42 minutes ago [-]
The cost doesn't really matter. The US led financial system (which is a glorified Ponzi scheme) is on an unsustainable path. The war in Iran is about resources (force Iran to use US dollars to trade oil, give US more leverage in dealing with China...etc.) and to delay the collapse. You build "digital pyramids" like AI data centers and consolidate power/resources while you still can. Financial cost of the war is largely irrelevant. Whether the outcome will be to your advantage is a different issue but pattern is predictable with historical precedence (Romans...etc.). Unfortunately innocent people pay the price.
martythemaniak 2 hours ago [-]
Why is the US at war?
999900000999 1 hours ago [-]
America needs to have never-ending perpetual wars to sustain its own economy. If we woke up tomorrow and there was just world peace, and America got rid of its military budget millions of people would probably instantly lose their jobs.
That's the ultimate reason. They could just as easily declare war against Venus and spend hundreds of billions of dollars sending rocks into space and it would have the same net effect. Actually it would be a bit more positive because to my knowledge nobody's really living on Venus right now.
sheikhnbake 1 hours ago [-]
> America needs to have never-ending perpetual wars to sustain its own economy.
People don't realize that the Pentagon has strategically, over decades, invested and distributed its supply and manufacturing needs to every single congressional district. Basically ensuring that any representative that votes against the DoD budget will run afoul of constituents employed in some fashion by the military industrial complex.
throwway120385 37 minutes ago [-]
The military-industrial complex that Eisenhower, a Republican, warned us about.
More accurately, Israel was going to attack Iran, and US intelligence stated that Iranian retaliation planning was to target US forces, along with most gulf nations and shipping lanes, so US preempted that retaliation.
tarkin2 1 hours ago [-]
Because, like Venezuala, they were selling their oil to China, which would allow China to attack Taiwan and take the US's supply of advanced semi-conductors for its weapons and military dominance
csours 1 hours ago [-]
"Why?" is the hardest of the questions.
For any particular person, you can tell a story that satisfies "Why?". But for a large number of people, you have to answer "Why?" for one sub-group at a time.
In other words, there's not a single answer that will answer this in a satisfying way.
To answer a different question: It appears that the Israeli government and military wanted to bomb Iran again, and the United States executive branch and military decided to help out. This is an incomplete and unsatisfying answer. Sorry.
maeln 49 minutes ago [-]
> In other words, there's not a single answer that will answer this in a satisfying way.
There could be one, but it would be a book-sized answer (and probably a Tolkien one, if not more).
Every conflict is multi-faceted and happened for a variety of reason, some mattering more than other. Any conflict involving the middle east and you have to go back almost 80-years of history to really provide a satisfying answer. Control of world oil supply, trades with China, opportunistic war to appease local voter pool, diversion from problematic affairs, diplomacy with Israel (which as it own thousand fold reasons for this war), Iran being left weak after losing most of their local allied militia, internal uprising due to a economical crisis caused in part to the removal of the agreement on nuclear and the trade ban that followed ... They all probably play a part.
Oh wow, I never truly realized it before, but his speech really used to be a lot more coherent across long sentences than it is these days.
slg 55 minutes ago [-]
People should be able to separate the man from his politics and look at this apolitically. I don't see how anyone can see the way his speech patterns have changed over the years and not conclude that he has had a sharp cognitive decline. It's baffling that we don't talk about it, especially after we just went through this with Biden and had the whole retrospective about how that was ignored. Now here we are doing the exact same thing again immediately.
vjvjvjvjghv 47 minutes ago [-]
Anybody who has observed somebody age over decades knows that there is a huge difference between being 70 and 80. And it’s another big decline when they approach 90.
The democrats denied this with Biden and now the republicans are denying it with Trump.
