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| ‘Imagine for a second if we lived in a country where the government actually cared about its citizens.’ Photograph: Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images |
But be careful about calling the US-Israeli attacks on Iran, which have expanded into an Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon, a “war”. The geniuses in the White House can’t seem to figure out what the hell they’re doing. The House speaker, Mike Johnson, announced on 5 March that “we are not at war” and that the US has “no intention of being at war”. Some lawmakers, such as Senator Cynthia Lummis, meanwhile, are arguing that the US has been in “forever war” with Iran for decades.
But whatever you call this – a war, a limited operation, a bloodthirsty act of imperial hubris – the costs of “Operation Epic Fury” are exorbitant. Civilians in Iran and the wider Middle East are paying with their lives: more than 1,300 people have reportedly been killed in Iran, including more than 200 children. Meanwhile, more than 800 people have been killed in Lebanon, including more than 100 children, and more than 815,000 people displaced.
While missiles may not be raining down on Washington DC the way they are in Tehran, ordinary Americans are paying a heavy price too. Nobody knows how or when this war will end, but I can tell you one thing for sure: Americans will find themselves far poorer because of it.
First, let’s look at the sticker price of the war itself, not including all the knock-on effects on the economy. Exactly how much taxpayer money has been spent on killing schoolchildren and causing a humanitarian and environmental disaster is hard to pin down. Last week Pentagon officials told lawmakers in a closed-door briefing that... READ MORE
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/17/trump-iran-war-cost-americans-11-billion