LEILA FADEL, HOST:
President Trump repeated his threats to destroy every bridge and power station in Iran tonight if the country's leaders don't agree to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Elsewhere in the program, we ask a member of Congress to react to that plan. We also hear what international law says about targeting civilian infrastructure like that. But now we're going to discuss what taxpayers are spending on the war with retired Marine Colonel Mark Cancian. He's a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Good morning. Welcome to the program.
MARK CANCIAN: Thanks for having me on the show.
FADEL: So today marks 39 days since the U.S. started this war with Iran. How much has it cost?
CANCIAN: Well, the budget costs to the Pentagon runs about $28 billion when you include the cost of the forces, the munitions and the various losses to bases and aircraft.
FADEL: How would deploying ground forces into Iran change that math?
CANCIAN: It would increase the costs a bit. You have to keep in mind that the ground forces that are in theater right now is only about 7,000. When people talk about boots on the ground, they often imagine Desert Storm or the invasion of Iraq, where the United States had hundreds of thousands of troops and marched to the capital. Here, the use of ground forces would be much more limited, maybe seizing some of the islands in the straits or in the Gulf. There would be, however, substantial losses maybe to equipment, the personnel, because opening the straits using military force - ground forces - would be a major combat operation on its own.
FADEL: When the military fires thousands of munitions, I mean, what does it cost to replenish them, and how long does that take?
CANCIAN: Well, a good piece of this - the cost of the war - is munitions. There are some high-end munitions where there are shortages. These are particularly the long-range, precision strike munitions like Tomahawk, which many people have heard of. There's also the antimissile munitions like Patriot. It takes years to replace them. And the reason is that production capabilities are limited, although they're expanding, and many of our allies want the same munitions that the United States does. So it'll take several years to replace munitions, and then the Pentagon wants to expand these inventories because of a potential conflict in the western Pacific.
FADEL: Now, $28 billion, that's a lot of money. I saw an estimate that this daring and heroic rescue of the airman in Iran was - cost about $200 million to $500 million, given the equipment that was lost. The administration would say the expense of the war is worth it. What do you think that spending has bought for the American people that justifies such a cost?
CANCIAN: Well, I'm going to defer that to the political realm. Depends on your view of the war. If you believe that we cannot allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon, this was probably the moment to take action on that. On the other hand, the problem might have been managed, and in which case, going to war was not worthwhile. So I'll let - leave it to the American people to make that decision. Of course, a lot depends on how this comes out. We're still in the war. We don't know what the ending is going to be. It could be relatively successful. It could be relatively disappointing.
FADEL: This cost that you're describing, I mean, is that pretty typical for a situation like this?
CANCIAN: It is. The wars are expensive, and they are not in the budget, so that if you're going to launch a operation of this scale, it's going to be expensive.
FADEL: And in - this amount of money that the government has spent, I mean, they have to pay for it one way or another. The government hasn't raised taxes. I mean, what are the ways the government will pay for this? What are the consequences of paying down war with debt?
CANCIAN: Well, we've made a decision as a society that we are going to put these kinds of programs on our credit card, increase the debt. And that's true here. It's true with the programs under the Biden administration, you know, the Inflation Reduction Act. Unfortunately, across the board, we've made a decision that we're going to spend today, and we're going to send the bills to our children and grandchildren.
FADEL: Retired Marine Colonel Mark Cancian with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Thank you.
CANCIAN: Thanks for having me on the program. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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