President Donald Trump has said American allies in the Middle East will "pay" the U.S. bill for the Iran war after the administration conceded the eight monthlong war was crucial in handing the Republicans stinging midterm losses last week. "Those countries that we've protected are going to pay us back any and all costs that we've had for the war," the president said in an interview with CBS News, aired Sunday. GOP officials have largely chalked up the Democrats seizing control of Congress to the increasingly unpopular conflict with Tehran and the ballooning fuel costs for U.S. consumers, triggered by the war.
The U.S. and Israel describe the conflict, which began with both countries conducting airstrikes on Iran, as a pre-emptive war to contain the threat they said Tehran posed with its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Appearing to refer to the Middle East countries which Tehran targeted with drones and missiles after the opening U.S. and Israeli attacks on the country on February 28, Trump said: "Without us, they wouldn't exist." "Without us, Israel would not exist," he added. Newsweek has reached out to the White House for comment via email.
Iran has attacked at least 11 countries since the start of U.S.-led bombardment, with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel hit particularly hard by Iranian barrages. The ebbs and flows of Iranian drone and missile onslaughts have squeezed global stockpiles of Western-made air defenses, in particular American-manufactured kit designed to take out fast-moving ballistic missiles. The U.S. has sent additional Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) systems, its most sophisticated ground-based air defenses, to the Middle East during the war to protect U.S. bases and American allies in the region.
Just days before the midterm vote, it emerged the Pentagon's estimate for the total cost of the war had surged to $47 billion. Between February and the start of August, the Iran war had racked up a bill of around $38 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The U.S. used up more than $13 billion in air defense interceptor missiles during this period, the non-partisan agency said.
Replacing weapons like Tomahawk cruise missiles and interceptors like Patriot missiles were described as the single biggest cost for the U.S. over the course of the conflict. By mid-July, the U.S. had used up more than 1,700 Patriot interceptors and over 200 THAAD missiles in the Middle East, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed U.S. officials. It's difficult to work out how many interceptors were used to defend individual countries, and whether several interceptor missiles were used to take down individual Iranian missiles.
It's not clear what the calculation to determine a cost breakdown per nation would involve. Each Patriot interceptor comes with a roughly $4 million price tag. Beyond this expense, the U.S. has incurred costs hard to attribute directly to the defense of specific countries, such as higher fuel costs for more flight hours in U.S. aircraft, and the rebuilding of U.S. bases in the region.
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