Maybe we should get people that are way beyond normal retirement age out of political Leadership?
throwway120385 33 minutes ago [-]
Voters primarily vote for people that look and act like them, and retired people are a massive voting block. Chris Christie saying off-the-cuff that if young people voted in any significant numbers then he would care about what they had to say was a huge money quote. We get geriatrics because people moan about how our vote doesn't matter while not voting.
throwway120385 35 minutes ago [-]
See, it's okay if it's the person you voted for and he's doing things you like. But when it's someone you didn't vote for and you don't like what he's doing then the cognitive decline is suddenly a huge problem.
Quarrelsome 42 minutes ago [-]
because when you give someone the keys to the US military to some people, they lack the imagination to think beyond piracy and raiding.
The war in its current inception is Hamas levels of planning.
1. Do a big attack
2. ????
3. Profit!
Depends of if the Iranian state is weak enough to collapse on its own, because I imagine a land assault in Venezuela or Iran would be a horrific mistake due to the terrain.
hedora 14 minutes ago [-]
This strike isn't even close to Hamas-levels of planning.
If anything Hamas got the US to make an unforced mistake in a game of checkers three moves out.
According to the IDF's analysis of captured Hamas documents, step 2 was:
"Get Israel to commit so many war crimes that we actually have the moral high ground. Then, regional partners will be forced to support us again, and our recruitment numbers go back up. Do everything we can to ensure the conflict expands across borders to secure future funding and alliances."
The crazy thing is the IDF knew this and published the report. Only after acknowledging that it was their only losing move did they start committing a bunch of war crimes!
Hamas' public support, funding and recruitment levels were rapidly approaching zero until the Palestinian genocide started. Now they're part of a regional conflict and arguably still hold the moral high ground, depending on how you tally things up. That was fantasy-land for them before the strikes.
It's almost like the IDF's funding is contingent on Hamas' continued existence, and, barring that, perpetual regional conflict.
It's too bad that civilians always lose in these conflicts, and right-wing criminals almost always win.
morkalork 1 minutes ago [-]
I love that this was downvoted and greyed out. Don't think, don't ask questions. Since when was that part of the hacker ethos?
hypeatei 1 hours ago [-]
Christian Evangelicals, war hawks, and a voter base that fell for the "peace ticket" talk.
58 minutes ago [-]
kraftman 2 hours ago [-]
Distraction
jcgrillo 1 hours ago [-]
Midterm elections later this year
MengerSponge 2 hours ago [-]
To occupy media cycles? To start the rapture?
rebolek 1 hours ago [-]
You're asking dangerous questions, comrade.
gtsop 34 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
Drupon 1 hours ago [-]
[dead]
throwaw12 57 minutes ago [-]
because of Epstein tapes and blackmail by Israel
pphysch 1 hours ago [-]
According to the Secretary of State Marco Rubio yesterday, we are at war because we knew Israel was going to assassinate Iranian leaders and we would be expected to defend them (and our foreign bases) when they go to war, so we might as well go to war right away. 4D chess.
benj111 1 hours ago [-]
I'd rather have a tracker to show how close the Orange One is to his coveted Peace Prize.
hk__2 1 hours ago [-]
*for the US.
TSiege 2 hours ago [-]
Cost is not the first thing I care about in war, but I felt like this is a useful site for tracking the money we're lighting on fire in order to pursue this conflict
Civilian costs are real, unjustified, and incalculable.
keybored 1 hours ago [-]
That’s good. But it seems that the American anti-war discourse is slanted towards the cost of it. Maybe because the whole political spectrum can relate to “our tax dollars”, while (1) the cost for the military personell might not be a concern for all because it is all-volunteer, and (2) some Americans don’t care what happens to people in other countries.
Certainly: American progressives can use this to counter the “fiscally conservatives” (for domestic spending) who are also hawkish.
hedora 30 minutes ago [-]
Remember: The opinions of people that either didn't vote or voted for Trump are all that really matter this November (unless the Democrats somehow lose voters, but the polls suggest that is unlikely).
Those are the votes that need to be won over to make any sort of difference during the second half of the Trump administration.
arduanika 46 minutes ago [-]
It's hard for laypeople to comprehend such large numbers. Could you add a counter that measures it in miles of California high-speed rail? It's got to be over three miles by now at least.
butILoveLife 2 hours ago [-]
We better get a liberal democratic Iran government out of this.
