By John Pickard
After the USA and Israel launched their bombing campaign against Iran at the end of February, we wrote in Left Horizons that despite the overwhelming military predominance of these two aggressor states, it would be Iran that would be “determining the economic and political fall-out”. That has indeed proved to be the case.
Netanyahu in Israel has stepped back for the moment from his part in this ‘forever war’, partly because of the election he faces, and partly because of the collapse of diplomatic, political and moral support for Israel across the globe, not least in the USA. But it is Trump who is counting the heaviest cost of his war.
Despite all the bragging and swaggering in Washington about the dominance of its military, the USA has not defeated Iran. They have caused huge amounts of destruction to the Iranian military, and to civilian infrastructure. They have killed thousands, mostly civilians, and economic sanctions are biting deep into the living standards of ordinary Iranians. But there are no signs of the clerical regime falling any time soon and, if anything, it is stronger than it was before.
More importantly, Iran still controls the Straits of Hormuz, which is closed as a result. The US has found that it cannot bomb the Straits open. With Iran’s Houthis allies in Yemen threatening the Strait of Bab al-Mandab at the southern end of the Red Sea, world prices for crude oil have risen again to over $100 a barrel.
At home in the US, the Fed has raised interest rates as a response to persistent inflation. American workers and especially those industries reliant on diesel – the important agricultural and transport sectors – are now having to pay $6 a gallon for their fuel.
The scale of the folly
Operation Epic Fury, which ought to have been name, Operation Epic Folly, has come at huge cost to the US and that was further underlined this week by two reports released in Washington. These assessments, from both the Inspector General of the US defence department – effectively monitoring spending by the Pentagon and ‘War Department’ – as well as the Congressional Budget Office, show the scale of the costs to US tax-payers.
It is now publicly acknowledged by these official bodies that Trump’s seven-month war – which he hoped would last seven days – has cost nearly $40bn. What is worse for the US military, the reports flatly contradict the boastful denials of Secretary Pete Hegseth, that there are no shortages of ordnance. They admit that the war has left the US armed forces with a serious shortfall of munitions.
Michael Duffy, the Under-Secretary of Defence for Acquisition and Sustainment, and one of the key officials monitoring Pentagon expenditure, admitted that the “munitions expenditure” in the war with Iran “has resulted in strategic inventory shortfalls and revealed industrial base bottlenecks for munitions resupply”. (Financial Times report, here)
The report of the Inspector General listed the considerable damage – studiously disregarded in White House briefings – that has been inflicted on the hardware and US bases in the region. It lists 22 aeroplanes and helicopters damaged or destroyed, including fighter jets and refuelling tankers. Up to 30 MQ-9 Reaper drones were also damaged or destroyed.
US main naval base in Bahrain unusable
Across the region, hundreds of Iranian missiles and drones have seriously damaged US military bases in Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. So much damage was done – particularly to the US military headquarters in Bahrain, just across the Gulf from Iran, that “the service had trouble establishing adequate alternate ports and naval bases.” That is the reason why ground-based fighter-bombers have had to be moved to Israel, further away from Iranian attacks, and recent bombing raids have had to be launched from aircraft carriers in the lower Gulf.
The US facilities across the region have been so badly hit that there are no functioning naval bases nearby to the US sea-borne task force. It was recently revealed that some naval personnel were in an almost mutinous state over a long (record-breaking) deployment at sea without any shore leave. The US navy has been obliged to use the base at Diego Garcia many days sailing away in the Indian Ocean. In contrast to the lies coming out of the White House, the acting Navy secretary, Hung Cao, was a lot more forthright this week. “They blew the hell out of Bahrain,” he said.
The total estimate of costs, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) – an authoritative body comparable to the UK Office for Budget Responsibility, are around $38bn, with $21.7bn required just to replace munitions. The same office reported that every single additional month of war – depending, of course, on the intensity of the exchanges – will cost between $2bn and $3bn. The White House has asked Congress for more than $67bn in supplemental funding for the Pentagon due to the war, including $21bn for munitions and all of this will only increase the burden on US workers.
Most important for workers in the USA – and all of those who are going to vote in the mid-term elections in November – the CBO estimated that the war will add 0.5% to US inflation, bringing it to 3.2% this year.
It remains to be seen how much Donald Trump will be able to interfere with the mid-term elections, perhaps by refusing to accept them or imposing some ‘emergency’ decrees. Nothing can be ruled out with the most unpredictable president in US history. But left to themselves, voters are likely to deliver a sharp rebuke to Trump, for a war that they know was completely unnecessary and if proving hugely expensive.
