$37.5bn cost of Iran war revealed as senator warns of ‘another forever war’ | First Thing

The Guardian (World) reports that US defense secretary Pete Hegseth has told the Senate the US-Israel war on Iran has cost thirty-seven point five billion dollars so far. He faced lawmakers angry over the soaring price tag and over the deaths last week of three American service members, and defended the Trump administration's roughly eighty-eight billion dollar supplemental funding request as urgent and necessary. In the same briefing, Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi described being pulled from the rubble of a leadership compound after the US-Israeli airstrike that killed supreme leader Ali Khamenei on the first day of the war, saying he has survived since by constantly moving around Tehran by car. Ordinary Iranians told the paper that airstrikes, repression and water shortages have become the new normal, while the additional funding request now sits with Congress.

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