Two Iowa Republicans backed a war powers resolution in the House over the conflict in Iran for the first time, a notable move for two members from the deep-red Hawkeye State as the midterms near. On Tuesday, the House passed a Democratic-backed war powers resolution with an aim to restrict President Trump’s military actions in...
Page F2From§Eachthe matinee edition — 16 September 2026
THE TALLY
Pentagon prices the Iran war at $33.4 billion, undercounting its own base damage, watchdog finds.
As it ran on the front
The Pentagon's own filing now puts a number on the Iran war: $33.4 billion, most of it munitions, not counting the hundreds of millions other agencies have spent keeping it running. That is the public price tag, disclosed this week. It arrives six months into a conflict the vice president, asked point-blank on September 3 whether it would end before the midterms, declined even to name: "I wouldn't call it a war," JD Vance said, the same week U.S. airstrikes on Iranian targets continued and a wedding was hit. The ledger says war. The language desk says otherwise. They don't reconcile.
Neither do the damage estimates. Last month, on "60 Minutes," Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Norah O'Donnell the U.S. had inflicted "historic" devastation on Iran's military capabilities and that "we have all the control in the world." A watchdog this week ran the tape the other direction: CENTCOM has quietly admitted Iran damaged or destroyed hundreds of buildings at U.S. bases, among the equipment hit a $270 million surveillance plane. The Pentagon's public account of what the war cost and its own account of what the war cost its own bases are two different filings. The gap between them is the story, not a rounding error.…
…(cont) On September 11, at a ceremony outside the building whose bases turn out to have taken that kind of hit, Hegseth invoked the anniversary of the 2001 attacks to place this war in the same lineage, telling the crowd Iran had "cheered on 9/11." The line ran five days before his own department's cost estimate went public.
The House, for its part, has now voted three separate times this year to limit what the president can do in Iran without asking Congress first. This week's vote carried two Republican members from Iowa who had not previously backed the restriction — a deep-red state, a war six months old, a midterm approaching. The same day, Rep. Thomas Massie filed articles of impeachment against Hegseth.
None of these votes touch the $33.4 billion already spent, or the buildings already down. The House can limit the power to start something. It has not yet found a line item for what finishing it already cost. The filing and the table still don't match, hon, and nobody downtown seems in a hurry to make them.
“They hand you the receipt for the missiles they fired and sit on the one for the buildings Iran took out — that's not bad bookkeeping, that's a business model. Nobody's eating that $33.4 billion but us, and the House just voted a third time to maybe ask permission before the number grows again.”
“$33.4 billion sounds like a lot until you remember what "historic devastation" is worth — the Secretary said it himself, on '60 Minutes,' we have all the control in the world. The base numbers, those are just logistics, that's — that's not something I'm supposed to be commenting on, forget I said that.”
The receipts
The Pentagon has failed its audit eight years running - the only major federal agency never to pass one Military Times, 19 December 2025
Widespread damage on US bases from Iranian airstrikes revealed, including to $270 million spy planeIranian missile and drone attacks have caused widespread damages to US military bases and equipment stationed in the Middle East, according to new photos.
The House voted for a third time to restrict President Trump's power to strike Iran. Meanwhile, GOP Rep. Thomas Massie introduced articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The 2025 reconciliation law cut SNAP by $187 billion, the largest cut in the program's history, feeding one in five American children Congressional Budget Office estimate, via CBPP SNAP tracker
House speaker declares Iran nuclear issue "taken care of"The Iran war has cost the U.S. military at least $33.4 billion — most of it on munitions — and not including hundreds of millions more spent by other agencies, the Pentagon says.
The Pentagon has failed its audit eight years running - the only major federal agency never to pass one Military Times, 19 December 2025
Exploiting Tragedy to Promote War, Hegseth Falsely Claims That Iran 'Cheered on 9/11'Twenty-five years later, Republican politicians are still using 9/11 to justify war in the Middle East. And they're still lying shamelessly. During remarks outside the Pentagon on Friday commemorating the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attack, President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth portrayed their deeply unpopular…
Iran has damaged or destroyed hundreds of buildings at US bases, CENTCOM has quietly admitted.
· Hegseth on "devastation" to Iran's capabilities from the morgue, 10 Sep 2026
· 'I Wouldn't Call It a War,' Says JD Vance After 6 Months of Trump's Failed, Costly, and Illegal War on Iran from the morgue, 3 Sep 2026
· Pete Hegseth Faces Growing Criticism as War With Iran Rolls On from the morgue, 3 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.