The United States and Iran reached a “tentative deal” to extend their ceasefire Friday, while negotiations over the fate of Iran’s enriched uranium continue, as the Associated Press reported Friday.
That’s the good news: Despite sporadic exchanges of drone and missile fire last week, the Iran war remains on pause, and the estimated cost of the war remains at its previous $25 billion level
And now here’s the bad news: The actual cost of the war to U.S. taxpayers is probably twice that. It depends on what the definition of $25 billion is The initial $25 billion figure the Pentagon estimated for the war’s cost covered only the cost of replacing munitions expended in fighting it. It’s the cost of replacing some: – 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles. – 1,100 JASSM-ER stealth cruise missiles. – 1,200 to 1,300 Patriot interceptor missiles. – 1,000 Precision Strike and ATACMS missiles. – The literally thousands of Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) kits used to convert thousands of unguided bombs into “smart bombs” used in the later stages of the war.
Replacing all this expended ordnance can be expected to keep Boeing (NYSE: BA), JDAM’s manufacturer; RTX Corporation (NYSE: RTX), which makes the Tomahawk; Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT), which makes the JASSM-ER, Precision Strike, and ATACMS; and RTX and Lockheed, who both manufacture varieties of the Patriot missile, busy for years. But this amount covers only the most visible cost of the war, and the most obvious “defense contractors” involved in recovering after the conflict. As CNN reports, U.S. bases around the Persian Gulf sustained damage from Iranian retaliatory strikes that could easily double the war’s cost, adding a further $15 billion to $25 billion to the bill.