The Iran war now has a $25B price tag but still no end date

The war in Iran has cost an estimated $25 billion so far, according to a Pentagon estimate. But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth offered no indication of when the conflict might end during combative testimony before a congressional committee Wednesday.

In a testy exchange before the House Armed Services Committee, Hegseth was grilled by Rep. Adam Smith, a Democrat from Washington. Smith asked the defense secretary how he thought the war would ultimately play out.

"You have to stare down this kind of enemy who's hell-bent on getting a nuclear weapon, and get them to a point where they're at the table, giving it up," Hegseth said.

"So they haven't broken yet," Smith responded.

Hegseth said Iran's "nuclear facilities have been obliterated," including stockpiles of highly enriched uranium that are believed to be buried underground due to U.S. air strikes last June.

Smith said the Trump administration launched the current war two months ago saying an Iranian nuclear weapon "was an imminent threat. Now you're saying it's completely obliterated."

Hegseth responded by saying that Iran "had not given up their nuclear ambitions."

Over the course of his testimony, Hegseth was asked several times about the cost of the war. He responded by saying, "What is it worth to ensure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon?"

The Pentagon's comptroller, Jay Hurst, also appeared at the hearing and said that the war has cost an estimated $25 billion so far. The main expense has been weapons fired at Iran, he added.

The Pentagon says it hit some 13,000 targets in Iran before Trump declared a ceasefire April 7.

Hurst's testimony marked the first time the Trump administration has publicly offered a cost estimate on the war.

The Iran war dominated the hearing, which was scheduled to discuss the Pentagon's budget for next year. The Trump administration is asking for around $1.5 trillion, a massive increase from this year's allocation of a little under $1 trillion.

A diplomatic stalemate

While the ceasefire with Iran has been in place for three weeks, there's been little progress on a diplomatic solution.

U.S. and Iranian negotiators have held only one formal round of talks, though they've been exchanging messages and proposals through Pakistan, which has served as a mediator.

The U.S. and Iran are waging dueling blockades of the Gulf, effectively bringing a halt to oil and other commercial traffic. This has dramatically pushed up oil prices and caused economic hardship worldwide.

Iran cut off the Strait of Hormuz in the early days of the war, relying on small weapons, such as mines at sea or drones and missiles from land. The U.S. countered April 13 with its own blockade enforced with a large naval presence.

U.S. capabilities in the Gulf

Kevin Donegan, a retired U.S. Navy vice admiral who previously commanded the U.S. Fifth Fleet, based in Gulf nation of Bahrain, said he believed the U.S. could keep the current blockade going indefinitely.

"It's very sustainable with the forces they have in the region now," Donegan told NPR. "They can even peel some of [those ships] back and move others into the region to do a rotation."

Donegan said a negotiated agreement would be the best, safest way to reopen the strait. But he said the U.S. Navy can clear the waterway, though it would take time to remove mines and further degrade Iran's forces on land.

Donegan, who's now at the Middle East Institute think tank in Washington, said he doesn't know precisely what steps the military is taking. But based on his experience, he believes the U.S. is using unmanned vessels — above and below the surface — to clear mines.

The underwater vessels, he said, "look like big torpedoes. They can find any mines that are there, and then there are other remote vehicles that can then remove them. You basically open up two good passageways, one coming in, one coming out."

If asked, the Navy could escort oil tankers through the strait, he added. But there would be risks and the number of ships passing through would likely be well below the pre-war shipping traffic.

Before the war, more than a 100 commercial ships sailed through the strait daily, going to and from Iran, as well as Arab countries, carrying oil, natural gas and other key components for the global economy.

"You'd obviously start doing that with small numbers (of ships) and you're going to have to diminish any residual capability the Iranians have," Donegan said. "Let's say you finally did get to where you can move convoys back and forth, and now you're going to have a much, much reduced capability than it normally would be."

The U.S. has had a naval presence in Gulf since 1949, and the Fifth Fleet was formally established in Bahrain in 1995 specifically to protect the flow of oil.

Donegan said that when he was commanding the Fifth Fleet a decade ago, he was often thinking about the possibility of Iran closing down the Strait of Hormuz.

"It's at the forefront of everything that we did in the Fifth Fleet, knowing that if we carried out military operations, this would be a card that the Iranians would play," he said. "It's completely expected that this is what they would do and is built into your planning process."

Despite the decades of turmoil in the Middle East, the flow of oil in the Gulf has never faced such a comprehensive shutdown. The last significant disruption was during the 1991 Gulf war when a U.S.-led coalition forced Iraqi troops out of Kuwait.

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