How Much Has the War in Iran Cost Us?

**Kusha Navadar** (0:10)
It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. I'm Kusha Navadar filling in for Brian today.
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But first, we turn to Iran. When the Iran War started in February, President Donald Trump said it wouldn't last more than a few weeks. Well, we've just hit six months and there's still no end in sight. After a month of relative calm, the United States restarted fighting with military strikes on Iran's Lorac Island. Iran retaliated with missiles at a base hosting US troops in Jordan. After that, President Trump posted on Truth Social in response saying, Iran is officially a failed nation. It is dead. Followed by many other claims about the state of Iran and a promise to respond militarily. With us now is John Cassidy. He's a staff writer at The New Yorker and writes their weekly column, The Financial Page. In his most recent column, John asked a question I imagine a lot of us have asked at some point over the past six months. How much is this war costing us? As a country, as individuals, as everything in between. In his column, John set out to answer that question and he's here to help us break down these numbers. John, hi, welcome back to WNYC.

**John Cassidy** (2:27)
Thanks for inviting me on. I'm delighted to be here.

**Kusha Navadar** (2:29)
Delighted to have you. And listeners, we want to hear from you too. What questions do you have for John about the cost of this war? Has your life become more expensive in the last six months? And do you blame the war? Tell us what you think. Call or text at 212-433-WNYC.
That's 212-433-9692.
John, your most recent column is titled, How Much is the War in Iran Costing Americans? But there's actually not one clear number, right? Why is that?

**John Cassidy** (3:02)
Well, the war has several effects and it all depends on how you tally it up. The way I looked at it was I separated the costs into non-monetary ones, casualties, deaths and injuries, military costs, the cost of the weapons and moving troops around, et cetera, and economic costs, which in this case have mainly been because the war caused a big spurt in energy prices, gasoline, diesel, et cetera. And I did a lot of reading, spoke to a lot of experts who've looked into each of these areas and tried to tally it all together. So I can go through each of those in turn if you'd like.

**Kusha Navadar** (3:41)
Yeah, I think we're going to break down and touch on at least a bunch of them. I'm wondering before we dive in, are there other factors that you looked at besides the ones that you mentioned when you're trying to figure out the cost of a war? Maybe a factor that people don't expect immediately if that comes to mind?

**John Cassidy** (3:57)
Yeah, well, I mean, there are lots of different ones. There are psychological costs, there are strategic costs. What's this going to do with the role of the US in the world, the future of sort of Middle East, et cetera? They're sort of very large, very important questions, but not ones it's easy to put a dollar sign or a strict number against. This being a sort of economics, financial column, I tried to restrict myself to questions which I could give some sort of a dollar answer to or a figure's answer to. So it's certainly, I didn't, the overall cost of the war, as with all wars, we really won't know for decades because obviously it depends on what larger impact it has on America's role in the world, what larger impact it has on stability in the Middle East, et cetera. And those are huge questions.