Iran war costs: What could $38 billion have done instead?
One way to understand it is to compare it with programmes that directly affect ordinary Americans.
The US war with Iran had cost the Pentagon about $38 billion by 1 August, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The estimate covers the cost of replacing munitions and equipment lost in battle, increased flying hours, fuel and other military operations. It does not include all federal costs associated with the conflict.
And the bill is still growing. CBO estimates that another month of fighting could cost about $2 billion if violence remains at the lower level seen in May and June, or around $3 billion if it returns to July's intensity.
But what does $38 billion actually mean outside the battlefield?
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One way to understand it is to compare it with programmes that directly affect ordinary Americans. The US Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which provides food assistance to low-income families, cost the federal government $101.7 billion in fiscal 2025 and served an average of 42.1 million people a month. At that annual rate, $38 billion is equivalent to about 4.5 months of the entire national SNAP programme.
That does not mean the money could simply be transferred from the military to SNAP. It illustrates the scale: the direct military cost of the war through August was equivalent to several months of America's biggest food-assistance programme.
Education provides another perspective
The maximum Federal Pell Grant for the 2026–27 academic year is $7,395, according to the US Department of Education. Dividing $38 billion by $7,395 produces roughly 5.1 million full-year grants. Early childhood education offers another benchmark. The US government provided $11.997 billion for Head Start in fiscal 2023, with funding to serve about 778,420 children and pregnant women. At that funding level, $38 billion is equivalent to more than three years of Head Start funding.
What about poorer countries?
The international comparison is perhaps even more striking. The United States contributed $1.284 billion to the World Health Organization during the 2022–23 biennium, through assessed and voluntary contributions. The $38 billion spent on the war is therefore almost 30 times the US contribution to WHO over those two years.
The comparison with childhood vaccination is also revealing. The US contributed $300 million to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, in 2024. Gavi-supported programmes reached more than 72 million children with routine vaccines that year. The $38 billion war cost is roughly 127 times the US contribution to Gavi in 2024.
That does not mean the money could simply have vaccinated 127 times as many children. Gavi's work involves much more than buying vaccines: it supports delivery systems, cold-chain equipment and other parts of immunisation programmes, while recipient countries also contribute their own resources.
A broader WHO figure helps illustrate the scale of global vaccination needs. Across 140 countries, average annual spending on routine vaccines was $76 per surviving infant during 2021–23, with total spending of more than $6 billion a year.
There is another way to look at the international opportunity cost. USAID and the CDC allocated over $20 million initially starting in March 2024, followed by an additional $35 million in emergency assistance.
The cost beyond the $38 billion
There is also an opportunity cost inside the US military itself. CBO says the conflict has rapidly depleted US stocks of missile-defence interceptors and other munitions. It estimates that rebuilding some of those inventories could take several years.
The war is also affecting the wider US economy. CBO estimates that higher energy prices linked to the conflict will leave overall inflation 0.5 percentage points higher in the first quarter of 2027 than the agency had projected before the war.
So the $38 billion is more than a military spending figure. It is money that could have supported millions of Americans through food assistance and education, or helped finance health and vaccination programmes around the world. The bigger question is therefore not only how much the war costs, but what those billions could otherwise have done for people at home and abroad.