We better remove and halt nuclear powers for the rest of my life.
I suppose pick either, and it was successful.
My personal polymarket says we wont get either. Trump and Israel ruin their reputation. But reputation matters close to 0 in international relations, which is why they don't care.
viccis 1 hours ago [-]
There's next to no chance that whatever comes out of the end of this will be a "liberal democratic Iran government". Obama started a route in that direction with the lowered sanctions and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action from 2015. Iran having a democratic government doesn't really help the GOP war hawks so of course they trashed it. The same happened with North Korea in the 90s with the Agreed Framework that had some promise before GWB torpedoed it to please his oinking base.
I also think that nuclear powers mean regional stability. Ukraine gave up its nukes in the 90s and we saw what happened there.
avidiax 1 hours ago [-]
> We better get a liberal democratic Iran government out of this.
> We better remove and halt nuclear powers for the rest of my life.
Neither of those things is a guaranteed outcome of this. Depending on who you ask, it's not even a likely outcome.
The IRGC remains the most powerful group in Iran. Probably a military junta is a more likely outcome, plus or minus a civil war to establish it.
Quarrelsome 45 minutes ago [-]
> We better get a liberal democratic Iran government out of this.
I doubt it. US intervention seems to have a habit of creating weakened nations for its rivals to benefit from. In Iraq's case: Iran and in Iran's case maybe the Taliban in Afghanistan.
roughly 2 hours ago [-]
Unfortunately, I think "Theocratic Iran with the bomb" is on the "good" side of the distribution of potential outcomes here.
mhb 18 minutes ago [-]
You're right. It is unfortunate that you think that.
spaghetdefects 45 minutes ago [-]
I'd be happy with the permanent removal of US bases from the Middle East.
georgeburdell 38 minutes ago [-]
The Middle East does not understand Democracy. It will just be another strong man in power. The diaspora is pushing for a new shah
tokyobreakfast 1 hours ago [-]
How much money was set on fire for Ukraine?
Where does that fall in relation on the righteousness rubric?
Jolter 59 minutes ago [-]
It was not set on fire, it was ”invested” in dead Russian soldiers.
jmyeet 1 hours ago [-]
There are a bunch of videos showing how expensive it is to fire certain weapons eg [1]. Not only are there our direct costs but we're also supplying several allies with munitions and weapon systems and paying for them ourselves.
Also, yes carrier groups exist anyway, but operating them in a combat zone halfway around the world is way more expensive.
Operation Epstein Fury [sic] is a giant white elephant and I think more Americans should know how much this is costing as well as why we're doing it, which is simply to support American imperialism with a lie similar to the IRaq WMD lie and that is that Iran is "weeks away" from nuclear weapons, a lie that's been told and propagated since at least 1992 [2].
President Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the expanding military-industrial complex in his 1961 farewell address [3]. Every bomber, every plane, every missile has an eye-watering cost when you put it int erms of schools, houses or healthcare. The recent ICE budget, for example, could've ended homelessness. Not for the year. Forever.
Israel begged every president since Reagan to invade Iran. They all declined. Until now. And many suspect we're going to run out of anti-missile munitions long before Iran runs out of ballistic missiles.
Just remember, every used munition eneds to be replaced. That's a new contract and new profit opportunity. It's why in so many post-WW2 conflicts you'll find American weapons on both sides.
If you needed further proof that Israel has copies of the compromising data about Trump from the Epstein files…
4gotunameagain 1 hours ago [-]
How much more is the US going to spend on Israel ?
Huge swaths of the US populace is impoverished and struggling, health insurance is non existence, the quality of education is in free fall, yet they decide to spend trillions for Israel.
