The joint US-Israeli attack on Iran began on 28 February, and six months later the war has already cost the US at least 18 troops and $100bn in military operations. Ordinary people are paying too. A Brown University study and estimates from Moody's Analytics put the extra energy costs at around $600 to $1,000 for each American taxpayer after Iran blocked the Strait of Hormuz. The machinery of state power keeps moving. The bill lands everywhere else.
The War Machine Eats First
US Democrats on Friday slammed the Trump administration for dragging out the war to its six-month anniversary, warning Republicans would pay the price in the upcoming midterm elections. That’s the language of the electoral cage, where one ruling bloc scolds another while the war keeps chewing through money, lives, and fuel. President Donald Trump's own estimates had the war lasting only a few weeks. Instead, the Republican-controlled Congress approved most of the $100bn late last month after Secretary of War Pete Hegseth requested additional funds north of $60bn.
Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin said in a statement on Friday: "Trump and his chief dealmaker [Vice President JD] Vance have failed to reach an agreement to end their war. Back in March, Trump and Vance said the war would be over 'soon' - but just this week, Trump said he is 'not in a hurry' to end the war." Martin added that the DNC oversees all party activities and vets candidates for elections. He said: "[They] dragged the US into a deadly and costly war they clearly cannot find a way out of - at the expense of the American people who are struggling to make ends meet. Trump and Vance explicitly promised no new foreign wars, yet six months in, there is no end in sight to the conflict that has driven up prices on everything from gas to groceries." He also said: "While Republicans claim they cannot bring down costs or fund affordable healthcare for everyday Americans, they continue to spend billions of dollars on a war no one wanted or asked for - and voters will remember this betrayal when they head to the polls in November."
That’s the democratic ritual in full costume: condemn the war, promise accountability, then route everything back through the ballot box while the war budget keeps flowing.
Sanctions, Strikes, and the Same Old Script
The war has killed between 3,400 and 6,000 Iranians, depending on whether you take the UN’s OCHA agency or the Israeli military. The numbers differ. The dead don’t.
The Silver Bulletin said on Friday that repeat polling showed around 37 percent of Americans support the US-Israeli war on Iran, while 55 percent oppose it. Earlier this year, before the 28 February onslaught began, reports emerged that Democratic Party leadership was trying to curb more grassroots efforts to restrain Trump's war-making authority. Establishment Democrats, many of whom failed to condemn Israel for what the United Nations and Holocaust scholars have called a genocide in Gaza, have not shied away from consistent condemnation of Iran, believing that, if not now, then at some point Tehran would have to be militarily confronted.
Iran said that, while it must be ready for a war with the US - largely egged on by Israel - it would rather cut a deal that allows it the weapons it says it needs to defend itself as a sovereign state. A week before the US and Israel began joint air strikes, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and CIA Director John Ratcliffe briefed House and Senate leadership on the latest Iran developments behind closed doors. The top Democrat in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, emerged only to say to reporters: "This is serious, and the administration has to make its case to the American people." Four days earlier, Schumer said in a statement that "confronting Iran’s ruthless campaign of terror, nuclear ambitions, regional aggression, and horrific oppression of the Iranian people demands strength, resolve, regional coordination, and strategic clarity."
The language changes. The structure doesn’t. Closed-door briefings, public warnings, more war.
The Diplomatic Theater
If there is a diplomatic track that Trump is still pursuing, there are no signs that it's yet at a senior enough level to bear fruit. Two attempted ceasefires have quickly collapsed. Qatar's prime minister arrived in Iran on Thursday in a bid to seek a joint Iran-Oman solution to reopening the Strait of Hormuz. The talks have slightly lowered the price of oil this week, but Trump's new deployment of the USS Theodore Roosevelt for a seven-month stint in the region suggests tensions are not winding down any time soon.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Monday announced a new wave of sanctions against Iran and its "enablers", toward what he described as an "asphyxiation of this regime". He called it "Operation Economic Outcast". Using a "zero leakage approach", Bessent said the Treasury had "mapped every node, every facilitator, and every network that Iran has used to smuggle oil and evade sanctions", and that Trump had already made phone calls to counterparts around the world "with specific requests to cease their interactions with the regime". He did not specify which leaders, nor on what timeline they may act.
That’s the state system in miniature: war by air, pressure by finance, and diplomacy as a side corridor that never quite reaches the people it claims to protect.
The war has also exposed a critical shortfall in US munitions, with the Pentagon moving many to the Gulf as it strikes back at Iranian retaliation against US military bases and energy facilities in the region. A Reuters report this month said the US had exhausted its stockpile of sophisticated long-range missiles during the war on Iran, including surface-to-surface ATACMS and Precision Strike Missiles. The Associated Press also reported a "beyond critical" shortage of advanced missile interceptors, especially Patriots, which have been used to shoot down Russian ballistic missiles in the war with US-backed Ukraine. The arsenal runs thin. The war keeps going anyway.