'Israel First, America Last', Iran FM Claims US War Costs Have Hit £79B as He Accuses the Pentagon of Lying to Taxpayers

Iran's foreign minister publicly accused the Pentagon of lying to US taxpayers on 1 May 2026, claiming the war on Iran has directly cost America £79bn ($100bn), four times what Washington has admitted.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi made the allegation in a post on X, using language aimed squarely at American domestic opinion and invoking rising household costs alongside an 'Israel First' charge that framed the entire conflict as a financial sacrifice on behalf of a foreign government.

The claim arrived barely 48 hours after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's first congressional appearance since hostilities began, in which the Pentagon put Operation Epic Fury's price tag at just £19.7B ($25B), a figure immediately dismissed by Democratic lawmakers and independent economists as a significant undercount.

The Pentagon's £19.7B Figure and the Lawmakers Who Challenged It

On 29 April 2026, Jules Hurst III, the Pentagon's acting comptroller, told the House Armed Services Committee that Operation Epic Fury had cost approximately £19.7B ($25B) to date, attributing the bulk of that sum to munitions expenditure.

Hurst testified alongside Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dan Caine, acknowledging that a formal supplemental budget request had yet to reach Congress because the department lacked a complete cost assessment. The £19.7B ($25B) figure covered munitions, operations, and equipment replacement, but Hurst conceded it did not fully account for damage to US military installations overseas.

Senior Democrats challenged the figure at once. Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said the number was likely 'low-balling it,' pointing to estimates he had received suggesting the war was consuming roughly £730M ($1B) per day. 'He is deluding himself if he believes that figure, and possibly deceiving the American people,' Blumenthal said.

CBS News subsequently reported that US officials familiar with internal Pentagon assessments privately placed the true direct cost closer to £39.5B ($50B), roughly double the public figure, with munitions replacement accounting for most of the gap.

Hegseth gave no ground. He called Democratic scepticism the 'reckless, feckless and defeatist words of Congressional Democrats and some Republicans', framing the war in terms of existential national security. Asked by Rep. Ro Khanna of California about surging petrol and food prices, Hegseth replied: 'I would simply ask you what the cost is of an Iranian nuclear bomb.'

Araghchi's 'Israel First' Post and What Tehran Is Alleging

The day after those Capitol Hill hearings, Araghchi posted in English directly to a US-facing audience. 'The Pentagon is lying,' he wrote on X. 'Netanyahu's gamble has directly cost America $100b so far, four times what is claimed. Indirect costs for U.S. taxpayers are FAR higher. Monthly bill for each American household is $500 and rising fast. Israel First always means America Last.'

The post is Iran's assertion, not an independently verified accounting. Tehran has a clear political interest in inflating cost figures to deepen American domestic opposition to the war, and Araghchi cited no methodology and provided no breakdown for how the £79B ($100B) figure was derived. The £367 ($500)-per-household-per-month claim is similarly unsourced within the post and has not been corroborated by independent economists.

What the post does reflect is a coordinated Iranian information strategy targeting American public opinion at the precise moment congressional scrutiny of war spending is at its most intense. Araghchi's framing echoed language already circulating among Democratic critics of the conflict, who have repeatedly challenged Hegseth to explain what tangible benefit ordinary Americans have received from a war that has pushed energy prices to multi-year highs.

Harvard's £790B Projection and the Accounting Gap at the Pentagon

Independent academic analysis has produced figures more alarming than either Tehran or Washington has offered publicly. Professor Linda Bilmes, a public finance expert at the Harvard Kennedy School and co-author of a landmark study on the true cost of the Iraq conflict, told CNBC the Iran war will follow the same pattern. 'I am certain we will reach $1 trillion for the Iran war,' Bilmes said. 'Perhaps we have already racked up that amount.' She estimates the US was spending approximately $2B (£1.6B) per day during active combat operations.

A central pillar of Bilmes' argument concerns how the Pentagon accounts for munitions. The department reports weapons at their historical inventory value rather than current replacement cost, a method that, Bilmes argues, systematically understates the true bill. The Centre for Strategic and International Studies calculated that the first 12 days of the war alone cost over £13B ($16.5B), higher than the Pentagon's figure for the same period.

Over six weeks of active combat, the US expended more than 1,000 JASSM cruise missiles, 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles, and 1,000 Patriot interceptors, each costing approximately £2.9M ($4M) to replace. According to Air & Space Forces Magazine, the US also lost around two dozen MQ-9 Reaper drones, four F-15E Strike Eagles, and multiple KC-135 refuelling aircraft across more than 13,000 targeted strikes.

Whether Araghchi's £79B figure proves to be propaganda or prophecy, the arithmetic of Operation Epic Fury has become a domestic political crisis that no official number has yet been able to contain.