Why ?
bawolff 1 hours ago [-]
US has tons of interests in the region. This is just as much for america's benefit as it is for Israel's.
evklein 46 minutes ago [-]
"Interests." I'd love to know what the price per barrel the U.S. has paid in the last few years when you factor in additional costs incurred due to involvement in Iraq and Syria.
hedora 10 minutes ago [-]
We're certainly paying more than it'd cost to just drive EVs.
Retail fuel prices are already higher than that, even ignoring subsidies, military operations and environmental externalities.
spaghetdefects 41 minutes ago [-]
This is not in the US's interest at all. What do we get out of destabilizing the region? This is entirely for Israel.
hedora 8 minutes ago [-]
This won't help Israelis.
It will help multiple industrial military complexes on both sides of the conflict.
jsphweid 48 minutes ago [-]
> This is just as much for america's benefit as it is for Israel's.
Citation needed.
Dig1t 57 minutes ago [-]
Almost all of our representatives have been bought by the Israel lobby. We will spend many billions more, and questioning it will continue to cause people to be labeled as antisemitic.
Israel is seeking a new Memorandum of Understanding now which will guarantee them aid for twice as long as normal (20 years instead of the usual 10).
The Israel lobby is the most powerful and feared lobby in Washington. As a politician, getting on their bad side means almost certainly losing your next election. Just look at how much money they are putting into trying to replace Thomas Massie.
Their power and influence has a huge chilling effect on all criticism of Israel, even representatives who represent people who overwhelmingly are against Israel like AOC and Omar, largely remain silent on the genocide and our foreign policy toward them because of this chilling effect.
I highly recommend the book "The Israel Lobby" by Mearsheimer and Walt. It was published in 2007 and detailed this entire thing almost 2 decades ago.
Maybe it will be offset by selling LNG at 50% higher prices to the dumb Europeans. Blowing up Nordstream was the first step, Qatar stopping LNG production the second. Perhaps take Greenland while the EU is completely dependent.
Rendered at 20:59:01 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
On the other side, it seems like this is not tracking interceptor costs (presumably due to it being classified), which have certainly been used extensively and are extremely expensive. For that matter i doubt we have a very clear picture of how much ordinance has been used in general.
[To be clear, im not doubting war is very expensive]
(As for whether this reflects only those added costs, I don’t know)
But rather than protect global sea lanes, the US is bombing Iran. That’s not the same thing.
The idea that the war isn’t costing money for personnel because those people would be doing something anyway makes no sense. They could be doing something else. In fact, they could be doing something that increases the wealth and wellbeing of the world, rather than destroying things. So from that perspective, the cost is far higher than what is shown here.
Then there’s the loss of innocent lives. It would be unconscionable to put a price tag on the lives of dozens of Iranian girls killed when their school was flattened and to show it on this website, and yet, this is not “free” either.
Arguably the primary threat to modern sea lanes is Iran.
Right now Iran is harrasing traffic. Previously the Houthis, generally considered an Iranian proxy, were harrasing traffic. Its all kind of the same war, this is just the end game.
What makes anyone think that this latest attack is the "end game" vs just the latest expensive chapter?
Neither are true.
He said Europe should pay their fair share for protection since 40% of their trade passes through those lanes but only 3% of America's.
gee, I wonder why they're doing that.
This seems like a perfect opportunity for a revival of David Cross's standup career.
In my opinion bombing people responsible for these atrocities increases the well-being of the world. Most Iranians seem to agree.
"do nothing"
and the clusterfuck the current administration has embarked on.
Your opinion is respectable, but not compatible with any idea of “justice”.
The real cost should include the spike in oil prices, the world consumes about 100 million barrels a day, so every $10 increase costs the world a $1 billion a day. We're already up ~$10, and it might continue to rise depending on how things go. You probably should include LNG in there too. If this oil halt is protracted, your stocks and bonds will be dragged down as well.
Sure the Navy can Airlift in parts etc, but that’s obviously very expensive and less obviously more dangerous.
Honestly i think my main opinion is that we have no idea what the number is, but its probably a large one.
This is a fair way to account for the cost, because the assets were procured and personnel hired years ago for just this purpose.
