The Pentagon seeks significant budget increase amid escalating conflict costs.
Pentagon seeks more than $200 billion in budget request for Iran war – WaPo
The Pentagon has asked the White House to approve a more than $200 billion request to Congress to fund the war in Iran, a senior administration official told The Washington Post, in an enormous new ask that is almost certain to run into resistance from lawmakers opposed to the conflict.
That number would far surpass the costs of the administration’s massive airstrike campaign to date and instead seek to urgently increase production of critical weaponry expended as U.S. and Israeli forces have struck thousands of targets over the past three weeks, according to three other people familiar with the matter, who confirmed the Pentagon is seeking packages of that size.
The cost of the war in Iran has rapidly grown, exceeding $11 billion in the first week alone, according to multiple officials. Shortly after the joint U.S.-Israeli campaign began late last month, the Trump administration started preparing an additional funding request to help cover the costs, a process often required to ensure the military can maintain its readiness to defend against threats around the world even during wartime.
Inside the Pentagon, the effort was led by Deputy Defense Secretary Steven Feinberg, who has focused for the past year on the American defense industry and increasing production of precision munitions, which have been rapidly depleted by the war, according to two people.
Even before the war in Iran, President Trump had called for a $1.5 trillion defense budget, a more than 50 percent increase from the previous year. It remains unclear how, and whether, the supplemental may count toward that total. The White House Office of Management and Budget objected to that total in internal discussions, suggesting it was too large.
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