Put another way: we would not need this fleet at all if we did not expect to use it in a manner like this. (For example, Spain did not choose to have this capability and so has not borne a cost of maintaining this option for the preceding decades.) Through that lens, the true cost of this war would involve counting back to before this round of hostilities began.
It's only fair to count _at least_ the "time on task" for all the assets.
But you are keeping people on high alert, refueling further away, etc...
Now the message we’ve told the world is: If you don’t want to eventually be at risk of the US attacking you, you better be nuclear armed.
The primary threat to Gaddafi over time was internal, nukes would not have protected him. What was he going to do, nuke his own territory? The same was true for Assad.
The primary threat to Iran's regime is internal. Nobody is invading Iran. It's a gigantic country with 93 million people. It can't be done and it's universally understood. Trump won't even speculate about it, even he knows it can't be done. What would nukes do to protect Iran's regime? Are they going to nuke their own people? Are they going to nuke Israel and US bases if the US bombs them?
So let me get this straight: the US bombs Iran, Iran nukes Israel and some US bases, maybe even a regional foe - then Iran gets obliterated.
That's not what would happen in reality at all. Don't take my word for it, ask Pakistan: the US threatened to bomb them [0] - despite their possession of nukes - after 9/11 if they didn't cooperate. Why would the US do that? Because the US knows that MAD doesn't work like the online armchair crowd thinks it does.
[0] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2006/9/22/us-threatened-to-bo...
Take any American, and treat them the way Americans treat others, and they would be forming terrorist cells (gorilla war), building nukes, basically every single thing they could to fight back. To never surrender.
Remember Red Dawn? That would be an American Response, to what America is doing.
That is it basically. If shoe was on other foot, Americans would never surrender.
So, why are we expecting others to give up quietly?
Look it up. Every case of Iran attacking US infrastructure has been in direct retaliation to the US blowing up some Iranian stuff.
Sure Iran has funded tons of proxy attacks by anonymous militias but these are generally not at the same kind of scale.
* Europe is in trouble because they can't get gas from Russia, Qatar stopped supplying gas
* Japan is in trouble because Middle East supplies its 75% of oil, which is blocked now
* Ukraine is in dilemma, because US giving every support to Israel, but not to Ukraine
* Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain is asking questions, if US can't defend us and is moving all defensive missiles to protect Israel, why should we even be ally with them in the future, they're scared even more (except UAE) that people might overthrow those kings if things continue this way
* Africa understood its better to work with China, than with US
Look at the correlation here starting from 2022: https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/recent-weakness-german-manufa...
Did US population en masse lost sleep during past decades till now and some future due to sweatshops full of kids making their jeans or iphones or Christmas toys for their kids in highly undemocratic regimes?
Ukraine, I understand, because it was attacked, but Israel, who was oppressing people for so many years with prisons full with Palestinian kids and teenagers long before Oct 7th, I really don't understand.
Except, for Epstein reasons (blackmail), other than that, there is no reason US should support Israel, in any way
1. Does US fight to support only right things?
2. Is Palestinian right to exist is the right thing as well?
We do have actual video of that one radome in Bahrain getting directly struck (from multiple angles). It's possible it was a satellite communication antenna and not a radar.
But the still images shown with before/after are AI generated. (the surrounding buildings are completely different in the before/after image).
The radar that is likely to have been damaged is the one in Qatar, here is reporting from an NPR editor using Planet satellite imagery: https://nitter.net/gbrumfiel/status/2028227786750476627
I suspect the long term ROI on free school lunches is going to far exceed that of this war, as well.
> protecting its citizens is of extreme moral importance
Given the number of our citizens that die from, eg, preventable diseases, that seems like a far, far higher moral call than a war against Iran.
If you are relating protecting citizens with current situation, NO country dares to attack US citizens in the US soil.
US, at this time, doesn't need to protect its citizens, especially in the US, from attacks by other nations, 0, none. No threat.
No one knows how this will end. Anyone claiming to is either lying or stupid or both.
Either they have a lot of information I'm missing, are complete idiots, or are being dishonest.
Can you imagine the scale of this number?
3 days of war vs 2 week of meal for every school kid
Now do the math for Afghan war, probably US could have easily cancelled 70% of loan for every college grad, or could've been built large rail network
https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/02/the-air-forces-new-icb...
So, an all-city high-speed rail network would certainly be achievable for a small fraction of the total US military budget.
Household budget analogies emerge any time someone wants to limit spending, or criticize spending, but one of the biggest points of Wealth of Nations (which is the foundation for modern macroeconomics) is that the budget of a state is fundamentally different to that of a household.
If a household fails to maintain its budget, it's game over. People know this, which is why it's a punchy analogy. But it's also a bad analogy.
If a state fails to maintain its budget, it can either print more money or raise taxes. Neither is a great long term fiscal policy, but it's not the end of the world either, and budgetary deficit something most states utilize fairly regularly.
What's missing with the school lunches and present with the Iran War is political will. (I get that is what your point was all along.)
[0]https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/01/world/middleeast/girls-sc...
Because that is a realistic possibility.
Likely the actual goal, as dictated by Israel and the Jewish Lobby in the US, is to destabilise Iran long term in a sort of Syria situation, so they cannot threaten Israeli hegemony in the region.
Remember even a non Islamic Iran is still a threat to Israeli power if it remains unified and intact.
so $7 per person?
Thank you for your very high effort, insightful and valuable comment on this matter.
2025 United States strikes on Iranian nuclear sites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_United_States_strikes_on_...
2026 Iran massacres https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_massacres
2026 Iran conflict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_conflict
Cost isn’t the relevant factor, it’s politics. Or more accurately, naked bribery that we, for some insane reason, call “lobbying”.
(Civilian casualty ratios in recent conflicts and declared wars)
Quick quick, give me a quote on the coffee maker on the AWACS.
That's the ultimate reason. They could just as easily declare war against Venus and spend hundreds of billions of dollars sending rocks into space and it would have the same net effect. Actually it would be a bit more positive because to my knowledge nobody's really living on Venus right now.
People don't realize that the Pentagon has strategically, over decades, invested and distributed its supply and manufacturing needs to every single congressional district. Basically ensuring that any representative that votes against the DoD budget will run afoul of constituents employed in some fashion by the military industrial complex.
For any particular person, you can tell a story that satisfies "Why?". But for a large number of people, you have to answer "Why?" for one sub-group at a time.
In other words, there's not a single answer that will answer this in a satisfying way.
To answer a different question: It appears that the Israeli government and military wanted to bomb Iran again, and the United States executive branch and military decided to help out. This is an incomplete and unsatisfying answer. Sorry.
There could be one, but it would be a book-sized answer (and probably a Tolkien one, if not more).
Every conflict is multi-faceted and happened for a variety of reason, some mattering more than other. Any conflict involving the middle east and you have to go back almost 80-years of history to really provide a satisfying answer. Control of world oil supply, trades with China, opportunistic war to appease local voter pool, diversion from problematic affairs, diplomacy with Israel (which as it own thousand fold reasons for this war), Iran being left weak after losing most of their local allied militia, internal uprising due to a economical crisis caused in part to the removal of the agreement on nuclear and the trade ban that followed ... They all probably play a part.
The democrats denied this with Biden and now the republicans are denying it with Trump.
Maybe we should get people that are way beyond normal retirement age out of political Leadership?
The war in its current inception is Hamas levels of planning.
1. Do a big attack
2. ????
3. Profit!
Depends of if the Iranian state is weak enough to collapse on its own, because I imagine a land assault in Venezuela or Iran would be a horrific mistake due to the terrain.
If anything Hamas got the US to make an unforced mistake in a game of checkers three moves out.
According to the IDF's analysis of captured Hamas documents, step 2 was:
"Get Israel to commit so many war crimes that we actually have the moral high ground. Then, regional partners will be forced to support us again, and our recruitment numbers go back up. Do everything we can to ensure the conflict expands across borders to secure future funding and alliances."
The crazy thing is the IDF knew this and published the report. Only after acknowledging that it was their only losing move did they start committing a bunch of war crimes!
Hamas' public support, funding and recruitment levels were rapidly approaching zero until the Palestinian genocide started. Now they're part of a regional conflict and arguably still hold the moral high ground, depending on how you tally things up. That was fantasy-land for them before the strikes.
It's almost like the IDF's funding is contingent on Hamas' continued existence, and, barring that, perpetual regional conflict.
It's too bad that civilians always lose in these conflicts, and right-wing criminals almost always win.
Civilian costs are real, unjustified, and incalculable.
Certainly: American progressives can use this to counter the “fiscally conservatives” (for domestic spending) who are also hawkish.
Those are the votes that need to be won over to make any sort of difference during the second half of the Trump administration.
We better remove and halt nuclear powers for the rest of my life.
I suppose pick either, and it was successful.
My personal polymarket says we wont get either. Trump and Israel ruin their reputation. But reputation matters close to 0 in international relations, which is why they don't care.
I also think that nuclear powers mean regional stability. Ukraine gave up its nukes in the 90s and we saw what happened there.
> We better remove and halt nuclear powers for the rest of my life.
Neither of those things is a guaranteed outcome of this. Depending on who you ask, it's not even a likely outcome.
The IRGC remains the most powerful group in Iran. Probably a military junta is a more likely outcome, plus or minus a civil war to establish it.
I doubt it. US intervention seems to have a habit of creating weakened nations for its rivals to benefit from. In Iraq's case: Iran and in Iran's case maybe the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Where does that fall in relation on the righteousness rubric?
Also, yes carrier groups exist anyway, but operating them in a combat zone halfway around the world is way more expensive.
Operation Epstein Fury [sic] is a giant white elephant and I think more Americans should know how much this is costing as well as why we're doing it, which is simply to support American imperialism with a lie similar to the IRaq WMD lie and that is that Iran is "weeks away" from nuclear weapons, a lie that's been told and propagated since at least 1992 [2].
President Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the expanding military-industrial complex in his 1961 farewell address [3]. Every bomber, every plane, every missile has an eye-watering cost when you put it int erms of schools, houses or healthcare. The recent ICE budget, for example, could've ended homelessness. Not for the year. Forever.
Israel begged every president since Reagan to invade Iran. They all declined. Until now. And many suspect we're going to run out of anti-missile munitions long before Iran runs out of ballistic missiles.
Just remember, every used munition eneds to be replaced. That's a new contract and new profit opportunity. It's why in so many post-WW2 conflicts you'll find American weapons on both sides.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6mWI8Q6IwA
[2]: https://www.tiktok.com/@therecount/video/7612744750713589023
[3]: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwigh...
Huge swaths of the US populace is impoverished and struggling, health insurance is non existence, the quality of education is in free fall, yet they decide to spend trillions for Israel.
Why ?
Retail fuel prices are already higher than that, even ignoring subsidies, military operations and environmental externalities.
It will help multiple industrial military complexes on both sides of the conflict.
Citation needed.
Israel is seeking a new Memorandum of Understanding now which will guarantee them aid for twice as long as normal (20 years instead of the usual 10).
https://www.stimson.org/2025/a-20-year-mou-with-israel-is-no...
The Israel lobby is the most powerful and feared lobby in Washington. As a politician, getting on their bad side means almost certainly losing your next election. Just look at how much money they are putting into trying to replace Thomas Massie.
Their power and influence has a huge chilling effect on all criticism of Israel, even representatives who represent people who overwhelmingly are against Israel like AOC and Omar, largely remain silent on the genocide and our foreign policy toward them because of this chilling effect.
I highly recommend the book "The Israel Lobby" by Mearsheimer and Walt. It was published in 2007 and detailed this entire thing almost 2 decades ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Israel_Lobby_and_U.S._Fore...